You are the one complicating matters. Animals do what they want unless/until something stops them. Very simple.
The hell it won't. Lions will chase anything out of their territory on a whim. They can do what they want. So can the Cheetah unless the lion stops it. Very simple.No one and nothing can give you rights, only take them away.

UG: Guns make people polite.

DanaC: Britain has no guns but is very polite.

Indeed, one of the outstanding things about Britain is its polite culture. It's as built-in to the people as America's individualist streak.

Within cultures there are traditions and teachings and approaches that give the people their basic make-up. What we were taught as children, we will teach our children, and they will teach their children. And this will determine who we are at the very root, and whether or not we will queue ("single file") for a bus or train or elevator.

Brits: Of course we will stand in a queue. We are British.

Americans: Of course we will bunch up at the entrance, fighting to get in, barely letting the departing people off. We are American.

So what UG is actually saying -- although he doesn't realize it -- is "Guns make the American people polite", quite a true statement.

I just love how queue is spelled. 4 vowels, one consonant, 1 syllable. That has to be some kind of record.

You do not need rights for animals to do what they want unless something stops them. The idea of rights is what complicates it.

If you are in a fight to the death do you need someone to tell you that you can do whatever you want, you just do what you need to survive (or at least a smart person does and nature tends to have a way with dumb people in those situations).

Why does the lion chase the other animals out of its territory? Because the lion has a territorial instinct passed down from its previous ancestor that also had it. The territorial instinct beat the non-territorial instinct in natural selection so instinct tells the lion that chasing the other animals out of its territory will ensure the passing of its genes on, which follows my rule.

For my initial example, I was talking about the lion leaving its territory to kill the cheetah to eliminate competition.

You can't just get rights from nothing. Something has to give them to us or they cease to exist. Everything has a source, something has to come from something else (there are exceptions but that has nothing to do with this).

The idea of infinite rights is the same thing as nothing. If you get in a fight where someone tells you everything is fair game and you get in a fight where no one tells you anything, it is the same fight; just the second is much simpler.

I don't completely agree with this and will hopefully build off it. While "Guns make the American people polite" does apply to many (most could possibly fit too) it does not apply to every sub-culture that is considered American.

UG's example, a gun range, is only one sub-culture of America and his example is very true for that sub-culture.

If you go to other sub-cultures, such as gangs, you will see the opposite.

Maybe it isn't being "American" or "British" that makes someone polite with guns or no guns but how they react to the power they get from guns. The people that go to gun ranges have been taught to react differently to the power of guns opposed to the people that join gangs. The people that go to ranges see guns as something greater than just a tool, but as a symbol of peace and/or respect. The people that join gangs see guns as a tool to enforce their lust for power.

In the hands of one sub-culture, guns can and will make society safer, but in the hands of the other sub-culture, it makes society much more dangerous. I will also assume that these sub-cultures or trains of thought are not just limited to America, but the entire human race.

That is well and rightly said, pierce.

Though I think it would be less the "society" than the individuals within it -- and their individual choices how to behave.

This does go a ways to illustrate my point. Consider also the exquisite manners of military aristocracies, worldwide. I don't think it's a coincidence that careful good manners are practiced by those who are among other things professional killers.

If you do not attempt to assault, rape, or murder me, you won't be harmed by my gun.

Just as in your heroin example, you make the choice not to engage in the risk-taking behavior. Actually, it goes beyond that. You are ultimately harmed by the guy doing heroin. It's your money that's going to send him to rehab, and your stuff that he's stealing (even if indirectly by an increase in your taxes to pay for the police to deal with the crime related to his drug use).




_____
* Note: There is no "e" in heroin. Putting one there makes me nuts.

Thats it! You don't need some one to tell you. You finally got it! Your (they're) rights are natural, given by no one.
See how complicated you're trying to make everything? The Lion does it because nobody/nothing is impinging on his right to do what ever the hell he wants. Simple.

Oh, I see... you wish to violate my rights by limiting acceptable examples. I don't think so.Exactly... you're catching on now.... the second, nobody tells you what your rights are, is much simpler.
If you get into a fight and willingly allow someone to interfere with your right to do what you want, you're a damn fool.

Riiiiggght... not having guns has never killed anyone on a campus, oh... wait.
No one gives me shit, my rights are my own.
There is no god.

Methinks heroine is more dangerous than heroin.

How very true!!

The Female of the Species - Rudyard Kipling

WHEN the Himalayan peasant meets the he-bear in his pride,
He shouts to scare the monster, who will often turn aside.
But the she-bear thus accosted rends the peasant tooth and nail.
For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.

