During the period of the late 18th to the latter 19th century, Christian thought, as expressed by one Tom Jefferson and adhered to by the whole of the Continental Congress, through the US Declaration of Independence, established that the rights you’re speaking of, are rights which emanate from Nature’s God. Who endowed certain Rights to man, thus making those rights inherent in man at his conception on this earth... thus the authority on which those rights rest, is well beyond the scope of man to rightfully give or take... meaning man can neither give nor take rights to or from anyone. At BEST man can through whatever power he may possess at a given time, advance a privilege, meaning a practice which will be tolerated for what ever time that power is able or sees fit to enforce… However while privilege is often erroneously confused with rights, it is not Right, nor is it even CLOSE. Rights rest on the bed-rock authority of Nature’s God, privilege rests upon the whimsy of power.

Well you see the problem… Our resident Atheist Kitty comes and declares Rights to rest on nothing more than the thoughts of human beings; human beings prone to changing their mind. Resulting in what once was a protected Right, no longer being such…

Human thought… a rather low authority indeed; given that what one man thinks is only valid as long as the power he wields to enforce that thinking provides for such… Isn’t that the premise behind “Majority Rules?” Isn’t that the thinking behind “IT’S LEGAL! SO I CAN KILL AS MANY PRE-BORN BABIES AS I CONCEIVE? Isn’t THAT the thinking behind all leftist thought: SOCIAL SUBSIDIES ARE LEGAL AND I AM ENTITLED TO THEM! IF YOU DON’T LIKE IT TOUGH! WE WILL HAVE YOU ARRESTED < STRIPPED OF YOUR PROPERTY AND LIBERTY BECAUSE YOU WERE TOO SELFISH TO PAY YOUR TAXES AND HELP THE POOR!

Well you referenced the Greek concept of the judiciary a moment ago… holding that pre-Christian culture up as something special… but here you reference a practice which the ancient Greeks were very much into… their women had no rights… Suffrage, the notion that all people are equal came to this earth precisely at the time when Christ demanded that the women and infirmed, along with the poor be allowed into the temple; AS EQUALS. As a matter of some fact, that was why they killed Christ; he was upsetting the applecart; an applecart which provided for the judicious trial, which sentenced him to death.

SO, it turns out that Christ and the pursuant "Christianity" is in fact the source of human rights and that without Christ and his inherent authority, Human Rights are whatever those wielding the most power say that those right are…

Where a citizenry is disarmed, he who advances the most power is THE GOVERNMENT; behind THEM is THE MAJORITY and the ONLY THING THAT STANDS BETWEEN THOSE TWO: IS THE DIVINE AUTHORITY ON WHICH YOUR HUMAN RIGHTS RESTS< WHICH GIVES YOU THE AUTHORITY TO CONTEST ANY WRONG< WITHOUT REGARD TO THE POWER ADVANCING IT.

No Human Being can sustain themselves against a superior physical force for very long. But God and his divine authority lives beyond the physical; the RIGHTS endowed by God exceed the individual’s limitation… they are inherent in each individual and cannot be taken by any other… human rights rest wholly upon GOD’S AUTHORITY.

Now all that simply means, is that If the right is something which YOU claim, on your OWN authority, then when you’re gone, the Right YOU CONCEIVED goes with you. These are concepts which you people seem NEVER ABLE TO COMPREHEND! RIGHTS ARE NOT POWER! RIGHTS ARE ROOTED IN OBLIGATION, RESPONSIBILITY AND A SACRED DUTY TO SEE TO THEM PROTECTED AND THAT THE ABILITY TO EXERCISE THEM IS MAINTAINED.

GOVERNMENT HAS NO RIGHTS! GOVERNMENT HAS POWER and THE ONLY VALID USE OF GOVERNEMNT POWER IS TO PROTECT AND MAINTAIN THOSE RIGHTS… You have rights… but part and parcel of THOSE RIGHTS, IS THE RESPONSIBILITY TO defend them by LIMITING THE SCOPE OF POWER WHICH YOUR GOVERNMENT WEILDS! But you can’t seem to understand that… At every turn the ideological left is determined to increase the scope of government power, on this spurious notion or for that specious reason…

“If you take a million dollars from a billionaire, it doesn’t affect his lifestyle, but a million dollars can help a lot of poor people and it REALLY HELPS THEM!” << That is a rationalization which ONLY serves to INCREASE THE SCOPE OF GOVERNMENT POWER. YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO TAKE THE PRODUCT OF ANY MANS LABOR… for the benefit of anyone else. IT’S THEFT! You’ve violated the PRINCIPLE… You’ve rationalized around the principle; you’ve claimed a right by MIGHT… YOU’VE GIVEN THE GOVERNMENT TYRANNICAL POWER. Which you feel is fine as long as that power is not focused against you.

The OP Scenario merely focused that power against you… The majority, the government, “The People” came after YOU!

What you found out is that you needed the means to defend yourselves; your rights were being egregiously violated by an overwhelming POWER… Many of you placed your faith in the assumed goodness of your neighbors, which has historically been a lethal error in such circumstances. The story Oskar Schindler and Anne Frank are noteworthy because they are an illustration of rare courage. When the Jews of Europe were realizing the OP Scenario, they were faced with a reality so far from the realm of reason that they stayed put and tried to argue against overwhelming POWER. They appealed to the kindness of their neighbors, who week after week turned their backs as Jew after Jew was thrown from their homes and businesses and forced into the jails, streets and ghettos and later onto the trains which took them to their long suffering deaths. Their appeals fell to turned heads as people were sure that if they hadn’t done something wrong, they wouldn’t be getting thrown out of their homes…

OH! It was all quite LEGAL!

If you think the same can’t happen here, you’re fooling yourself. Now… the question is: “ what will you do, now?” Will you close your mind and pretend it can never happen to you? Or will you realize that your ideology feeds this very evil and work to return to a reasoned frame of reasoning and work to support the CONSTITUTION AS IT WAS WRITTEN and the immutable principles on which it rests?