The United States Constitution guarantees certain rights--the right to free speech, the right of free association, the right to worship in the way you want, etc.
These are different than the "inalienable rights" discussed in the Declaration of Independence, the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
As discussed in class, we don't all define those rights in the same way and that leaves us with the question, do human beings have any inalienable rights?
In the Social Justice video (http://animoto.com/play/qV2S8JWtG21GIhkcVamWow), students name things like food, education, and dancing as inalienable rights. What do you think? What do people have a right to?
How does the piece by O'Neil complicate those ideas?
What do people have a right to? How does guaranteeing those rights infringe on the other rights?
What other limitations might there be?
25 comments:
Both Aristotle and Confucius believed that one should seek out things that they loved. If one combines that with the idea of what all people deserve life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, one begins to see what I believe as to what we actually “deserve” in life.
We deserve to be able to live without being threatened or discouraged by other people. We deserve the freedom to act the way we would like to and feel most comfortable as a human being, of course reasonably, without harming anyone, which includes worshiping whichever god or gods as we please, or ignoring them as one. We deserve the liberty to pursue our own happiness so I can quit my job as I like and go build houses, be a beach bum for a day, rent a boat and explore the ocean for a week, etc. (hopefully you get my point).
So, I believe that’s what we truly deserve. I’m fortunate enough to live somewhere where I have open resources and able to get what I deserve. Where I come from people still have to fight to get what they believe and deserve. As for the rest, such as money, fame, a house on in La Jolla or by the ocean in Florida, a Golden Globe, or having the Government provide you with food and shelter free of charge for those in need… I would say that maybe it might be an inflated sense of entitlement rather than identifying what one truly deserves.
I believe the piece by O’Neil expresses the things that people take for granted and do not realize that kids our age dream about doing things that we basically contribute in our everyday lives. I don’t know about my classmates but when I saw the video i liked how expressive it was and all it had was people expressing what they love with writing on their hands; the fact that there was no actual speaking involved spoke louder to me than if there were people speaking.
After watching the video of Social justice and seeing all those people express their thoughts about “Everyone has the right to _________. “ I believe that everyone has the right to happiness. No one in this world should be sad, depressed, or miserable. Everyone should be happy because being happy can make someone’s day go from bad to good. People’s happiness brings a good vibe to the environment that they are in. Nobody should be sad wherever they are because life is about making the best of it.
However I don’t believe that everyone has the rights to everything they want. There are certain rights that come first than others. For example would we rather want the right to ice cream than education? Nevertheless it really depends on the person that would prefer the ice cream because they value more the ice cream than education. If we have these types of disagreements we wouldn’t agree on the same rights because of peoples preferences and opinion.
Ben O’Neill questions the phrase of “Everyone has the right to ______.” He states “For such people, the notion of “rights” is a mere term of entitlement, indicative of a claim for any possible desirable good, no matter how important or trivial, abstract or tangible, recent or ancient.” O’Neill’s statement is very true because he tests the idea of what a right means. People can interpret the meaning of right in many forms that they choose. O’Neill also states that “Their assertion of the right to ice cream is ridiculous, but it is no less philosophically defensible than thousands of other assertions of rights made in nightly news broadcast and the pulpits of the worlds legislatures.” All this creates is a dilemma of guaranteeing other rights that people prefer over others.
Since a right can be very general in a certain area it creates a limitation on what rights should be available. That’s if there was a limit on how many rights we can grant to people. If there weren’t a limitation on how many rights we could have, it would create chaos in this world with the rights people think they should have. Someone may say “Everyone has the right to kill.” People would disagree with it because it’s not right for us, but for them it is. We should limit our rights to ones we really need in this world according to the world.
Fidencio Romero
For me, when one starts to talk about rights, liberties and justices it opens up thought, opinions and arqument. Some people have different opinions. Some care to state their opinion and others don't even have that option. Living in a country where i don't need to think about my rights, i often never talk about it. But now, we bring up the discussion of what is a right? What are these rights? Do some have different rights than others?