When Nag the basking cobra hears the careless foot of man,
He will sometimes wriggle sideways and avoid it if he can.
But his mate makes no such motion where she camps beside the trail.
For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.

When the early Jesuit fathers preached to Hurons and Choctaws,
They prayed to be delivered from the vengeance of the squaws.
'Twas the women, not the warriors, turned those stark enthusiasts pale.
For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.

Man's timid heart is bursting with the things he must not say,
For the Woman that God gave him isn't his to give away;
But when hunter meets with husbands, each confirms the other's tale—
The female of the species is more deadly than the male.

Man, a bear in most relations—worm and savage otherwise,—
Man propounds negotiations, Man accepts the compromise.
Very rarely will he squarely push the logic of a fact
To its ultimate conclusion in unmitigated act.

Fear, or foolishness, impels him, ere he lay the wicked low,
To concede some form of trial even to his fiercest foe.
Mirth obscene diverts his anger—Doubt and Pity oft perplex
Him in dealing with an issue—to the scandal of The Sex!

But the Woman that God gave him, every fibre of her frame
Proves her launched for one sole issue, armed and engined for the same;
And to serve that single issue, lest the generations fail,
The female of the species must be deadlier than the male.

She who faces Death by torture for each life beneath her breast
May not deal in doubt or pity—must not swerve for fact or jest.
These be purely male diversions—not in these her honour dwells—
She the Other Law we live by, is that Law and nothing else.

She can bring no more to living than the powers that make her great
As the Mother of the Infant and the Mistress of the Mate.
And when Babe and Man are lacking and she strides unclaimed to claim
Her right as femme (and baron), her equipment is the same.

She is wedded to convictions—in default of grosser ties;
Her contentions are her children, Heaven help him who denies!—
He will meet no suave discussion, but the instant, white-hot, wild,
Wakened female of the species warring as for spouse and child.

Unprovoked and awful charges—even so the she-bear fights,
Speech that drips, corrodes, and poisons—even so the cobra bites,
Scientific vivisection of one nerve till it is raw
And the victim writhes in anguish—like the Jesuit with the squaw!

So it comes that Man, the coward, when he gathers to confer
With his fellow-braves in council, dare not leave a place for her
Where, at war with Life and Conscience, he uplifts his erring hands
To some God of Abstract Justice—which no woman understands.

And Man knows it! Knows, moreover, that the Woman that God gave him
Must command but may not govern—shall enthral but not enslave him.
And She knows, because She warns him, and Her instincts never fail,
That the Female of Her Species is more deadly than the Male.

Yes, but you do not speak for everyone that owns a gun. Other people use to enforce their lust for power.


xoxoxobruce - I think you are misunderstanding my analogy. Of course no one has to tell you what you can and can not do, but you do not need rights to do whatever you want. Rights are just superfluous, why I say it is more complicated, and the only thing I can see them being there is for justification.


rkzenrage - Would you still want guns on campus if 20 people were dying a year from them but only 1 person a year was being saved from them? This is assuming we had definite proof.

I did not say I wanted guns on campus. I said adult students have the same rights everyone else has.
No one should take that away from them. No one.
I had my gun with me the whole time I was on campus, (my apt was on college property).
I was working in a job where a concealed weapon was required the whole time I was a student the last three years of my college career. I never knew when I would have to go straight to work from a performance, audition or rehearsal.

Of course they are justification, they are the reason I can do what I wish.
That said, that doesn't release me from the responsibility of considering, and not infringing on, other peoples rights.
If I didn't have the right to do what I wish, there would be no reason for laws to tell me I can't, they would just not tell me I could.

Yes, that is why I believe rights are human made. Only one species on the entire planet needs or has the intelligence to justify its actions, and that is us. If we are the only species that need rights to justify ourselves, how can they be anything but human made? The universe is not made for humans so we didn't discover them, we had to make them ourselves.

I am not against the idea of rights either by the way.

Just because humans have the ability to explain their rights, to reason how they apply, doesn't mean animals... uh, the other animals, don't have them too.

Actually it's not rights, it's right, just one.... to do what they wish. No one gives it to them, they're born with it.

We both have the same conclusion, just different ways of wording it.

That right is still a justification and the universe doesn't use justifications. In the human eyes, we are born with natural rights but in the universe's eyes, we don't have any.

Laws don't tell you what to do, only what not to do. If you have no natural right to do what you want, then you must do what I tell you to do. Now rub your belly and pat your head.

