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What did he leave out? The most important part.

mpg said:
The government didn't give us the Bill of Rights.
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Who do you think upholds and defends those rights? (the govt) And what do you think the govt is comprised of? (answer: individuals)

They are one and the same.

However, I can't - as an individual - make up some right for myself and expect everyone else to abide by it. I can EARN that right and defend that right myself, if I am able.
 
Redress said:
Your comment shows a serious lack of understanding the real world. You make the most, absurd comments.

And what exactly is this video supposed to show? Why is it even worth posting? What is the point of this thread?
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to understand what the Constitution means you have to understand the assumptions held by those who drafted the document. If you do not your understanding and interpretations of the constitution are going to be flawed or downright idiotic. I am an agnostic but I am also a constitutional scholar of some skill and those who whine about God as somehow validifying their faulty interpretations of the Bill of RIghts, etc, are delusional.

the issue is not whether God exists or if you believe in a higher power (above that of jackbooted stormtroopers with the power to kill you) the issue is that those who wrote the constitution DID and that is the starting point for understanding and interpreting the document.
 
MrVicchio said:
Sadly, you're comments show a serious lack of understanding history, what motivated the Founding Fathers, or why America came to be. You make the most, absurd comments.
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What people believed in the past about rights has no bearing upon whether they are inherent or government granted.

Furthermore, the DOI is little more then a laundry list of why the English King sucks. You should read it for a change. And America came to be for a variety of reasons. One of which was for some Christians to avoid the dogma of other Christians. You never hear that in school.

No one has ever answered these questions here:

If you believe that rights are God given and are inalienable....then why doesn't the Ocean stop its drowning of a man lost at sea? Two men trapped on an island starving, who's right to life supersedes the other?

I doubt you can.

Nature has demonstrated for millions of years that "rights" only exist if there is force to enforce them. Therefore, our current rights are inherently government granted and enforced.
 
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mpg said:
You're both wrong. The people grant themselves the rights, not a god, not the government.
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You're like half way there. People agree to the social contract, thereby giving some freedoms for protection and enforcement of rights. So yes, technically people grant themselves rights, but in the process of enforcement they rely upon government.
 
American said:
That's because you lack the understanding about why that premise is important.
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Actually, her understanding of the premise far surpasses your feeble attempt. By understanding that rights only exist by effectively violence and threats of violence, she respects her rights and engages in behavior to ensure their survival. As rights are given and taken by government, one must ensure that government is for the people.

If everyone believes or agrees that your rights come from something higher than government, "God" will never have to intervene because men will strike any attempt by govt to subvert those rights.
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And when has God ever done so before? People believed in the Divine Right of Kings and that didn't turn out as well. The problem with your view is that you take such rights for granted thinking that your God will be there to ensure they exist despite all evidence to the contrary as to how those rights actually function. The funny thing is, social conservatives like you have been subverting individual freedoms for years. You attack the left as those who subvert, but Social Conservatism has been proven time after time as being antithetical to limited government and expansions of personal freedoms. Theocracies are an extreme example of government becoming massively overbearing to the point where rights are removed in mass. Those who proclaim to follow God in the political office are some of the worst subverters of freedom in history.

But of course you have to understand that concept first.
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Looks like you need to go back to school.

Those that lack understanding, virtually always on the left, have compromised intellectual immune systems.
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See above. Those who think that rights are God given don't see a problem when they run away from hard questions about such rights.

if rights were God given and unable to be removed, why doesn't the Ocean respect a drowning man's right to life?
 
you would think that if people had more understanding, we wouldn't be having this conversation.
 
obvious Child said:
Actually, her understanding of the premise far surpasses your feeble attempt. By understanding that rights only exist by effectively violence and threats of violence, she respects her rights and engages in behavior to ensure their survival. As rights are given and taken by government, one must ensure that government is for the people.



And when has God ever done so before? People believed in the Divine Right of Kings and that didn't turn out as well. The problem with your view is that you take such rights for granted thinking that your God will be there to ensure they exist despite all evidence to the contrary as to how those rights actually function. The funny thing is, social conservatives like you have been subverting individual freedoms for years. You attack the left as those who subvert, but Social Conservatism has been proven time after time as being antithetical to limited government and expansions of personal freedoms. Theocracies are an extreme example of government becoming massively overbearing to the point where rights are removed in mass. Those who proclaim to follow God in the political office are some of the worst subverters of freedom in history.



Looks like you need to go back to school.



See above. Those who think that rights are God given don't see a problem when they run away from hard questions about such rights.

if rights were God given and unable to be removed, why doesn't the Ocean respect a drowning man's right to life?
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I have a question, what does the phrase "God-given rights" mean to you?
 