It is difficult to discuss what rights we have, when we all have our different ideas and preferences of what a right is. My view is that everyone has a right to life. Many people do great things with their lives, and others have their life snatched from them. But as a human being we all have the right to live. Living in America is great. We have many benefits to that first right of life. Like in the clip about Social Justice, they show us many of the rights that we attain living in the U.S. It is very eye opening to see what rights we do have. When i see all that I have, I begin to think about others and what they don't have. In this life, it isn't about what we have or don't have, it is about making the most with what we have been given.
On another angle, O'Neill challenges this idea by asking the what a right really is. He makes it sound like some believe that they deserve a life filled with luxuries and toys and the coolest new stuff. And others just want clean water to drink from. So what do we have a right to? What have we earned? Do we deserve something more? What do you think? I have given you my spiel. Now i want to hear from my other classmates on what they think. Feel free to challenge my beliefs and opinions...
Elijah Auer
No offense but the color of the words and the background is a bad combination. Or is that just me getting old because I'm in college. I love the elephant though!
During class, our professor showed us a video of young and older adults expressing on their hands what inalienable rights is to them. It was colorful, funky and self-expression was the main idea that stood out. It alerted me of how many people have different perspective of what rights, justice, liberties means and what we desire. For example, it could be the rights to eat pizza, which sounds silly but, some people many see it has a right of ours. Highly doubt that the government may decide pizza is not allowed anymore, but that may not happen at all.
In the video, someone believed that happiness was a right. We all deserve to be happy and not be miserable forever, but not too many people may see happiness as a right. This leads to how people treat each other which is show respect towards one another. I believe that everyone have the right to respect which can change the world. It would be a difficult challenge to conquer, but it can create a chain reaction and affect one person to the next. Not everyone would keep the chain reaction going but it is a start.
Another thing that I would like to point out is education being an inalienable right which really is because everybody is welcome to get one in my eyes. Unfortunately, the way the government is handling our money it’s looking too bright for everyone. They are using it mostly on our militarily and prison, taking the money out of our education system which we need the most. If we funded more into our education system, then more people will start going to school and get a degree from college and lose interest of being in trouble.
Right, justice, liberties plays a factor in our daily life. We have the right to go to Starbucks and buy a cup of coffee. We have the right to eat, sleep, hang out with our friends, talk on the phone, the list goes on.Like what O’Neil stated “Everyone has the right to ___.” Feel free to fill in the blank of what you think we have the right too.
In class our instructor showed us a quick video on what people believe everyone has a right to. It displayed both young and old people giving their opinions with words written on them. I believe the concept of right is very tricky because it tends to be conflicting. Many people see rights as simple tasks, such as clean water, free education etc.. What is not made clear is, who is in liberty to regulate which people get certain rights and at what cost.
The video portrays different opinions as to what people believe are rights. Most are genuine because they go for a certain cost. I for one could not agree more, humans worldwide deserve the simplest of rights and liberties such as help from the government to sustain a modest living, and expressing themselves in any way they want.
After reading the articles from the course reader however, I have to agree with a certain fact that was touched on. For example, the right to a free education is a wonderful idea but free to whom? While some students have a free education, others have to pay to go to the same school. Why should the right to a free education be applied to some students, if it was really a right, shouldn’t it be applied to all? This is just my opinion, and I know that there are certain reasons as to why some students have to pay for school, but if everyone has such a strong opinion for free education, it should just be applied to all students.
The whole notion of rights also has to do with the types of rights. Some are just meant to fulfill desires, like free education and so forth. While there are moral rights that have to do with the morale of doing what’s morally right for a population as a whole like freedom of speech. Everyone is entitled to certain inalienable rights, which are those one is born with, nonetheless; people need to justify why they think certain topics are rights, because they need to be a justification that has to do with more than just desires.
