We're discussing rights given to us by the Laws of Nature, as understood by our founding fathers, not the meager rights dolled out by the federal government.
But I think the idea of natural rights is dumb. They're made up by humans. They're enforced by humans. Their exact nature is disagreed upon and debated by humans.
The idea that there is some set of core natural rights that comes from somewhere other than humans is a tactic used to avoid debate on which rights we should and should not have by people unwilling to actually support their ideas with facts or reasoning.
You might as well just say that god told us to do it that way.
Of course I am :) but natural rights have formed the basis of most modern (english revolution and forward-- american, french, russian) revolutions. Those citizens didn't care for what was _legal_ or _illegal_, they cared for their welfare and rights, even though it was essentially illegal. Webcomic for the choir: http://www.asofterworld.com/index.php?id=469
If humans followed the law above all else, then we would not have democracy, or even republics. We'd have totalitarian nations of smiling slaves.
> but natural rights have formed the basis of most modern (english revolution and forward-- american, french, russian) revolutions.
The idea of particular divine ordinances -- which is what doctrines of natural rights are -- are fine ways to organize identity and action around that identity, including revolution.
That that is true doesn't, in any way, make any particular such quasi-religious concept correct. And, even if it did, I can't think of any of those revolutions that included, in their conception of natural rights, a right to buy drugs, as such. So, even operating in such a framework (and even once we've agreed which framework of natural rights we are operating in), you probably have more work to do than just simply asserting it to establish the claim "people have a right to buy drugs" is valid even within that framework.
> If humans followed the law above all else, then we would not have democracy, or even republics.
Yes, most people would agree that there are principals beyond the law that justify arguments about what the law should or should not be, and most would probably even agree that some of those principals are sufficient to justify breaking the law as it stands -- and even to justify soliciting homicides if they are threatened sufficiently.
However, that kind of high-level agreement itself is very different than agreeing that the "right to buy drugs" is in either the first or, more relevant to the claim that the Ulbricht verdict is a miscarriage of justice, the second class of principals.
Sure, humans renegotiate the law all the time. Sometimes peacefully sometimes at the point of the sword. But those are still rights as defined by humans not handed down by God/Nature.
There wasn't revolution because the people were aesthetically displeased at the fact that their natural rights were being violated. There was revolution because the people wanted something and they were willing to fight for it.
If income inequality keeps going the way it's going, one day we'll see the people revolt against the rich demanding a natural right to housing, medical care, education and who knows what else. You'll, of course, note that particular definition of natural rights far exceeds the Jeffersonian one. It'll be just as an illogical concept then as it is now. It's a nice rhetorical flourish though, and rhetoric goes a long way when you're asking people to risk their lives.
Speaking as someone who's on your side in this debate...
Rights are what you get if a bunch of rational, self-interested people get together and say, "What ought we be allowed to do without interference?"
There is a single, correct, rational answer to that: you ought to be allowed to do anything that doesn't initiate force against someone else. All rights are a function of that single fundamental observation.
Every rational, fully self-interested person (who has studied the topic a lot) will agree on this.
So that's where rights come from... they are a human construct, but there's also a single, objectively correct answer.
So they don't come from "Laws of Nature" or the Founding Fathers.
