I read many DU posts talking about govt. taking away this or that right in which the author

[jody]

confuses a “natural, inherent, inalienable/unalienable right” with privileges granted by government.

One class of rights are enumerated in our Constitution or, are unenumerated but covered by the Ninth Amendment.

Our Constitution obligates government to protect those rights when exercised by a minority of one against the tyranny of a simple majority vote among elected representatives, a true democracy, or against the power of a rogue president.

SCOTUS says about enumerated rights, “We look to this because it has always been widely understood that the Second Amendment, like the First and Fourth Amendments, codified a pre-existing right. . . . As we said in United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U. S. 542, 553 (1876), ’{t}his is not a right granted by the Constitution. Neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence.’”

The majority and minority in that SCOTUS decision both cited constitutions written before our Constitution and Bill of Rights in which states acknowledged those pre-existing rights and which could not be given away to federal government at any time. See PA (1776) "That all men are born equally free and independent, and have certain natural, inherent and inalienable rights" and VT (1777) "THAT all men are born equally free and independent, and have certain natural, inherent and unalienable rights".

Contrast those rights with privileges granted by government whether by majority vote in congress or an executive order by a president.

Government has the authority to grant privileges under our Constitution by a simple majority vote but it also can use its authority to take away those privileges.

Government may infringe upon but not prohibit, enumerated and unenumerated rights our government is obligated to protect under our Constitution.

[Warren Stupidity]

1. Enumerated 'natural' rights can be eliminated by legislation.

We could repeal the 2nd amendment, or the 1st or 4th or 5th (those last two largely gone anyway) tomorrow (well it would take a bit longer logistically) and that would be the end of that. Inalienable or not, they can be severed from you by the power of the state.

The distinction between natural and legal rights is rather arbitrary, first of all as it seems that philosophers cannot generally agree on what are the set of rights that are "natural", and secondly because some of the legal 'entitlement' rights seem to me to be just as natural and inalienable as any others. For example the 14th's right of natural born citizenship is clearly predicated on having a government to which one can be a citizen, unlike for example free speech, which right just flows out of one having the ability to speak, and yet, artificial or not, alienable or not, it seems to me to be as fundamental to human society as any of the rights enumerated in the bill of rights.

Or consider that great bugaboo of the natural rights crowd: social security. At this point in time, in this post industrial modern world, I would argue that we all have the right to live without fear of abject destitution - FDR's famous list applies, and I view these rights as natural and inalienable as any other.