In recognition of a few people here chastising me for having the affront to post anything displeasing to them in their threads, I want to directly bring up the subject of Rights.

In particular, American's ideas about Rights, especially how often people claim them, when they really don't have them at all.

Freedom of expression is probably the MOST misrepresented Right that there is here. In politics, it was used recently to claim that the owners and officers of large corporations should be allowed to hide the money that they "donate" to politicians and political groups.

People in forums like these, often cite Freedom of Speech as being why they should be able to insult others with snotty childish labels, or as I've run in to, the "Right" means that they can say anything THEY want, but no one is allowed to say they are full of piffle.

Most of all I want to point out that in specific places, such as this forum, or in any other private organization, we DO NOT have the same Rights as we do in other situations.

In these forums, we are here at the sufferance of our hosts, who have established some degree of limits on what is considered acceptable discourse. Here, as with ANY hosted forum, no one has any "RIGHT" to say what they wish, we have PRIVILEGES, which are delineated for us.

It's true in Romantic relationships as well. When you agree to be with someone in a dedicated sense, you may think love gives you ultimate freedom, but it does not. There are always consequences from which you are NOT protected.

what misses in interpretation, I believe

is the constitution had to do with the limiting of governments ability to place limits on people,, not limits amongst and between private citizens


like as in how a government entity cannot detain you for speaking your opinion,, but your boss can indeed fire you and restrict you from their property for doing so if its against the terms of the contract you made with them

Freedom of expression is probably the MOST misrepresented Right that there is here. In politics, it was used recently to claim that the owners and officers of large corporations should be allowed to hide the money that they "donate" to politicians and political groups.

Freedom of expression is a right and a privilege Americans are endowed with. I cut a portion of your speech, to show you that you have the right to say it, even though I don't agree with you. The most misrepresented right? To whom? League beagles?

This American right is the only thing keeping the one percenters from burying the middle class.

You feel bad because people don't agree with you. That's tough. If someone walks up to me and says Donald Trump is gonna send your kind back to Mexico! I will feel mad, but he has the right to speak his opinion, no matter how much I dislike it. It's what makes our country the most freedom loving democracy in the planet. Sure it's not perfect, but we leave second place far in the dust.

So just try to accept that some people are not going to like what you say. Remember, our country was founded on these rights.

This thread doesn't really clarify anything.


Rights are inherent to human beings.
Human beings always have rights.
They will always try to express them no matter what.


You have the same rights no matter where you go in the world no matter who you are.

Rights are inherent, innate, they aren't given, bestowed, or bequeathed, they are recognized.

You have the same rights sitting in your house as you do sitting in jail.

Other people are simply given the power by other people in power recognized by other people and groups, to abridge, interfere with, hold their rights greater than, your individual rights and expression of them.

Other people simply form groups of power that then make sure the cost to you of expressing your rights is perceived by you to be higher than expressing them is worth.

No rights are removed. You never have less "rights" than you ever have.
All you have is greater consequences to expressing them imposed upon you by others.


No.
We've entered into a legal contract via the TOS agreement.
We are not at their sufferance, we are in a business relationship.
We provide what the site sells in exchange for what we get out of it.
This site is a "host" only as a verb, not a noun.
If we violate the TOS they can discontinue the business relationship at their discretion.
In no way do they ever influence "rights."


Everyone has the right to say what they wish wherever they are.
They are also responsible for what that speech engenders.
The website has absolutely no ability to enforce anything anywhere except for on this site.
So they can kick someone off for saying something unwanted.
That's also "expression."
But they have to do it via the legal contract they enter into via the TOS otherwise it potentially opens them to liability.


What is "delineated" are cause and effect for expressing rights in certain ways.
If you say/act x way, y will happen, you agree you know this and will adhere to this by clicking 'agree' on the TOS, therefore with any violation the website has the ability to take this to other people that have the power of enforcing its will off of this site onto you.

Again, has little to do with "rights."
You are in a legal business contract with the site, which only lists terms and remedies.
The site does not grant privileges nor have any effect on "rights."
No different than your visa bill saying if you don't pay they can pursue you for money due and cut your credit line. If x happens (you don't pay), we will do y (cancel your card, and pursue you). It doesn't interfere with your right to express yourself by buying stuff.

It's recognition and defining terms of a relationship, not delineating privileges or affecting "rights."


This is ultimately a meaningless statement.
There are consequences to every single choice made, or not made.

