Taking rights away from the people does not insure freedom, it violates it. The government did not give us our rights, therefore they have no right to take them away. We don't have rights because of the government, we have them independent of the government. The purpose of a government is to protect your rights, not violate them.

"Anyone under 25 who doesn't believe in socialism has no heart. Anyone over 35 who still believes socialism has no brain."
-Winston Churchill

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The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either -Benjamin Franklin

You're being a bit naive here. Rights exist, pragmatically, because a government chooses to let its people have rights. There's no mystical universal law of physics stating people have the right to basic freedoms. Take a look at North Korea and tell me they aren't a government with rights for its citizens.

Your point that taking away freedom doesn't ensure freedom is absolutely correct, though. Anyone who thinks that, well, is a totalitarian.

I might add it's a bit more complicated than that. The government protects your rights by taking rights from others. If we all had our "natural" rights, that would include the unrestricted right to our pursuit of happiness. Government necessarily intrudes on that individual right so that we do not get in the way of others' rights.
That creates a dilemma in itself. Government's role is paradoxical.
That means to me that government's role is balance of rights, not protection of them. If rights are natural, then the protection of rights is a contradiction of terms.

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That information is classified and to be given only on a need-to-know basis...

And I do not need to know.

My point is we have no natural rights. Social contracts which dictate our rights through liberal progress throughout recorded history are the only laws in the universe granting or protecting our rights.

Unless there's a law of the universe I haven't noticed in the latest scientific journals, human rights are a concept.

Government may try and choose to let people have rights like in North Korea, but people do have the innate right to be free. And if someone tries to take that freedom then individuals can overturn that government by force if need be. Governments only have as much power as people let and/or allow them to have.

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All you need to know about the energy crisis:
ANWR Exploration Republicans: 91% Supported. Democrats: 86% Opposed.
Coal-to-liquid R's: 90% YES. D's: 78% NO.
Oil Shale Exploration R's: 90% YES. D's: 86% NO.
Outer Continental Shelf Exploration R's: 81% YES. D's: 83% NO.
Increased Refinery Capacity R's: 97% YES. D's: 96% NO

SUMMARY: 91% of House Republicans have historically voted to increase the production of America’s own oil and gas. 86% of House Democrats have historically voted against.

Right- A power, privilege, faculty, or demand, inherent in one person and incident upon another. Powers of free action. Something you have the sovereign authority to do because there is no higher authority to get permission from.
Privilege-A particular and peculiar benefit or advantage enjoyed by a person, company, or class, beyond the common advantages of other citizens. A temporary authority granted to you by someone of a higher authority.

First of all, the people in North Korea have rights, they're just being violated. Something granted to you by the government is not a right, it's a privilege. You're basically saying no one has rights. Well, then, why would someone give their sovereignty to government if not to protect their rights. To socialize everything. That has failed in every country it has been tried. What other purpose could the government possibly serve if no one has rights. We might as well live in anarchy if no one has rights.

Unrestricted pursuit of happiness is not a right. Things like property, life, privacy, self transportation, expression, religion are all rights. We have no right to violate the rights of others. There's no paradox there.

It is obvious that human beings are born with a clear knowledge of rights. That's why 2-year-olds walk around yelling, "Mine! Mine! Mine!" They understand property rights. Not well, but they understand they have property rights and that they are important. All other rights are easily derived from a basic concept of property rights. If rights are a human concept, how can people naturally understand that they have them. As adults, we somehow lose sight of our rights. We need to be a little more like a 2-year-old and say, "That's mine," And be prepared to fight for what is ours.

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The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either -Benjamin Franklin

You've just misconstrued a "right". A right is part of the social contract. Without social contracts, how would we have rights? It's like saying, if we had no such concept as sports, why would we build stadiums for the purpose of sports playing? Saying a right is something granted by God is not only absurdism, it's so horribly theological I don't think it really deserves a response beyond this.

Prove to me they have rights. Because they're human? What gives humans rights? You can't prove God, or your fairy tales. If you think rights are given by God, you need a better debate platform because you can't win in a secular environment.

It took you that long to figure it out? In our natural state, without government, without rules, without laws, in a tribal community, in an individualist community so primitive it lacks any comparison to modern life, you think they have the same concepts of freedom? Press, assembly, those rights don't even exist as concepts.

Rights are man-made. Priviledges are man-made. There is no such thing as a right or a priviledge outside a social contract context and I challenge you to prove otherwise.

