Rights cannot impose a burden on someone else, they are internal and inalienable. Rights are part of being a human being and impossible to take away; they are not granted by government or legal contract (there are small-r “rights” lawyers talk about in contacts, but that's a different animal). People can restrict the free expression of your rights, but you still have the rights. If you're put in prison you still have the right to liberty, but not the freedom to express that right. If you are killed you still had the right to life, but not the ability to continue it.

Any right that violates that basic concept is no right at all.

You have the right to work for the best food, shelter, clothing, entertainment, etc that you can possibly get.

But the end product should not be a right.

The most basic of all human rights is food.

Food is not a right, Vega!

Not water or air?

I think you're confusing biological imperatives with actual rights.

Be careful there because sex also falls in that category. That would set just about every woman in the world up for a lawsuit for denying some dude his basic human rights.

Legitimate rights place no burden on anyone else and rather than expanding the role of government over the individual, they work to curtail it.

Sure it is, Stan. There is nothing more fundamental to human rights than food and water.

That's your definition. But one cannot do anything, if one cannot eat or drink. One cannot live, be free and pursue happiness without access to clean and available water.

Biological imperative? Yes. A human right? Yes.

Does it mean the US is responsible to feed everyone in the world? No.

Air is, Vega. Not that making any sense worries you.

“Does it mean the US is responsible to feed everyone in the world? No.”

Except that that is exactly the follow up to every such declaration.

Food is a right so anyone who is hungry is entitled to food. As is housing, and medical care, and so on.

This always leads to the government picking up the slack and us picking up the tab.

True rights place no financial burden on anyone else.

Do you know what it is called to force someone else to work for your own good against their will?

Most would call that slavery. Is their no right to be free from chattel ownership by another?

No, life is the right, not food.

These aren't rights, they are needs, learn the difference.

I often hear my critics say that people should have a Right to something like Housing, Food or Shelter.

Yeah, I often hear liberals say stupid stuff too. It seems to be a common thread with them.

So who do you plan to enslave to provide you with food?

Spoken like a true Republican.

Yep. Rights before you are born and at the end of life. In between, not so much.

“Does it mean the US is responsible to feed everyone in the world? No.”

Nope it is our responsibility to take shit from everyone else. You know Manifest Destiny and all that imperialism.

And it's kinda the human thing to do to look out for others. Not that anyone would confuse you with being human.

Christopher Taylor comes the closest today in identifying the nature of rights. Rights are a moral concept defining the moral limits of human interaction. You have a right to life because it is wrong for someone to kill you. You have a right to free speech because it is wrong for someone to mandate what you can and can't say. As he notes, someone can violate your violate your rights. But that doesn't negate the right. This stems from the fact that people acting immorally doesn't make wrong right. And they can no more be created or declared into existence than morality can be created by fiat.

Once you understand this basic definition, the notion of a positive right such as a “right to food”, a “right to housing”, or a “right to clothing” become not only absurd, but a negation of the very concept of rights. A positive right acts not as a moral limitation on human interaction, but rather a removal of such limitations. It tells you that the other has claim on the individual, limitations be damned.

Whether you need it or not is entirely irrelevant. Unless you reduce all of humanity to infantilism where everyone else faces the moral imperetive of providing their every need, morality is not a function of need. And rights cannot be either.

Charity is not a right, either troll. When you actually know what a human is get back to us, until then Asshatma, your opinion means less than nothing.

Life; Liberty; the pursuit of happiness; freedom of speech; religion; and the press; the Right to bear arms; the right to private property… none of these can be given, only taken. If you notice, that the Rights to bear arms and private property are not that you be given these items, only that they not be taken away from you without due process.

Now compare this with Liberal “Rights” of food, shelter, and healthcare. These require that something be provided by others, that your basic care be given by another human being at the expense of another human being against his will. These are not Rights, they are the leading edge of tyranny.

Intentionally misinterpreted the meaning and twisted into something else like a true Democrat.

Why should you have more rights than me?

Yeah that's been the American goal since like, oh yeah that's right Manifest Destiny went out of style before 1900. And which terrorities have we conquered, lately? I mean we are imperialists aren't we? Or are you just trying to deflect because you had nothing else of intelligence to say?

Requiring others to work for your benefit against their will is called . . . ?

What other term is there?

Oh right, the government will pay for it, so it'll be free and no one will have to pay.

A true democrat.

Out of curiosity, where do you live? I trust it's a place where no one else did prior to you moving there.

Who's denying anyone the ability to buy/grow/hunt/gather food or water?

I wonder if we're still imperialists now, with a solid democrat majority and the leftwing Messiah in the whitehouse.

Seems like treason to malign us as such now.

“And it's kinda the human thing to do to look out for others. Not that anyone would confuse you with being human”

Interesting.

And where does this imperative come from? Are we hardwired to help out complete strangers? Or do you believe there is a higher morality, separate from evolutionary leanings, based on perhaps the edicts of some sky spirit?

flagged for blatant trolling

You need food to survive, but you don't have a right to it. That doesn't diminish the importance of food or our dependence, it just means that you do not have an inalienable, divine given human right to food; food is a means to your right to life, not the right its self.

It's been my experience political lines are typically drawn along these parameters:

Conservative – Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Liberal – Life, liberty and happiness.

That's not meant to be an insult, but it does explain the mindset of how some people think.

Conservative – My rights shall not be deprived in my pursuit of food.
Liberal – It is my right to have food.

What, you mean opposing slavery? Yeah, we Republicans are just awesome like that.

Don't confuse rights with needs. We need food, air and water to survive but we need basic rights in order to live our life peacefully and earn a living.

If I have a right to food then I have a right to force the local farmer to give up the results of his work. That is slavery, pure and simple.

I chose my ideological side when I realized that a liberal poli-sci professor of mine literally saw no distinction between equal opportunity and equal outcome.

Nobody should suffer because of unfairly denied opportunity or property…but unfairly gained opportunity or property is equally unjust.

That means that these kind of liberals either can't grasp the concept that one man's entitlement is another man's slave (unpaid) labor, or that they just don't care. I'm not sure which is more frightening.

You're right, Vega….food and water are human rights. However, work is NOT a right. You have a right to the farmer's food but NOT a right to the work the farmer put in to grow the food.

You need to pay the farmer the appropriate price for the toil that was put in to grow the food.

I think we need to clarify the requirements of life: food, water air and work. As human beings, we are required to work in order to achieve.

Nobody ever got food or water free….they had to trade physical labor for survival. This is true today just as it was true in ancient civilizations.

That's a very good way of putting it, although I'd argue “pursuit of happiness” isn't a right at all, and Jefferson should have retained Locke's original “property” in the triad instead.

You'd have to remove “Liberty” from the Liberal side, as it is incompatible with their view of “happiness.” You can't take something from someone in order to make another's life better without infringing on their liberty.

“Declaring something a Right does nothing to provide a good or service for someone. It simply makes people feel morally superior.”

What an idiot. Tell this to Thomas Jefferson.

Is that supposed to mean something?

mightysamurai,

I'm shocked at you. Don't you remember Jefferson's insistance of the right to life, liberty, and free cookies?