Just because people belittle your opinion in threads, it doesn't eradicate your right to continue expressing your truth.

From all the posts I have read from you OP, I deem your assessments to be balanced, unemotional and empirically based.

That type of even-keeled thinking will NEVER go down well in the lower segments of the forum board eg religion and politics, where I have seen the most extremist, hysterical and ugliest behaviour in the mingle discussions.

Just because people attack your balanced views in an extremist world, it doesn't eclipse your right to keep expressing your opinion or even your right to belittle their opinion, as they have done yours.

Possibly because of your level of class , you have chosen not to retaliate, and if so, I respect you for that , but that doesn't eradicate your right to do it if you wanted.

And on your sub-point about people assuming that love gives them the ultimate freedom, I actually think that more people are growing to reject committed relationships because they are quickly learning that love is more filled with what they perceive to be burdensome obligations than the ever seductive freedom of choice.

Just as we have rights to our opinions, others have the same right even if it goes against our own.

Freedom of speech, also, doesn't apply to privately owned sites

And (being this is an international site) there are countries that don't have the same freedom of speech that we do in America.

Very good point.

Yeah this is more or less what I'm alluding to. All my life, I've heard people from all sorts of points of view, trying to use ideas LIKE freedom of speech/expression, to try to claim powers or personal powers that no one actually has.

It's something which I think is VERY worthy of each person pondering, because it is so important to keep our mutual freedoms as much as we can.

More than anything else, it's important to recognize that there's nothing simple or easy about ANY of our rights.

I have no worries that my own freedoms will be limited just because someone anywhere doesn't like me, and tries to shut me or anyone here down. That's not the point I'm hoping to make with this. None of us are in danger, INCLUDING the people who want the rest of us to shut up and allow them to rant at will. They can still do that.

I only posted this to get some people thinking about the dynamics of our little coffee klatch, in the faint hope that as long as we don't get personal or run too off the point in any discussion, NONE of us is a threat to any other.

THE LIBERALS BELIEVE ,''THEY KNOW WHAT'S BEST'' WE HAVE TO LIMIT THERE CONTROL

OVER US....I KNOW FIRST HAND I WORKED FOR A LOCAL .GOV .............

Lots of people think "right to their own opinion" means "right to require everyone to listen to their opinion without criticizing them for it."

Or that "freedom of belief," means "right to force everyone else to cater to their beliefs."

The main PRACTICAL thing to recognize, is that ALL individual "rights" of any kind, CAN'T be unlimited, because there are other individuals in the world, and their "rights" will invariably intersect with each other's.

That's why all "rights" are limited, and often being challenged in the courts.

The beautiful irony of a discussion of "rights",
and being "affronted" by another poster's disparaging
comments toward our posts;

Is, that literally EVERYONE posting in this thread, myself included,
has made at least one backhanded, or snide comment, toward
another person's post.

Some will take issue, with some of my posts.
Some will take issue, with some of what you, or anyone else
posts.

That's life.

One person's "rights" do not override, or supersede
another person's "rights".

Respect, is a wonderful, precious thing.
Unless it's a mutual respect, it will not last long.
The best way to win respect, is to be respectful.

I prefer to exercise my freedom to ignore the silly things that you Humans say.

http://www.theobjectivestandard.com/issues/2011-fall/ayn-rand-theory-rights/

That particular attempt to derive "rights" from Ayn Rands concepts, is unfortunately a failure. It does a good job of explaining why many of the most popular notions of where rights come from are false, but in the end, it comes back around and supports one of them . That is, the idea that whatever rights functionally exist, are set forth by the government which can bring power to bear.

I suspect Rand would not have approved the essay, though I Am certainly not a Rand scholar.

The real crux of the issue as far as we are concerned with here is, deciding who specifically and locally, is going to be allowed to determine everyones' rights. Here, that local authority is the M2 personnel. You can appeal to the sense of justice of an individual thread monitor, but that's as far as your "rights" go.

The same thing is true in the larger arena of the United States. Though many people don't want it to be so, it really is true that the Constitution and other controlling government documents, in association with what is best understood as the "collective mind of the jurists/political leaders of the moment," is what determines what our "rights" are or are not.

And what it comes down to in the trenches is, when there is a conflict of desires or interests, who the bulk of the controlling forces at play, will tell to give way, and who they will tell to pound sand.

.

OP, I disagree with 90% of what you post here....but I 100% support you posting all of it....at least its interesting and not boring.


