Nope you can not. They exist in a purely conceptual form. It is just a word made to describe something. They exist just as the concept of other things exist.

__________________
May your paradise always be green, you liberties always be full, and may the ignorance of you enemies not drive you to be pro-nuke.

"We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself
into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and
trying to lift himself up by the handle."-Winston Churchill

Yes, I do. Humans are Animals. Male lions will kill other male lions for the "right to breed". That is Nature.



It has a lot to do with Socialism. Positive rights are Collectivist ideas. Negative Rights are Individual rights. You are arguing that only the State can give rights, thus making it Positive rights.

I am telling you a State can't give you your Natural Rights as they are already there. The State can only recognize them or oppress them.



No its not. Positive Liberty is the idea of doing something for the Collective Good. Positive Liberty gives the ability to oppress or control one's right via the masses. Like Gay Marriage is Federally banned as the ban is seen as a Positive Liberty (in the good of the State). Education, Health Care, and Political participation are a Positive Liberty derived from the masses. Without the masses approval, you do not have these rights.

Negative Liberty does not come from the masses.

Negative Liberty refers to freedom from interference by other people. Which means if you take my view, Negative Liberty is the best Liberty to have. This means when I read the Declaration of Independence, US Constitution and the Bill of Rights... I see Negative Liberties (rights) that no Government shall infringe (which is used in the Bill of Rights when talking about these rights). It means I respect everyones right to Free Speech, the right to bear arms, to property, to Trial by Jury, and the many more listed.

But you are a Positive Liberty person, and you think these rights are State given. Which means you have the tendency to want to oppress.



You don't see gay rights as Natural.Thus you think they choose to be gay just like 95% of Republicans do. I see gay rights as Natural. That they are born with equality and don't have to have masses tell them this.

__________________
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

Ok, that makes sense in way.

__________________
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

It is not the easiest thing to grasp. It reminds me of that yucky philosophy class I took.

__________________
May your paradise always be green, you liberties always be full, and may the ignorance of you enemies not drive you to be pro-nuke.

"We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself
into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and
trying to lift himself up by the handle."-Winston Churchill

I would argue that they only exist becuase we decided they exist.

Honor, nobility and many other things don't exist except in the human mind but that doesn't mean they don't have power.

__________________
Walt Whitman
"I say that democracy can never prove itself beyond cavil, until it founds and luxuriantly grows its own forms of art, poems, schools, theology, displacing all that exists, or that has been produced anywhere in the past, under opposite influences."

Animals do not posses rights. They follow their instincts. To say that animals have any rights is completely ludicrous.

__________________
"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.

Animals do not posses rights. They follow their instincts. To say that animals have any rights is completely ludicrous.

And I'd also like to note, again, that these rights you've given animals are just something you completely made up.

Any proof or evidence that these "rights" are intrinsic to animals/humans?

__________________
"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.

Exactly, animals possess perfect positive freedom but no negative freedom and no rights.

__________________
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

Well, it's not even that they have any freedom, really. Freedom is once again just something we made up. Animals just survive.

__________________
"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.

So I have the right to kill you?

The state can give negative rights too, it can say that you must not intefere with this person's ability to do this. I don't belueve in any natural rights so your last sentence is just more repetition of your position.

I think you're getting confused between positive rights and positive liberty, a positive liberty is the freedom to achieve your potential and to receive the opportunities needed. A negative liberty is the less broad freedom simply from inteference. A positive right would be obliging someone to do something for another person as opposed to a negative right which says that you must not do anything to intefere in another's attempt to do something. So a positive right to education means the state must provide education for everyone, a negative right to it means the state, nor anyone else, may intefere with someone's attemtps to gain an education. But this is just the factual definition of words, what this fails to do is prove the existence of natural rights.

True, though negative liberty can be more than freedom from inteference in the very narrow sense you use it. Is poverty not an inteference to ones freedom? Is ill-health not also? And so surely we must have the right to healthcare and to the means to come out of poverty.

No I don't, I believe in negative liberty also, but like i said above freedom from inteference must mean more than merely the narrow definition of simply not allowing other persons to physically stop you from excerising your right to, let's say for example, free speech.

No, "thus" can not be followed by a non-sequitur, what stops me from believing homosexuality comes from birth (please note I'm not saying either way my beliefs here) but that gay rights are no more natural than mine or yours?

__________________
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