> our inalienable, universal rights

That school of thought dates from the 18th century when thinkers appealed to a Creator who endowed those rights (even if it was a rather aloof Deist conception of God). However, in the following century it faced strong competition from the utilitarian school that suggests that rights are only a convenient fiction that society recognizes for the common good. Plus, these days ever more people do not believe in any particular Creator who could have endowed anyone with rights.

Human ethics, metaethics and politics is definitely nowhere near "laws of physics" settled and agreed on.

The "right to life" is seen in the objection to a government killing a citizen for no reason. The argument is that, self-evidently, it's wrong for a government to do that. So there must be a right to life independent of the laws of a country or the whims of its rulers. Sure, a theist would claim that God would in particular object to capricious killing, but you don't have to be a theist to claim it's self-evidently objectionable.

And I guess you can argue that some do not recognize universal rights, but it's not a compelling argument to just point out what some people think.

Not at all. The concept of natural rights merely means that by our nature we have rights. The schools of thought that led to that identification and to the foundation of the US based on the ideal of a government exclusively tasked with securing these rights goes back at least to the 15th century (Aristotle and other Greek thinkers already were inching towards the idea that there are things that are right to protect in the polis despite what others may think or the laws may impose; for example, read Antigone by Sophocles).

What is it in human nature that concretely and morally entails our having rights? the faculty of reason and its crucial role in human life, as long as we are free to act according to our thoughts. No faith involved, no mysticism required.

[added] The Founding Fathers did not create a theocracy. I don't see what point you are trying to make -- the concept of natural rights does not require a god, and it is irrelevant whether some person invoked deism or not. The fact is that we are all born with inalienable rights by virtue of our nature, what we are and how we ought to live together.

> The concept of natural rights merely means that by our nature we have rights.

The Greeks may have had a concept of natural rights separate from their being endowed by a Creator, but that is not the same concept of natural rights that John Locke proposed and which inspired the American Founding Fathers, leading to posts from Americans like the one we see above. Advocacy for that school repeatedly cites the existence of a Creator.

John Locke and many American Founding Fathers definitely do cite the existence of a Creator, but that isn't a fundamental requirement of the argument. Part of the derivations of natural rights (at least in Locke) comes from observing animals in nature, and applying these "natural" rules to humanity.

The french rights pronounced by the French Revolution had nothing to do with the idea of a Creator and were very similar in concept with many of the Founding Fathers'. So this does not seem like a reasonable argument to make.

FWIW, and I use this example in discussions with non-scientists all the time, Newtonian Gravity, aka the "Law of Gravity", not only isn't a fact, it isn't even correct. General relativity appears to be a closer approximation to nature, as Sir Arthur Eddington demonstrated in 1919[1], and Albert Einstein put forth in 1915[2].

That writers continue to conflate the definition of legal "law" with scientific "law" is in some ways amusing, but it weakens the analogies. A physical theory (testable hypothesis making specific predictions) isn't a law. The analogies aren't merely suspect, they are often fatally flawed with appeals to authority amongst other practices which are not relevant in science.

What I am saying, more simply is that "laws" of physics aren't facts. Using them as the basis for an analogy results in flawed reasoning.

With regard to the original subject matter, fundamental rights mean different things to different people, countries, governments, and other entities. It would be nice if everyone adopted a single minimal definition that we all interpreted and supported in the same manner.

This wish is unlikely to ever be fulfilled, as fundamental human rights often run counter to power structures of various types across the world. These rights could potentially constrain other entities rights, so they may choose to adopt some or none of them, or interpret them in as wildly different a manner as they wish.

This is vastly different than how physicists interpret and test theories. We don't set h_bar == 0 because we don't want the world to have a quantum character in some locations. But entities in power can set FundamentalRight_type == 0 for a specific type (pick speech, life, liberty, pursuit of happyness) if they so choose.

In this way, "fundamental" rights are really not so fundamental. They aren't like the theories of physics, the same everywhere.

[1] see https://www.space.com/37018-solar-eclipse-proved-einstein-re... though like almost all writers, they misunderstand what "proven to be correct" means in the context of a physical theory.

[2] see https://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/teaching/HPS_0410/chapters_20...

You're muddying the water and completely missing the point:

Facts are what they are, regardless of what people may say or feel about them. The laws of physics, such as Ohm's Law, can be discovered and are facts even were people to deny their validity. The same is true for all facts of nature, including the nature of humans and their rights.

Scientific fact is testable and falsifiable. If you're going to claim that natural rights are fact, I'm going to ask that you provide a testable hypothesis that demonstrates the right to life as a law.

Irrelevant. Things are what they are regardless of what you think, pray, ask, claim, test, or emote. If you truly want to learn about the factual basis of individual rights, there is ample literature for you to look up and read. If you wish to believe or claim that rights are not grounded in the facts of human nature, that's one of your rights.

What the big T Truth is is irrelevant if it can't be proven or measured. Watch:

The fact is that I'm a brain in a jar, therefore you don't really exist and have no rights whatsoever.

For what you say to be fact, and not just your personal belief wrongly presented as such, you first need to prove to me that you really exist.

All this to say, anyone who claims to know the "truth" or "facts" in a discussion about ethics and morals doesn't know what they're talking about.

Ok. So the law of gravity is the law. No matter what I say, right?

The facts subsumed by Newton's laws. Laws themselves are not the facts they are identifications of facts.

Respectfully, I disagree on both claims.

