A Post I Put on Someone Else's Facebook Wall (I Think It Stands Well on Its Own)

I've been ruminating on this lately, in contrast to a lot of things that now are perceived as rights -- "reproductive rights," health care, marriage (whether "equality marriage" or not), etc. -- and I've concluded that I'm still a natural-law kind of guy. Implicit in a "right" is that it is a gift of God, not something decreed by those who are in power. The former is absolute. The latter can be taken away. Furthermore, true rights are universal, meaning they exist even where it is not possible to exercise them. I do not have freedom of speech or religion, etc., because I'm American, but because I am human; Iranians have the same freedom. Rights are not something that are added to. They always have existed. So we can't just make them up when we think they'd be nice. And we can't just do away with them when we don't like them. No right can be absolute if we  cannot conceive of the creator (just one place where Ayn Rand and I disagree) who granted them in the first place.  When they emanate from the whims of people, they can be just as capriciously taken away. Finally, rights have to do with much more than behavior; they go to our core, they guard who we are as beings. This is why the freedom of religion currently is under threat by "freedom of worship." The former implies the latter, but not vice versa, and this is how the Obamacrats are trying to broker into religious organizations their fascistic health care policies. Thanks for letting me exercise my freedom of speech. Do it while you still can.