human rights revisited

[gu88766]

i've been thinking about human rights again
oh, no! joshua returns to his cruelty!
maybe it was all the battle star galactica
admiral adama asks in the first episode, i believe
never once did we ask ourselves:
do we, as a human race, deserve to live?

yeah, sure! we have a right to live!
i like living therefore i have a right to it

but wait, to live i might need:
.food
.water
.shelter
.friendship and love and religion too?

you have a right to life
but free reign to the properties of life?

hobbes and locke might be antiquated
but they share a reasonable idea of property
if you put work into something
you have a right to compensation
(most philosophers agree on that one)
but these guys take it further
you have a right to own that thing you worked on

for example, you plant a field of wheat?
its yours!
did you slave all day drilling for water?
its yours!
did you bake the bread or hunt the cattle?
its yours!

an over simplification of property, i know

but now lets imagine someone starving
maybe they didn't plant wheat or bake bread
or maybe they did and something happened
a storm came along and took it all away
(natural disasters are a bitch)
but does that give him a right to steal?
welfare is nothing more than government sanctioned stealing

this is not to say that compassion is a bad thing
not at all
but if i want to give a dying man a slice of bread
let it be out of my own good conscious
because you might have a right to life
but i also have the freedom to ignore your rights
not violate but ignore

free is just another word for stealing!

wait... here is a funny song.