Fact in law is not the same as a fact in science.

Scientific "law" is an artifice, more of something created by someone attempting to explain using a poor mapping of language to the way scientists do their work. Scientific theory makes testable and falsifiable predictions. Gravity is a theory, not a law. It makes testable and falsifiable predictions.

Specifically, Newtonian gravity, what you call the law of gravity or a "law of physics" is known to be wrong.

Given this, how can you claim that they are what they are "regardless of what people may say or feel about them" ?

As a (non-practicing Ph.D) physicist, I have this discussion with many non-scientists, to try to help them move beyond the concept of "laws of physics" (there are none), and into the concept of testable predictions arising from the hypotheses in the theory.

Ohms "Law" is yet another example. Ohm's law breaks down spectacularly for certain materials under specific conditions. Quantum systems like Josephson junctions most definitely do not obey Ohm's "law".

In science, absolute laws do not generally exist. Using your words "regardless of what people may say or feel about them", they are irrelevant, and often incorrect. Scientific "law" is not absolute. They are not "facts".

Language, english or otherwise, is a very poor substitute for the language that testable hypotheses are written in. There is often a fundamentally severe impedance mismatch between what is written out, and what the language of science (mathematics FWIW) actually says, or even how to interpret or describe what is going on.

Without constructing a strawman, I'd like to point out that in previous centuries, people were so enamored of the fixed natural "laws", that they actually persecuted those who poked holes in them. One that comes to mind is the geocentric model of the universe.

This one is particularly interesting, as it had both religious overtones and support, and made specific predictions. The predictions of geocentricism about other planetary orbits did not match observations.

That is the fundamental Ptolemaic system law of planetary motion was wrong.

But it couldn't be.

But it was.

So astronomers developed modifications to the laws. Epicycles were invented.[1]. Which made the calculations harder. And it meant you had to discuss a mechanism by which this worked. That is the law which you are claiming to be inviolate, must be modified at best, or discarded at worse.

Add in to this very accurate measurements and analysis by Brahe, Kepler, and others, this lead Galileo, Newton and others to formulate a new model of the solar system, backed up by testable predictions. It took a while for this "law" to supplant the previous "law". But supplant it, it did.

Because science is not based upon absolute, legalistic versions of laws. Science is based upon testable hypotheses. If the tests fail, so does the hypothesis.

This mechanism survived unscathed for about 250 years or so. Until Einstein pointed out the problems with it.

My point was simply that just because the popular science writers call it a law, doesn't mean it is a "law".

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deferent_and_epicycle

Physics and its development is not the sole, nor the primary, reference for man's means and acquisition of knowledge. Ohm's Law is valid within certain limits, and these limits are also facts. (I misstated something earlier -- Ohm's Law itself is not a fact, it is conceptual framework, an identification of facts.) Just as our understanding of blood groups and their compatibility has improved over time -- the underlying facts did not change, the knowledge and theories changed to take into account the expanded knowledge of facts. Science is a systematic body of knowledge, that is: knowledge of nature -- nature being the facts.

this is my preferred interpretation, also :)

Then please petetion your senator to deregulate tanks, fighter jets, nuclear warheads, ballistic missiles, submarines etc. If you are serious about arming civilians as protection to overthrow tyranny, do a better job.

>Thus, for example, tanks, battleships and bombing planes are inherently tyrannical weapons, while rifles, muskets, long-bows, and hand-grenades are inherently democratic weapons. A complex weapon makes the strong stronger, while a simple weapon — so long as there is no answer to it — gives claws to the weak.

George Orwell, "You and the Atom Bomb", Tribune (19 October 1945)

We already have the National Guard [1] --aka militias-- which provide ample check from the State level against a would-be dictatorship at the Federal level. For further self-education, one may want to read The Federalist Papers, in particular no 46 written by Madison (see [2] for a discussion of the issue).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Guard_of_the_United_S...

[2] http://tracinskiletter.com/2018/03/21/the-advantage-of-being...

The constitutional concept of the militia is universal (well, universal for adult free males, at least, but arguably the limitations their relate to limitations applicable to the concept of full citizenship at the time, not special ones for the militia); the National Guard is a subset of or overlaps with the militia (and is, as it is structured, in some ways, in conflict with the conceptualized role of the militia in securing liberty) but is not equivalent to the militia.

I agree, militia is a wider concept and there can be many such free-formed associations. I merely wanted to mention that the National Guard are also known as militias, and they have always had very powerful weapons at their disposal.

The national guard is NOT the militia.

I agree that it is not the only militia.

Please explain Vietnam.

It is a myth that the Vietnam war was mostly a war between US conventional forces against Vietnamese guerrilla forces.

In point of fact, the majority of the battles the US military and ARVN engaged in were against the NVA (North Vietnamese Army). That is, conventional forces vs other conventional forces. While the VC (VietCong) were very active and played a crucial role in the eventual victory of North Vietnam over South Vietnam, they were never the primary military force deployed by the communists.

Moreover, the VC were not just guys with AK's. They had the full panoply of military hardware that light infantry uses: from anti-tank rockets to mortars to light anti-air missiles. The VC even had a few tanks. The VC did not engage solely in small unit guerilla operations either. Once in a while, they would launch major offensives using coordinated assaults of 10's of thousands of soldiers.

What history has shown is that while insurgencies can cause problems for established regimes, without outside logistical and financial support (i.e. supply of arms, food, money, etc) they usually cannot win.