Position:Home>Philosophy> Why do we feel we are entitled to rights?
Question: Why do we feel we are entitled to rights!?
Especially when there are people born in all over the world no different than us that have virtually no rights at all!? Is just being born in America enough to make you better than anyone else!?
When did the belief in rights start!? Couldn't we just have said, every man for himself!? It makes more problems because then whites have rights and blacks don't even in the same country, until about 40 years ago, wars are fought because of privilege!. But what does it really mean!?
Why have we collectively striven for construction and technology over history, what is the ultimate goal!? Because I think as soon as you join a group you want rights the same as anyone else in the group!.!.!. I guess my real question is, why do we group!? But feel free to answer any one of those dozen questions!.!.!.Www@QuestionHome@Com
Best Answer - Chosen by Asker:
Wow!.!.!. Great questions!. I wish I was intellectually able to handle these issues in this forum!.
What if we looked at it from the perspective of karma and reincarnation!? Would you be born into an "easier" existence with each "re-birth!?" I don't really believe that is the case at all!. I think you are born into the situation that will allow you to learn human lessons, be they humility, greed, sadness, fear, comfort, warmth, love, hate, any number of ideas man has devised to describe experiences people can have when they pass through a lifetime!. There isn't any other good reason why one person might be born into abject terror and another with the proverbial "silver spoon" in his mouth!. If you are convinced that there is a God, you must see that the place and situation of your birth is pre-determined by some method of selection!. Could it be that God directs your soul to be part of a particular existence at a given time, in order to learn the lessons necessary for the maturity of a soul!?
Enough of this speculation of mine!. I hope you get something interesting to think about from your question!.Www@QuestionHome@Com
As far as American history is concerned, the belief in individual and group rights BEGAN in England during the 1700's with the Pilgrims that chose to come to the New World (at that time) and with those that rebelled against English rule!. Being born in America does NOT make a person better than any one else!.!.!. but U!.S!. citizens (the majority today) believe that everyone (worldwide) SHOULD have basic freedoms of equality!. True, there are still some people that "just don't get it", but they are becoming fewer and fewer each year!.
Technology is not the end all or be all of existance!. But it does make for greater enhancements of modern existance!. Technology and technological advancements, if used properly (and not abused), will become as normal as fire became eons ago!.
The pure "every man for himself" approach would result in anarchy!.Www@QuestionHome@Com
We're humans!. Instinctively, we need rights!. Those born without them strive for them, although they may have no resources to fight for them!. All of the pilgrims and such that escaped Britain came to avoid persecution, or less specifically, for rights!. That's why America's constitution is the way it is!.
We're not better than anyone else, just luckier to be born in a place where our rights are openly given, and not taken away!.Www@QuestionHome@Com
easy: ego and selfishness
everything is about "me me me"Www@QuestionHome@Com
the constitution gives us all basic rights in this countryWww@QuestionHome@Com
Somebody has to set the example!.
We started as a country where it was every man for himself, we won our rights fair and square and did it our way!. It was that same "freedom of each" that became inborn expectation for individual rights!.
At first, our egos got the best of us, ergo the whole slavery thing!.!.!. Still, over time, these wounds have healed!. I'd say Obama has a more than decent shot at becoming our country's first black president, like it or not!.
Individual rights are what being American is all about, and that's why we're the best/worst country in the world!.
-TT!.Www@QuestionHome@Com
i believe everyone should have rights no matter where u are from or what color u are and these countries that give their people no rights are horrible and i am so grateful that i am not there tho i probably wouldnt kno any different but even tho i hate our government and we are slowly losing everything we were constructed of i am still happy i have some of my basic rights i thin kteh world needs to loosen up and stop worrying and being so uptight and closed minded i think people are silly to worry about things taht really dont matter or dont have an effect on them i am really working on trying not to get upset or think people can tdo things as much just because i dont like it because i want to be able to do what i want and if im stomping around saying i dont think people should be able to do this and that then what gives me the right to think i can do whatever i want ya kno i dunno if i answered any of ur questions or even stayed within the topic but this is some of my opinion on rights and freedomsWww@QuestionHome@Com
Get your definitions straight: Rights are unalienable of individual sovereignty!.
Entitlements are "privileges and immunities" under the clause of the same name, part of the 14th Amendment of the U!.S!. Constitution!.
Those not born in America have precisely the same unalienable sovereignty!. Our Constitution made it clear that "all men are created equal," not that "all Americans are created equal!." Men who have fewer or no rights than Americans live under tyranny such our Founders lived under--or worse!.
The Magna Charta was signed in 1215!. "Magna Carta was the first document forced onto an English King by his subjects in an attempt to limit his powers by law!. It was preceded by the 1100 Charter of Liberties in which King Henry I voluntarily stated that his own powers were under the law!." (Wikipedia)
But Englishmen and others knew long before 1215 that they were endowed with unalienable rights!.
The blacks and women deserved it when white men got it, but not even all white men got the vote, or all rights, at the signing of the Constitution!. It was one of our failings, and it took the Civil War and 3 Amendments and Jim Crow laws and lynchings and the Civil Rights movement and leaders both black and white and President Johnson and the Supreme Court to give to the disenfranchised what they had always deserved!.
" The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people!."
This means, simply, that what is not the governments' power belongs to the people IN THEIR INDIVIDUALITY, because the smallest minority is the individual and the Constitution was intended to protect the rights of the minority!.
Sovereignty belongs first to the individual, because he/she cannot grant away his/her liberties to the purview of state powers (such as trials by jury instead of individual justice), when he/she does not have such powers to grant!. Therefore, such powers reside first within the individual, and case law is most often made when individuals find a hole in the law that denies them their individual sovereignty!.
Entitlements belong only to those who have been GIVEN them!. NO man/woman is GIVEN sovereignty except by right of birth!.
That is what "unalienable" means!.Www@QuestionHome@Com