There are definitely inalienable rights that humans have. As a human being such rights as freedom of speech, the right of a trial before prosecuted as guilty are a select few of these rights, although these are mostly rights that apply to Americans and a few other countries. The people in the Social justice video portray that everything that a person wants such as ice cream, dance, free education and so on are for the most part are things that are wanted rather than needing. Although the only reasonable one to me in this list is free education but in reality tax payers pay for the public schools around the country. These individuals as O’neil explains in his article do not make a distinction between needs and wants. For example, one of the people in the video say that every person has the right to ice cream which is definitely a want more than a need. In colonial times they didn’t need all this extra stuff that the modern world has and they did perfectly fine without it. Ice cream has nothing that is going to help a person better themselves or anybody around them. These are certainly “rights” that people need to have a simple and typical lifestyle that is very tolerable and comfortable.
O’Neil’s article complicates the rights that these individuals feel that are inalienable rights because he explains how people in previous generations did not have these certain rights and they got along just fine as I had explained up above. He also states that a person has the right to a need necessary for life opposed to wanting something that is an extra or better yet a luxury. In other words inalienable rights are the rights that no overtime still apply in order to have a a functional life. People should consider inalienable rights such things as expression, right to a trial, the right to vote for representation and so on. Although these rights are the ones that should not be stripped from humans there are such laws that stop something’s like these from being pursued. For example in the state of California marijuana is legal but yet of the federal government goes to a dispensary they could shut them down for selling and being in possession of an illegal drug on a federal level. So sometimes these laws overlap and do not let humans exercise them to the fullest of their abilities. Limitations in my mind are such things that are excess and luxuries and I completely agree with O’Neil and his beliefs in his article.
Although this video is meant to be very hopeful presenting common rights that people should be given I have to take the obvious route that this is not the case. The video allows you to begin thinking about what other simple rights people should have and also makes you realize how much of these "inalienable" rights people actually do not have. And this is the reality. Not only does the world lack social justice but it would be naive to hope for more. It is true we should have inalienable rights and should have every right given in the video. However, I can't help agreeing with the critics of social justice that most people object to. In O'Neil's piece the critics point out that "to assert a right to some tangible good or service like clean water, healthcare, education, prenatal care, or ice cream, requires that someone else must supply that good. It asserts the moral prerogative to have others supply you with your desires, at the expense of their effort". Before you create a list of what rights people should have, I feel you must first understand that most of these rights need to be given. Therefore, how many rights are you giving to other people to fill their desires? How much are you doing to help those who don't even have necessary rights such as food and water? I know the rights listed in the video apply to me a whole deal. But most people don't think twice about who doesn't have the important rights. However, if they do acknowledge and discuss why certain people do not have specific rights, how willing are they to do something about it. It is reality that there will never be complete social justice, but this should be a very obvious fact. It is true and completely moral that we all should have many inalienable rights such as food, music, education, healthcare, love, happiness, rock and roll. But to complete the sentence "everyone has the right to _______", with anything possible, especially with rock n roll, can create resentment from those who have the least amount of rights. Although we wish we had inalienable rights, unfortunately at anytime, under any government or any corrupt society, our rights can be taken away. We have rights to many things but I would not consider any of them inalienable.
However, the video was very well made and made its point that we all deserve certain rights and these rights are different for everybody. The rights being written on people's hands and legs was also very clever and artistic, created a sensitive environment, and gave viewers the opportunity to think about what rights they hold dear, as well as enlighten them on what rights they probably didn't think about. The creative video gave a hopeful viewpoint and stated its purpose that we all deserve these rights, and more.
