Do a lot of people employ strawmen when they argue with you? Could it be that someone genuinely misunderstood what you were saying?
This is exactly what I argued against when I said:
“If rights are things that you are entitled to and freedoms are things that you can do without interference, then nature grants you no rights or freedoms whatsoever”
But you called that a strawman. Where do these rights come from? You say it is not the law, you say that they come from nature is a strawman. Is it a notion of God (this is a question not an accusation)?
If I were born in circumstances where these rights were in no way protected - say if I was born anywhere on the planet about 1000 years ago, would I still have had them? If not, what changed between now and then that I am born with rights now and not then?
Every one of these documents that grants (or merely agrees to the existence of) human rights is a legal document drafted by a negotiated by humans. Is that process a process of deciding on which rights that people want to hold inviolable or is it a process of divining the truth of what rights are inviolable? If the latter, then how do we know we got it right and that the current set of rights has the rights right? If the former, how can we say these rights were not granted by people?
If you wouldn’t mind taking a moment of your time to education rather than merely berate me from your position of superior knowledge of US and international rights, I would appreciate it.
When I said:
I tried to be very clear that my concern was rights as they can be enforced in the real world. I hope I engage in no strawman argument by guessing that you agree that rights, even if defined to be inalienable, can be rendered moot by oppression. I’ve been, in your scheme, equivocating between having a right taken away and having any hope of access to a right taken away. I’m not sure what the sense in calling me out on that is when I’ve clearly stated it is what I am doing.
