this post was submitted on 11 Dec 2025
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If a right varies from state to state, it’s not a right, it’s a conditional privilege.
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I'd argue they are still rights whether the law is behind it or not. These things are always a moral entitlement; not always a lawful one.
But like... Morals are relative. They're frameworks built around core values, they're not a property of the universe. They're not self evident, they're axioms we choose to value collectively
Rights are things that must always be fought for, and they can be both established and worn away. They're a social construct
Rights are things that come before the law, they're the boundaries of the law. But like the rule of law itself, they only exist through collective belief and action, otherwise they're just words
I don't think it needs to be dressed up more than that. Good things are good and bad things are bad, rights protect people from bad things from the state
You'll never convince people who think good things are bad, because they don't have good values. You shouldn't engage with them on an equal level, because their values are inferior... At this point we just need to make it socially unacceptable to share their fucked up opinions
Didn't know that George Carlin came back from the dead
What if a bad supreme court can come in and take away rights? If that's the case, then it doesn't matter if it's explicitly listed in some kind of constitutional document because the bad court can choose to interpret that document in such a way that the right disappears. By this definition, there's no such thing as a right, because there's always someone who can come in and take it away. There aren't, and can not be, any actual rights, just conditional privileges.
But, that isn't a very useful definition. In some sense, it's obviously true. If a warlord takes over a country they might suddenly forbid something everybody assumed was a right. That's why we have the saying "might makes right". Fundamentally the only rights you really have are the ones that you're strong enough to prevent someone from taking away. It certainly helps to have them written down in some kind of founding document, but it's no guarantee of anything.
Freedom is something you take. Whether for yourself or another, and it's always from some fucking duechbag who wants slaves and not equals
Oh, so by your genius logic, slavery wasn’t a human rights violation—just a ‘conditional privilege’ for some states? And I guess age of consent laws are just ‘local customs,’ not protections? Congrats, you’ve outed yourself as the kind of brainlet who thinks rights are whatever’s convenient for your backward agenda. Sit down, you absolute embarrassment.
Are you ok? 👀