During class we come up with the conclusion that defining what rights were can change from person to person. The video that was shown in class was very interesting and I agreed with most of the things it said. Although I think that some of the rights are more important for people to survive. An individual has needs that need to be met to have a dignified life. Like having some kind of shelter to live in when it is raining, snowing, or the sun is to burning. Everyone has the right to food and clean water to grow and have strength to learn and play. I believe that everyone as the right to have the essential things to live there life. Having a home and food to eat people have the strength to fight to reach their full potential. I also think that having health care is very important for people that do not have money to go to the doctor or pay for medicine. The United State is very different then other countries when it comes to health for example in Mexico the doctors ask you first if you have the money to pay for their service unlike here they treat the patient first then give the bill. I see were O'Neill is coming from in his article people should not be given everything because it is there right but I think that people should work hard to achieve everything they want in life. Things should be earned in this life so people can earn to value the things that they have. On the other hand how are people how are starving who did not have money are shelter be accused of living off of aid. This people need to have the energy to work for their dreams. Also if they have to see constantly siblings dying in front of them how are they going to think about getting educated. Their minds are thinking in how to help their family get some food and medicine. To some point I think that O'Neill is correct but some are so down for example the people from Somalia that without any aid they are domed to die.
When talking about rights we all have a different opinions on what rights we do and do not have. As I watched the in the Social Justice video "Everyone has the right to ______", those people had words written on there hands of things that were inalienable. The video was creative and very thought out. It was perfectly fine to have rights that were inalienable, its just that in order to have these rights they either need to be given or you have to work for. Yes you can say you have the right to own a three story house, with a pool, and six bedrooms, but in order to get that you have to be financially able to get that. The only right I feel everyones is capable of having is happiness, which is priceless. To have the right to do something is can be so misleading and confusing but people are going to do what they feel they have the right to do.
I look at all the rights people have worked for in our society and its sad to know that they take advantange of having those rights when we know that there are people in other countries in need of help. We all have the capability to do something for others we just have to not be scared and take the risk.
Humans truly have very few inalienable rights, if any. Rights are given to people, and can also be taken away. An inalienable right can be defined as a right that cannot be taken away or denied. Therefore, depending on where one lives can change what is a right for them, and others. Our rights in the United States are protected by laws. Therefore if someone’s rights are restricted, something will be done about it. Some people’s rights are denied in order to protect some rights of others. For example, I do not have the right to play music as loud as I want at night because others have the right to quiet at night. I would be punished if I infringed this right of someone else. These rights Americans have are not the same everywhere else.
Everyone does not have an inalienable right to education, healthcare, or even food. These things can be taken from someone or denied. They are neither received by birth, nor are deserved just by being alive. All of these things must be earned and something that is earned is not a right. In the United States Constitution it says that liberty is an inalienable right, but in most countries it is not. Many people are not free to do as they wish. Some are denied medical attention, land, food and even water. This is causing the death of thousands and is showing us that these are not inalienable rights. Life, happiness, feelings and beliefs are some of the few inalienable rights everyone has.
In the Social Justice video, I examined all the answers that the people completed in the phrase "Everyone has the right to..." and I agree with Ben O'Neill when he said "the people in the video give answers consisting of all manner of desirable things." From knowledge, justice, love, compassion, healthcare, education, food, clean water, nutrition, shoes, dancing,..., lollipops and ice cream, those are the rights that are not right. The right for shoes? ice cream? come on. It just seems that not many citizens out there take this topic seriously because they are living in a country that provides too much freedom. I think the "inalienable rights" to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are more than enough because not everybody in the world has those kind of rights to pass around.
I agree with Fidencio, there are rights that should come first, like the right to breathe free air or get an education versus the right to ice cream. Sure as Fidencio said, the right to have ice cream as opposed to the right of an education is something that depends on the opinion and want of a specific person. However, how can a person have the inalienable right to ice cream or anything for that manner if there is no start, no being in the first place? Thus, I believe that a person has an inalienable right to breathe, without the inhalation of air, the bodies of humans would cease to function disowning them from the right to have rights, even those stated in the Declaration of Independence of "Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."
