What's the "Rights" Answer?

I don't have any "rights." Rights don't exist outside of consensus agreement. 

In other words, they're all made up. Thoughts?

A friend of mine posted this on Facebook and got over 100 comments in response. It seemed like everyone wanted to weigh in on the subject. While reading these comments I realized that most people (or at least those in this small sample) were just guessing as to how their rights were granted to them.  I took a moment to write this on her page and, considering it's a philosophical discussion, I thought I'd share my response here.

Citizens rights is a topic the enlightenment thinkers of the late 16 and early 1700's were wrestling with. There were three primary voices: Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau, and they each were trying to lay the groundwork to establish a just society with as many freedoms as possible.

They each started with a basic belief of what Man is like in his natural state, but they couldn't even agree on that. Hobbes believed that Man was a brutish animal, and without any restrictions he would always be in a state of war. He thought that the only way to create a society from this starting point was to have what he termed a "Leviathan," or a single ruler with supreme power, that would enforce order. In his society we would give all our rights to the ruler, and that ruler would give us back the rights he deemed appropriate. He called this the "sphere of freedom" and you could do anything you wanted as long as you stayed within the sphere. If you acted outside the sphere (i.e. did something that was not approved by the ruler) you would be punished.

Locke was quoted a lot in the writings of our founding fathers. He was a religious man who believed that we had God given rights of Life, Liberty and Property. He felt that no governing body had authority to deprive any individual of these rights because they came from God. He believed in a "Social Contract" which was similar to Hobbes where we would give up all of our rights (except for those granted by God) to the state and the state would determine what rights we would get back. But unlike Hobbes, Locke was interested in a representative government because he believed that your elected official, a man who had to live under the laws he would pass, would be more just, as far as granting rights, then a King.

Rousseau believed that man in his natural state had no rights, and unlike Locke who focused on the individual, Rousseau believed in the collective "we." He believed that it wasn't until people got together and became a community that rights could be decided. He wanted to make sure that man could live as free as possible and he believed that the only way to do that was to allow the community to establish rights as a whole. He felt that a man who gave up his rights freely would be a happy man. Those rights would be agreed upon by all the people of the community, and once agreed, the people would be free to live within the bounds of the laws that they themselves created.

So yes, governmental structure and its authority is just made up, as are the rights of its citizens. And even though none of us were around when it all happened, we give our tacit consent by remaining citizens, to abide by the laws of the land, and we accept the rights we are granted by the governing body.

What do you think?

If you have any thoughts about "rights," or if you agree with or disagree with anything I've said here I'd love to hear about it. Also please feel free to ask me questions on anything that seems unclear. Your questions will force me to think things through a little more thoroughly, and will help me understand my own thoughts a little better.

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