Rights exist by what people demand and exercise and do.

A "bill of rights" is a piece of paper. A piece of paper which is ruled upon by a court that was granted its power by the very same collection of papers.

For example, the right to keep and bear arms (obviously not for hunting but for war and security) has been infringed upon many times, but constitutional courts have decided that actually despite the bill of rights, some infringement is allowed. (EDIT: And this doesn't even address the problem of governments creating unconstitutional laws or executing unconstitutional actions which de facto strip your rights for some possibly significant time until it can be overturned by a court, but without much redress or punishment or deterrent)

In the end the people are the ultimate arbiters and deciders of what rights they are willing to give up and what powers they are willing to be governed under. This plays out the same way in USA and Australia and Afghanistan and Libya.

I for one agree with you.

I've never understood why America puts of with basically being a police state, with the level of police brutality and incarceration that they have.

And here in aussieland, we don't have that, but we do nothing to protect our liberties.

If society is violent, divided, and less trusting of one another, there is more willingness to turn to the state for protection.

Unfortunately this creates a strong incentive for all governments to actually create such societies and increase division and mistrust in order to gain power.

But Australia isn’t violent, divided, and less trusting of one another. Neither are most of the western-style developed countries that turn to the state for protection.

> Unfortunately this creates a strong incentive for all governments to actually create such societies and increase division and mistrust in order to gain power.

Have you actually been to Australia before? Or Europe for that matter? Or Japan? Your claims don’t make much sense with the current examples. All we have is a developed country that heavily values the right to bear arms and has a horrible crime rate, while the other countries are the exact opposite.

> But Australia isn’t violent, divided, and less trusting of one another. Neither are most of the western-style developed countries that turn to the state for protection.

I didn't say they were.

> Have you actually been to Australia before? Or Europe for that matter? Or Japan?

Yes, yes, yes. Worthless rhetorical questions.

> Your claims don’t make much sense with the current examples.

What claims?

> All we have is a developed country that heavily values the right to bear arms and has a horrible crime rate, while the other countries are the exact opposite.

I'm not sure what you're getting at, but Europe is not a country. And there are more countries than your examples with differences in crime rates and gun ownership, so I suspect whatever point you are trying to prove with selective data points wouldn't actually hold up.

We have tons of examples of states where the government takes responsibility for protecting the people and are safer than the one example where a second amendment exists to keep people "safe". If you want to split hairs between western and eastern europe, yes, countries like the Ukraine is not as safe as the USA, but that in no way proves your point.

You didn't address my post or answer my questions. What "point" is it that you think I am making? What claims is it you think I have made?

> If society is violent, divided, and less trusting of one another, there is more willingness to turn to the state for protection.

Patently false from all available exemples.

What examples? How do they demonstrate that? Clearly not all available examples were used!

And nowhere did I say that that is the only reason a society would be willing to turn to the state for protection, so spare me the false counter examples dressed up breathlessly to look like some incredible gotcha.

I gave the examples in my first comment, you didn’t refute them but claimed their were some bad countries in Europe, which I agreed with (Ukraine, Russia, etc…).

Your examples didn't refute what I wrote.

Presumably the GP is referring to a conception of rights that exist independently of a piece of paper declaring their existence.

Well how do you enforce a concept? One move would be to introduce a bill of rights

Even in a system with a bill of rights those laws are there as a last resort, to deal with complete failure states. They are the limits, not standard operating procedures.

There is always going to be capacity for doing better, society is always what we make of it, even without hard legal limits (not to suggest imposing limits of state power is bad).