Then again, rights are limited to the structure of our government, as Justen Meadows mentioned, "I do not have the right to play music as loud as I want at night...I would be punished if I infringed this right of someone else [to have a quiet night]." That is just one example of an inalienable right shown in the video that can be taken away due to the laws our government, that we the people have voted upon, have created. Another example is the inalienable right to dance, I may have that right, but if the laws of physics say your ankle will break and you can't dance anymore, that right to dance is taken away. Just as Justen Meadows mentioned "an inalienable right can be defined as a right that cannot be taken away or denied." I also believe in this, if a right can be taken away then how do we have inalienable rights? As the Declaration states the Government gets their power, that includes creating laws that can take away one's rights, from the consent of the governed (we, the citizens). With that in mind, we deny ourselves and others to have inalienable rights. Rights which as He has endowed on us, those who He created equal. Yet, we make laws saying "No to Gay Marriages'".
So, in contradiction to what I believe is an inalienable right, I could easily take away a person's breathing and deny them their right to live. I would not do that of course, but who is to say that someone else won't.
By watching this video and reading the article I agree with many of you guys that the “rights” the people presented in the video are more of desires than actual rights also that we do to an extent have some “inalienable rights”.
In the Declaration of Independence we are promised to have the rights of life libery and the pursuit of happiness but I wonder do we indeed have the inalienable rights supposedly given to us in the Declaration of Independence? Those are comprehended in so many ways by the Supreme Court that I have no idea what it means anymore. Yeah in some aspects we do have a right to life, however many states in the United States have the death penalty as one of their punishments, also many states in the United States have said yeah abortion is okay. Do we have a right to liberty? I guess you can say that, but many people in the United States truly aren’t free to do certain things. Freedom to play music as loud as you can (as Justin Meadows had said), freedom to stay out late, freedom to eat pizza, freedom to marry whoever you want etc. Everyone has the right to be happy, but what if making you happy harms others.
I completely agree with Joanne Sarmiento when she says that our rights are limited by the government. Those rights listed to us in the Declaration of Independence are so broad that anyone can interpret it in so many ways however the only interpretation we need to worry about is that of the Supreme Courts.
All in all, I do believe we retained some inalienable rights, but to an extent of what the government believe, not exactly what our interpretation of what we believe our rights are. If the judicial branch interprets our rights in a certain way—than it is so, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have any at all.
Rashele Rodriguez
Inalienable right, are the ones stated in the Constitution, such as freedom to speak, worship how they wish and so on. Thing such as ice cream and free education are not. I believe that everyone has a right to acquire them through jobs, which lead to money to purchase them or to a scholarship, or coupon that might get you either of the above without money. But to forcibly take either because you feel you have the right to it is not right to whom ever you are taking it from. However, just as O'Neil slightly points out they probably just made the video to make a point or statement and used silly examples to carry it out. They are not the advocates and the mistake is by the advocates by using such video in their own work.
O'Neil's piece complicated the ideas of the video because he points out that the examples used are desired things rather than rights to everyone. He believes that to forcibly take one of the rights stated in the video would only be taking from another and that is not right. As I stated above people have the right to the rights mentioned in the Constitution and to also get the ones mentioned in the video, they have the right to acquire a job to make money to buy the good. Also, they may acquire any coupon or money helper or replacer in order to also receive such good. An example where a right infringes on another right is that some states have legal marijuana or medical marijuana cards and growing licenses. Federal laws make marijuana illegal in any circumstance and can make disciplinary actions even in the states where it is legal.
In the video the students at the college had hope and the desire to want to make the world a better place. Although it is a good view point to have on the current situations in the world involving social justice the students in the video are not in a position to do anything about it. The author of the article seems to believe that in order to do something about it someone actually has to take responsibility for their actions and those of others. However, given their view point they do offer hope with the current attitude that they carry, although now it does not seem realistic. The author of the article opposing the video seems to believe that you cannot expect to have goods and services given to you, whether it be anything from owning land to receiving help from a neighbor.