In the earliest days of hominid development, I postulate we formed tribal oligarchies and autocracies (the most basic form of government) in order to perform protective units, first. Survival, at that point, was more important than protecting our "God-made" rights like you seem to be arguing. You think tribalistic humans had concepts of freedom of the press and freedom of speech and freedom of worship? These concepts didn't exist until the formation of civilizations.

You lecture me on "rights versus priviledge" yet have no grasp of anarchy. It's a common misconstruement that anarchy is chaos---you're actually looking for the word "anomie".

I believe we deserve rights. Hell, I even think we have no right to take away the rights of others unless necessary.

How are they rights? Who gives them to us? God?

Never taken a psychology class have you? You actually think 2 year olds, in fits of selfishness and acts Jung would call "realization of the collective unconscious" drive to desire, because in reality, it has been postulated and held in psychological circles that infants to toddlers to children aren't fully conscious yet psychologically, KNOW the concept of property rights?

A right, which makes it different than a privilege, is a social contract between you and God, impossible to be taken away by other humans. If you don't believe in God, I really can't convince you of rights.

I'm not going to convince you of the existence of God, you aren't going to convince me otherwise. It's just a matter of what truths you hold to be self-evident. America was founded on the belief that we all hold inalienable rights, and as long as I live here I'm going to do whatever it takes to defend my rights.

They do have concepts of freedom. That's why they build weapons to defend their life and property. If they didn't believe in assembly, they wouldn't have ever come together to develop civilizations. I'm not trying to prove to you that rights are endowed by a higher power, but you can't deny that the concept of basic freedoms have existed since the beginning of man.

In a secular argument, I can't convince you otherwise. From a secular standpoint, we have no more rights than bacterium. I draw my logic from the belief that there is a higher power. You wouldn't be able to convince me rights don't exist if you had to assume God existed and created us.

They formed protective units to protect their right to life.

Alright, anomie. (can't you just say misconception.)

Even if you don't believe in rights, you can accept the idea that we should reserve certain privileges, and defend them from the government and others, even to the death. That whenever the people don't reserve certain privileges, the society inevitably takes them all away and then collapses on itself, similar to the Soviet Union. That privileges should be reserved for the principal of reserving them.

Yes.

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The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either -Benjamin Franklin

Capitalism is base on human greed not on democratic principles. When Capitalists defend their sick and brutal system by mentioning under Socialism their would not be no free enterprises which is a lie unless you consider the abuse of power cause by many businessmen a right. Under capitalism, workers labor for bosses that had complete control of their company. Most companies make their decision with no democratic input from the majority of employees; the workers.
Capitalism is cruel no matter what moniker it goes by. The system supports dictatorship of the market and monopolistic in nature. It is best compared to the old dictatorships of Europe before the Enlightenment; they said they had divine right to rule and that people are incapable of leading their selves. The tyrants claim that they had the freedom to rule whatever way they wanted. It upholds private property above anything else.
Socialism would allow labors the right to make decisions by creating workplace democracy. Socialism is about trust and consent, just like democracy is. Einstein, Orwell and others supported socialism. I rather work in a system that acknowledges as a person not a tool for a other person's "profits".

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Knowledge shatters Ignorance's blissful lies and brings forth Liberty's sorrowful truths.

First of all, how could we have any stable economic system not based on human greed. Humans, by nature, are greedy. Socialism goes against the very basic principals of human nature, therefore is destined to fail, and has failed everywhere it has been tried. You can argue it was the corrupt government and totalitarianistic style of government that caused Communism to fail everywhere it has been tried, but whenever sovereignty (power) is taken away from the people, it has to go somewhere, and as the old saying goes, "Power corrupts". If you are referring to Libertarian Socialism, you will have to explain how that works to me. In any free economic system, people tend towards capitalism, meaning that it will be unequal because people work unequally hard. Naturally, employees and employers rise, and people have the freedom of not working for anyone who they think will exploit them. I've read papers on Libertarian Socialism, but I don't understand how it realistically works. Who makes the rules? Please explain.

Side notes on Democracy: "Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what they want to eat. Liberty is another well armed lamb protesting the vote." "Democracy is not freedom, Democracy is nothing more than tyranny of the majority." "Democracy is where 51% of the population oppress the other 49%." "Democracy only lasts until people realize they can vote themselves grants from the treasury. Then corruption, complacency, and fiscal irresponsible causes the Democracy to collapse onto itself." That's why America has a Republic, and people originally only elected the House of Representatives.

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The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either -Benjamin Franklin