"Lowered segments of the forum board"? What is considered the "higher segments"? Dating And Relationships? Coffee Houses and Chit Chat? With those redundant and boring topics that have been on internet forums for decades now?
If someone feels certain forum sections are beneath them, I'd suggest going to their forum settings and removing them....unless they just enjoy reading and judging them.

BTW...

"" I
have seen the most extremist, hysterical and
ugliest behaviour in the mingle discussions.""

...you havent been on many other forum sites, have you? Mingle2 is tame in comparison to others...

Yes. DH,for example, is packed with vile muck. No moderation at all. And so far, the least moderated forums I've looked at, all tended to fall apart and die, BECAUSE there was no reining in of the worst offenders. Dh only continues because people are allowed to clock out the worst offenders.

That's another way that the concept of rights, as well as the limits of them, plays out in the real world. Whenever enough people act as though their rights are UNLIMITED, chaos results, and all are destroyed.

RIGHTS AND OPINIONS
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Human rights in the United States
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In 1776, Thomas Jefferson proposed a philosophy of human rights inherent to all people in the Declaration of Independence, asserting that "all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." Historian Joseph J. Ellis calls the Declaration "the most quoted statement of human rights in recorded history".[1]
Human rights in the United States comprise a series of rights which are legally protected by the Constitution of the United States, including the amendments,[2][3] state constitutions, conferred by treaty, and enacted legislatively through Congress, state legislatures, and state referenda and citizen's initiatives. Federal courts in the United States have jurisdiction over international human rights laws as a federal question, arising under international law, which is part of the law of the United States.[4]

The human rights record of the United States of America is a complicated matter; first and foremost the Federal Government of the United States has, through a ratified constitution and amendments thereof, guaranteed unalienable rights to citizens of the country, and also to some degree, non-citizens. However, the historical evolution of these rights must be considered as well, as the periphery of the population of the United States who had access to these rights has expanded over time, and in accordance with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights has not fully expanded complete rights to all human beings within its borders as compared to the international standard set by the United Nations General Assembly, because of social and political issues that stem from the history of the United States.

Contrary to its constitutionally-protected requirement towards respecting of human rights, the United States has been internationally criticized for its violation of human rights, including the least protections for workers of most Western country,[5] the imprisonment of debtors,[6] and the criminalization of homelessness and poverty,[7][8] the invasion of the privacy of its citizens through surveillance programs,[9] police brutality,[10] the incarceration of citizens for profit, the mistreatment of prisoners and juveniles in the prison system, the continued support for foreign dictators who commit abuses (including genocide[11][12]) and torture of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.

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At one point in U.S.History; it was OK to take land away from The Native American Population & kill as many "Injuns" as you could [Genocide]. In another idiotic U.S. crisis; the folks down South thought it was OK to "own" people. The Northerners said "No, sorry, not Ok. Black Americans should have the same human rights as light skinned Americans." "Not cool & No way!Blacks are not equal & we think we have the [Right] to Own Them! We're outta here & forming our own nation!" said the Southerners. Hitler & his gang decided The Jews were "inferior" & did not even deserve to live. What's really unreal is the fact that this psycho-craziness is still happening...Humans! Not a bright species for sure!
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In so far as voicing unpopular/popular opinions on the [any] forum? That's not A Human Right; it's just an[your] opinion. And, in giving voice to any opinion-anywhere; it's common sense & personal experience to expect that your opinion will offend "others" even if it was far from your intent to offend anyone. People who are so offended might express their distress to your opinion in numerous ways. One of those ways might include a strategy to personally attack, diminish or discount you[as a person] & [your opinion] by any means at their somewhat limited disposal. *laughing*
One of my mentors[Peter] once told me something very wise when he found me "sobbing" over having had my art work be the brunt of a rather vicious critique earlier on in the day. Peter told me to cut-"The Whining" in the fact that the art world was just like a giant sandbox of childish grown-up infants engaged in immature power-plays & ego-gratification behaviors. If I wanted to play in the "Art-Sandbox: then I'd better learn to not get all "Emo" & rationally deal with the idea that "sand-in-the face" was just a probable repercussion of sand box playtime activities;}
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A Cyber-Space Forum is only one of many "sandboxes" in life & most certainly, not one of any great importance- to say the least, lmao! If I'm not in the mood to hear the idiocy & venom that has the potential to issue forth in my direction from the key-boards of bottom feeding trolls; I simply avoid "That Sandbox" for the day. Nothing personal...