It’s very difficult to determine the rights of the people, but one that is known is that in the same social spectrum everybody deserves to have the same rights. Otherwise it would Different rights of people do get in the way of the rights of others. For example, during the 19th century when America wanted to expand, the belief of manifest destiny arose among the political parties, because they wanted the country to expand west. They believed that they had the right to expand, but this expansion got in the way of the Native Americans who have lived on the land for thousands of years. As time passed and the United States began to expand, they took away all of their land and put them on reservations. In this case the rights of the people of the U.S. and the Native Americans clashed. Therefore neither of these groups of people have the right to land. The only way to determine one’s rights is to look at what cannot possibly be taken away from someone, and what cannot possibly taken away is someone’s right to choice. Anyone can choose who they are and what they do in their given their situation. The only to completely take control of someone else’s life is to take it away from that individual.
-Jake Schlichting
What is defined as a given or inalienable right is subjective to a person’s own perception of it. In my own perception of inalienable rights, I find that basic necessities like food and water, and services like healthcare and education, are all extensions of our right to “life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.”
The video approaches rights in a light hearted matter, even though some of the rights mentioned like freedom of speech and free healthcare are more controversial matters. The video really reflects how Americans approach rights. We are a privileged nation, and as a result, we have innumerable rights that are denied in many parts of the world. Some of the “rights” listed in the video were not appropriate examples, like ice cream and rock and roll, but again the video just reflects how much we take rights for granted. As an idealist, I believe that everyone should have access to healthcare, education, food, and clean water.
According to O’Neill, an actual right is defined as “a moral prerogative derived from the application of moral philosophy to the nature of man.” He doesn’t believe that services like education and healthcare are rights because they aren’t validated by moral philosophy. In order to provide free education and free healthcare, tax payers must supply the funds, which O’Neill states takes away from the morality of doing such a action. Of course there are other ways to provide such services without infringing on another’s rights, even if O’Neill chooses to focus on this one approach. I also believe that because O’Neill approaches what constitutes a right philosophically, his arguments are purely rational and do not take into account the overall idea behind social justice. As far as limitations, providing food and supplies are sometimes not sustainable. Other countries can become too dependent on other nations for food and water, if a sustainable set up is not created.
-Chaminie Dhayalan
After watching the video “Everybody has the right to ” I began to agree with some of the rights they used, but I also disagreed with them too. The reason why I disagree with some of the fill-in’s is because some are actual needs rather wants, and I don’t agree with any of the wants, but fully agree on all the needs. For example, the right to ice cream, lollipops, and rock and roll are all a want and not a need such as the right for food, healthcare, and water.
Although some rights aren’t easy to provide to everyone, everyone still has the right to it. For example, healthcare is a need and everyone has the right to it, but some people cant afford it. Same goes for food and water. In some places water is contaminated or dirty and unsafe for humans to drink and those people cant afford a water purifier.
Some rights I think are more reasonable to everyone are love, feeling expression, sleep, and help. To me these rights are all things that can be fulfilled. There are many more rights that are needed but the list would go on forever. Love is a need because it can affect a person life dangerously if they don’t feel the love they need. Love is something everyone can receive rather its from a family member or a stranger. As for feeling expressing, it would make a community more civil because no one would be hold feelings in that are just killing them inside.
Now for the right to wants such as ice cream, rock and roll, or even lots of money, everyone has the right to try and fulfill their wants, but aren’t the best for them. The reason why I say that someones wants aren’t the best for them is because some people don’t know what is more important and end up hurting themselves. For example, people who do drugs, make the wrong choice on what to spend money on and just buy drugs instead or a need like food.
