You Don't Have the Right

The concept of human rights has always been a topic of particular curiosity for me. I hear people saying, "I have the right," or, "They have no right," or "It's within my rights." Well I hope I do not disappoint anyone with my opinion, but there is no such thing as rights; They're imaginary, we made them up, like the boogie man, or the three little pigs. Rights are an idea, granted, a cute idea, but that is all, they are imaginary and fictional.

But if you think you do have rights, allow me to pose a question: Where do they come from? Some people say God; they are God-given rights. Well, ignoring (and actually avoiding) my stance on religion, I still think that is BS. I honestly think that if rights came from God, he/she would have given everyone the right to food everyday and a roof over your head. In other words God would have been looking out for you.

But for the sake of argument, lets say it's true. Let's say God really did give us our rights. Allow me to pose another question: why would God give us a certain number of rights? The US Bill of Rights has 10 stipulations; ten rights, and apparently God was doing sloppy work that day because the Bill of Rights has had to be amended an additional 17 times! So it seems that God forgot a couple of things... like slavery. I guess it just slipped his mind.

But lets say God gave us the original ten. He gave the British 13. The British Bill of Rights has 13 stipulations. The Germans have 29, the Belgians have 25, the Swedish have only six, and some people in the world have no rights at all! What kind of God-given deal is that? No rights at all?

So for the sake of argument I'll pose another question: why would God give different people in different countries different numbers of different rights? Boredom? Whatever the reason may be, it just doesn't seem like divine planning to me, it seems like human planning; like one group of people trying to control another group of people.

Now, if you think you do have rights, I have an assignment for you. Go to Wikipedia.com and type Japanese Americans 1942 into the search field. There you will learn all about your precious rights. In 1942 there were 110,000 Japanese American citizens in good-standing, law abiding citizens who were thrown into internment camps simply because their parents were born in the "wrong" country; that's all they did wrong. They had no right to lawyer, no right to a fair trial, and no right to a jury of their peers, no right to a due process of any kind. Just when these American citizens needed their rights the most, their government took them away. Rights are not rights if someone can take them away, they're privileges. It seems like that is actually what our Bill of Rights actually is, a bill of temporary privileges.

Some day, it seems, that the people of this country will realize that the government doesn't really care about you. It's interested in its own power; That's the only thing, keeping it, and expanding it wherever possible. As far the answer to the problem, I have no solution, but I believe it is important for our reason to transcend the BS and see the illegitimacy of governmental social order as far as this topic is concerned.