How does Inalienability of our rights always hold up?

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I decided to post what Fnord has said in these two posts and forum he has started. I think we need to speak about another aspect to what he has posted. This brings up and has to call into question about our rights and their inalienability. It is said that one right's end where other's begins. If one's person's rights have to be violated and the logical reasoning is the greater good then I have to ask how our are inalienable rights truthfully consistent and always inalienable? How can a person's life always be reconciled with liberty if both are inalienable? How do they always both hold up in all instances of time and space?

Why does the group's rights matter more than the individual rights? If one the group's rights matter more or the individual's right's matter more than how are all of our rights inalienable and can be claimed to be inalienable for all moments in time and space?

How do these inalienable rights which are presuppositions always hold up?

There is only one inalienable right that I have ever seen set forth in any legal code: the right to freedom of thought, belief and opinion. This right is inalienable because there is no means whereby an outside agent can legally compel you to change your thoughts, your beliefs and your opinions to conform with a legal obligation.

But no other right is immune from interference.

The right to life is routinely--and legtimately--abrogated in a number of ways: through capital punishment; through self-defence; through the withdrawal of medical care; through war.

The right to liberty is routinely abrogated through arrest, detention and imprisonment.

People who describe rights as inalienable are indulging legal romaticism--the idea that the law has a pure, unqualified ideal, from which its real world application must necessarily provide for exceptions. That's neither a bad nor an incorrect notion, but it does necessitate the acknowledgement that the ideal can never be realized--except in the singular case of freedom of thought, belief and opinion. Where this legal romanticism goes wrong is when its adherents claim unqualified inalienability.

The statement that begins, "It is my inalienable right to..." is almost always incorrect.

There is no such thing as an "inalienable" right. It is a purely political concept.

For instance, the Danish Constitution lists four inalienable (in Danish: ukrænkelige) concepts:

1. Parliament
2. Personal Freedom
3. The Home
4. Right To Property

Anyone with enough guns could disregard all four.

And that is a great reason for everyone to have guns.

BS.

It's ok, you don't have to have any.

True. I'll just rely upon my superior knowledge of the political stability of nation states and not your asinine one-liners.

There is no such thing as 'group rights', only individuals have rights. A group having rights would come at the expense individuals, that's mob rule.

Denmark was occupied by a foreign power not too long ago

Well that's not what Fnord the conservative says.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKm5xQyD2vE[/youtube]

What complete nonsense.

A right is a legal interest that can be enforced at law. There is nothing in that definition that restricts a right to an individual.

There are rights that can only be held by collectivities. Aboriginal title--both in Canada and the United States--is never exercised by individuals, only by collectivities. But it is most clearly a right in law, even if the extent of that right is unclear.

bow down at the feet of your king, maybe they'll throw you a few scraps

we are born with rights endowed by our creator, NO government can take them away. They exist with or without the government.

How does this hold up if there are exceptions? Can you explain Fnord's to me? He believes in the greater good of society over an individual's rights. If what he says is correct then is he not living a contradiction and how are our rights inalienable then? You see them as self-evident and obvious. I do not. If one exception has to exist then the very inalienability of them is negated. If I'm wrong on this then why? It is said that our rights come from the laws of nature? Even Cicero mentioned it. In detail, what are the laws and how are they derived? All I see is survival of the fittest.

Even if I accept the first statement--that we are born with rights--that is meaningless unless those rights can be enforced.

The very simplest way for the government to take away a right that you believe has been endowed by your creator is to refuse to enforce it. A person's right to life ends when my medical license authorizes me to withdraw life-preserving care. A person's right to liberty ends when the person is arrested by lawful authority. A person's right to pursue happiness ends when that pursuit involves actions that are prohibited by law.

When abridged by government, or when government refuses to recognize them, what value are these so-called rights? They are hollow, empty things, signifying nothing. Rights do not exist unless governments choose to recognize them, or compel themselves to recognize them through some means of mandate, such as a constitution. The only exception is the right to freedom of thought, belief and opinion.

Not well. In a tyranny or dictatorship your rights might last until you are either killed or imprisoned.

ruveyn