We all have different perceptions as to what an unalienable right is. Even though the definition of an unalienable right is stated in the Declaration of Independence, to me, there is more to what exactly we should define as a right. It is not something that can be defined by a single word or phrase. Of course all humans are entitled to “the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”, but there is so much more complexity that defines this definition of a right. But again, since people are so diverse, everybody has a different notion of happiness. We emphatically pursue what we think will make us happy. However, what makes a person happy? How far are we willing to go for our own happiness – and at what cost? What we want and what we have the right to are very different things. Some things stated in the video like dancing and ice cream are things that people want. On the other hand, things like speaking and pursuing happiness are what we as humans really have rights to.
As privileged Americans, our unalienable rights are indeed guaranteed as stated in the Constitution. Though we may have these rights, there are many other human beings that don’t. For less fortunate countries, a “right” might be not scrounging for food and clean water. If compared to these countries, the rights displayed in the video such as ice cream or dancing are certainly not taking the idea of rights too seriously. We definitely do take our rights for granted. In America, we are hardly subjected to having our rights be seized forcibly as might be the case for other countries.
O’neil discusses the morality of rights. He questions what exactly people define as a right and how much people take things for granted. He implies that there are rights that should undeniably be prioritized over others. Something like ice cream, for instance, is not nearly as important as freedom of speech.
In the video clip of "Everyone has a right to_____", it shows it's audience what students and professors believe to be their rights as humans. In saying this, I do believe we as humans have many rights.
One of these rights include the right to speech, which our founding fathers got right. No one should be able to tell us what we can and cannot say. If someone were to oppose what was said, then that other person's free speech should be engaged and a discussion can happen. Withouth the right of speech, we as humans would possibly not exist because of false communication.
The most powerful right, I believe, we have is the right to learn. Our brain is the most complex organ in our body and we should be able to utilize it. Putting to use of the brain is very key in advancing as a society, staying healthy, and knowing what's right and wrong. This will keep trouble off the streets and educate them and more importantly keep our society from ever getting into trouble.
I believe the clip was a great non-verbal way of communicating that we as humans should stand up for what we believe in, however not everyone agrees including Ben O'Neill, a professor from the University of New South Wales.
He exclaims that the students are simply stating things that are desires and not rights. This I can agree with because not all of these photos were serious or they demonstrated something that the student truely loved or admired. The fact that these young adults can show they truely commit to something that they believe everyone should do is nice, however, it shouldn't be a right just because they love it. According to O'Neill, "Rights refer to what is actually right-i.e., what is morally right." Morally no one should have the right to steal from anyone. With this being said, i believe there are only a few rights we have, but the problem is that we all have different perpectives on what is right for a human. This is because of all of our cultures and where we grew up or how we grew up. Someone's believe in rights that grew up in South Africa will be slightly different than a right that Richie Rich believes in. In the end, we all need to just fight for what is right in our eyes and it will balance out into a society that we all can bare to live in. This ongoing issue of what is right will never get solved. Until it does get resolved I will continue to fight for what I belive is right and go at my life day by day.
Everyone is entitled to have their own rights. What we define "rights" as is our own definition. Although some may consider ice cream a right others may view it simply as a desirable good. O'neil writes to show that rights are more than just desirable goods. He tries to show, in a rather harsh manner how peoples view of what they are entitled to is not actually a right, but what they want is actually a desirable good. He points out that in order for people have such things as Health care and food someone else must provide it first. Essentially, O'neil is saying that these so called "rights" are things people desire that is taken with force.
Personally, I think that O'neil is being a little to critical of the video on Social Justice. These people are just being positive. I believe that everyone thinks differently and is entitled to their own opinion. If someone thinks having ice cream is a right, then so be it. Whatever anyone thinks is a right for them doesn't necessarily have to be a right for another person.
Another thing that really bothered me in the article was O'neil's view on the young generation today. He views the young generation as immature and says that they are not yet capable of understanding the true meaning of rights. i find this to be very offending, which also makes me view O'neil as very pessimistic. Its not a bad thing to look at the bright of things, to think that playing the guitar is a right is perfectly fine. Just because something is desirable, doesnt mean that it cant be something we are entitled to.
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