In our opinion we have rights because we need some sort of justification for control. I acknowledge the fact that we need rights for society to run but it is solely a human creation so societies can run smoothly. Rights had to come along with laws, it is a package deal. It is the same way with class. If you join a monetary society, class will naturally come with it. If you abolish money you will also abolish class. If you abolish laws you will abolish rights naturally because they are unneeded and Occam’s razor will take them out.

In other words, rights are just serving as a counterweight to laws. Once you get rid of laws (I am against that), then rights will no longer have a purpose.

Our? Who's our?
You are trying to convince me that the cave men, having no laws, had no rights. Nonsense, they all had the right to do what they wanted. They were born with that right, as is everyone before and since.

All laws, all rules, all customs, are an infringement on that right to do what you wish, in an attempt to create cohesive society.

Once again, what is the difference between a caveman with infinite rights and a caveman that just survives? There is no difference so why would the universe make an idea of rights if they are unneeded? So, I am saying that the idea of rights were likely made as a counterweight to laws.

If rights are a justification and humans are the sole species that need to justify their actions, humans are the only ones that could make up the idea of rights. Not the universe but humans.

What would happen if someone was born without rights? Its impossible to imagine because it is impossible to do. You can take away any other universal law (theoritically) but not rights. If it is impossible to take away rights what is the point of reconizing them in the first place? It is just an added piece of information that is not needed, which goes against the will of the universe.


By the way, I will be gone for the next few days so don't expect an immediate answer.

Rights are not sandwiches, nobody makes them, not even the "universe". Every critter is born with them. Were you not paying attention when I said, "Just because humans have the ability to explain their rights, to reason how they apply, doesn't mean animals... uh, the other animals, don't have them too."
We don't need them to justify out actions, although we can, it's not necessary.
Rights aren't a reaction to laws... laws are are a reaction to rights. If people didn't have rights there would be no laws, because people would just have to do what they were told.

Yes! Now you've got it.The point is, you're not the boss of me... and vice versa.C'mon, don't be silly, the "universe" has no will.
Not needed? Without it there would be no truths to hold self evident.

How can you be born with something that can not be made? Rights are ideas, which have to be made by something.

What you are saying is contradictory to what I just said. I said it was impossible to be born without rights and now you are saying it is possible. Do you need a right to do what you are told or not? Either way, if no one tells you what to do then you don't need rights and the idea of rights can still be considered reactionary to power. This is turning into a "what came first, chicken or the egg" argument...

What you are saying is that someone born without rights would be born without free will, more or less. Is this what you are trying to say or not?

Okay, I used the wrong word. Supports may fit better.

I was talking about rights without society or anyone telling you what to do. There is no difference from infinite rights and survival so in that situation rights are not needed. Once a society forms, then the idea of rights are needed.

That's right.

Your definition of "rights" is sort of useless. If all laws are an infringement, we get back to subjective judgement calls as to whether the benefit outweighs the violation. I suspect that piercehawkeye45 considers a "right" to be an aspect of your [universal right to do as you wish] that no benefit outweighs.

This type of right, which is the more common understanding of the word, is invented by humans, and based on culture.

"That no benefit outweighs"?... that depends on who's calling the shots, which is usually the ones making and enforcing the laws. You can bet it will be what's most beneficial to them.

That's why I claim they don't determine my rights with their laws, only infringe on them. I will never accept my rights are "everything else", after they have imposed their will.

"which is the more common understanding of the word", maybe in your world, but not where I come from, buddy.

How you can exercise your rights always depends on who's calling the shots. But what you consider to be a right depends on you, and is largely based on culture. Your definition is nice, but ultimately useless. If both "stop at the red light" and "don't murder" are infringements of your rights, then "rights" are too abstract to be meaningful. You can't make a case against a law as infringing, because that's a given.

On the other hand, if you view a right as "something that no law ought to prevent me from doing", you can actually use the word in a useful way, as in "You should not ban handguns because of the right to keep and bear arms."

My rights aren't based on culture, everyone is born with them.
How in hell do infringements make my rights "too abstract to be meaningful"? That's nonsense, it makes my rights more meaningful, and more important.
I certainly can make a case against a law as infringing... "because that's a given", strengthens my case because I don't have to prove it is an infringement.

It sounds like your saying, save the argument of infringing on my rights, for important fights. Horseshit, every law, every rule, every custom, should be questioned on a regular basis. Anything outmoded, or redundant should be eliminated. There should be no laws without a current legitimate purpose and any that are not clearly so, should be questioned.

Maybe Fewer Hunting Preserves For Crazies
 

In a further development, America's 1st Freedom magazine notes that Texas Governor Rick Perry and some legislators are considering repealing a state law prohibiting possession of firearms on college campuses.

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