I'm not assuming anything. I'm very plainly asserting that rights already exist and that they exist independent of society and government.

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A panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.

"Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes toward the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

"I'm a panda," he says at the door. "Look it up."

The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.

"Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."

One could argue anything they want, and could then be wrong on many things. Rights are not physical, they do not have energy, they no not have mass, they do not have a cause and they do not have an effect. Thus the only way they can exist in any form is as a thought.

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Set your destination with your heart, get there with your mind.

"The wisest men follow their own direction." - Euripides

I love how I'm being continually ignored.

Is there any evidence or proof that rights exist outside of our minds?

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"Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states...Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial "outside agitator" idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds."



~Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

People are the Government. It takes You and I to vote to create a Session for Congress and a Term for a President. It takes You and I to do this on 2 other levels, local and State. If nobody votes no government is created.

Thats why the Preamble of the US Constitution states:

Carter v. Carter Coal Company (1936) affirms this. As the US Constitution only lays out the Federal Government and recognizes it comes from the Soverignity of the People. Tomorrow, if we so choose, we could abolish this form of Government as its our Soverign Right to do so.

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Pioneers are walking all around singing songs about Lenin and they should be shot for it.

Handlebars

"If you are looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror"- V

It is inaccurate to say that I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office.
H. L. Mencken

come on you know you wanna play football..

Beagán agus a rá go maith.

Economic Left/Right: 3.75
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -2.87

Is there any proof that they don't?

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A panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.

"Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes toward the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

"I'm a panda," he says at the door. "Look it up."

The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.

"Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."

The burden of proof is on you, pal. And in any case it's impossible to prove a negative.

__________________
"Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states...Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial "outside agitator" idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds."



~Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Human rights are thought up and declared by humans. Animal rights too. Societies decide humans should have rights. If the people don't force the governments to defend those rights, the people can lose those rights.

A baby isn't born with rights automatically. If the baby is born into a country that has declared she has rights, then she has them.

If she's born in a country under the Taleban, she has no rights.

Slaves in the USA had no rights.

Jews in Nazi Germany had no rights.

Native Americans in the USA had no rights.

Rights are given to the people by the society the people live in. If the people demand their rights, maybe they'll get some. If they get lazy and don't pay attention, their rights can be rescinded.

It's happening to us right now. Does anyone notice?

Surely the burden of proof is equally on you to prove they have been invented, as it's on Chan to prove they're natural.

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Trust me, I'm a socialist!

There's power in a factory,power in the land, power in the hand of the worker. But it all amounts to nothing if together we don't stand, there is power in a union.
The union forever defending our rights, down with the blackleg, workers unite. To our brothers and our sisters in many far off lands, there is power in a union.
Money speaks for money, the devil for his own. - Billy Bragg

No.

Don't give me that crap! You make the assertion that rights do not exist outside our minds, you have the burden of proof that they don't exist outside our minds.

Let's use an analogy here: if a tree falls in a forest and there's no one there to hear it does it still make a sound? Your assertion is essentially that it doesn't and it's up to you to prove that it doesn't.

I will defer to John Locke:

John Locke: Second Treatise of Civil Government

__________________
A panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.

"Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes toward the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

"I'm a panda," he says at the door. "Look it up."

The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.

"Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."