DarkWizard12 said:
I have a question, what does the phrase "God-given rights" mean to you?
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That the person using the phrase needs to spend some time in nature. Not to mention studying the actual function and application of rights over the past 3,000 or so years. Furthermore, those who use it, I believe, have some superiority complex. Nature does not abide to the notion of "God-given rights" and man to have a special set of rights that no other organism on the planet has ever had (or respect) is ludicrous. Rights exist via force. Nothing more.
 
Originally Posted by MrVicchio
I agree, show people that he believes Gov't is the highest power.

Patria Antiqua said:
I'm glad he thinks so, because it is.
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LOL...... come November we will remind him that "the people" are a higher power and "the government" serves at our pleasure.

Then in November 2012 we'll drive the lesson home.
 
rivrrat said:
I have no issues, hon.

The govt grants the rights, so leaving some fairy tale "creator" out of his speech was spot on. It should have been left out of the DOI too.
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If the government grants our rights, then the government can take those rights..... that's why our rights are "inalienable", and can not be taken by the government.










OK............. 80,000,000 gun owner help a bit. :mrgreen:
 
Holy ****!!

Guess what else he left out.

Practically every single word in the whole Declaration of Independence.
Clearly Obama is a Tory loyalist who sides with King George.:2mad:
 
rivrrat said:
Really? You don't think the govt can take rights away? :lol:
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IT's possible for a government to take away the ability to exercise a right. That is certain. However, it is possible that in certain instances, the right remains even though there's no ability to exercise it.
 
Simon W. Moon said:
IT's possible for a government to take away the ability to exercise a right. That is certain. However, it is possible that in certain instances, the right remains even though there's no ability to exercise it.
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LMFAO

And how is that different than not having the right?
 
obvious Child said:
That the person using the phrase needs to spend some time in nature. Not to mention studying the actual function and application of rights over the past 3,000 or so years. Furthermore, those who use it, I believe, have some superiority complex. Nature does not abide to the notion of "God-given rights" and man to have a special set of rights that no other organism on the planet has ever had (or respect) is ludicrous. Rights exist via force. Nothing more.
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Well, you misunderstand a vast majority of religious americans then.

It's nothing about "nature", "nature" is sort of...irrelevant and means nothing to the phrase? as well as the past 3000 years. Just over 200 years ago, we still lived that kings had a "god-given right" to rule over their subjects.

In churches everywhere, God is taught to be eternal. His existence is eternal, his commands are eternal, etc. etc. etc. An abstract concept really. When you have a vast majority of church-going people saying rights are "god-given", they aren't saying any such right is literally given by God, but that right is eternal. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, what christians understand to be "god-given rights", are understood to be eternal, regardless of what anyone or any government says. This "nature of rights" or whatever the **** you call it, is meaningless to the overall point of the phrase.

Now does it make a little more sense?
 
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rivrrat said:
Precisely.


Really? You don't think the govt can take rights away? :lol:
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they don't have a right to take rights away, although, they certainly can try. :lol:
 
Simon W. Moon said:
If rights only exist in so far as they can be exercised, how can right be infringed?
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Because of a govt or other power that defines that we HAVE a right and defends it for us at our behest.

Rights are created by mankind, defined by mankind, re-defined by mankind, granted by mankind, defended by mankind, and revoked by mankind.

In OUR society, we give the govt the power to do that. If we did not live in a society, it would individuals who did that for themselves. We have a right to something as long as we can defend and exercise that right. If some big bugger comes along and decides we don't have a right to live on the hillside he wants to live on, then he's correct if he manages to take it from us. By failing to defend our right, we lose the right. By losing the ability to exercise the right, we have lost the right. But, if we defend our hillside, the big bugger failed to gain the right to it and we keep the right to it.

In our society, the government just fights at our behest.
 
rivrrat said:
Because of a govt or other power that defines that we HAVE a right and defends it for us at our behest.

Rights are created by mankind, defined by mankind, re-defined by mankind, granted by mankind, defended by mankind, and revoked by mankind.

In OUR society, we give the govt the power to do that. If we did not live in a society, it would individuals who did that for themselves. We have a right to something as long as we can defend and exercise that right. If some big bugger comes along and decides we don't have a right to live on the hillside he wants to live on, then he's correct if he manages to take it from us. By failing to defend our right, we lose the right. By losing the ability to exercise the right, we have lost the right. But, if we defend our hillside, the big bugger failed to gain the right to it and we keep the right to it.

In our society, the government just fights at our behest.
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I think you're talking about ability instead. We have the ability to do things that we have no right to do.
 
rivrrat said:
Ability gives us the right. (outside of a manmade govt system of power)
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A thing can be not illegal, able to be done, yet one can still have no right to do it.
 
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