It seems to me that these days people believe that they have all kinds of "rights" - from a right to have a 15 minute break at work, to a right to not breathe smoke from someone else's cigarettes.
I think this sort of thinking is dangerous, as it can lead to tyrannical over-legislation - the beginnings of which we are most likely seeing today.
As a supporting argument, I submit this quote, taken from a science-fiction novel, of all things, in which the narrator expounds on the idea that human beings have no natural rights whatsoever.
"Life? What 'right' to life has a man who is drowning in the Pacific? The ocean will not hearken to his cries. What 'right' to life has a man who must die to save his children? If he chooses to save his own life, does he do so as a matter of 'right'? If two men are starving and cannibalism is the only alternative to death, which man's right is 'unalienable'? And is it 'right'? As to liberty, the heroes who signed the great document pledged themselves to buy liberty with their lives. Liberty is never unalienable; it must be redeemed regularly with the blood of patriots or it always vanishes. Of all the so-called natural human rights that have ever been invented, liberty is least likely to be cheap and is never free of cost. The third 'right'?—the 'pursuit of happiness'? It is indeed unalienable but it is not a right; it is simply a universal condition which tyrants cannot take away nor patriots restore. Cast me into a dungeon, burn me at the stake, crown me king of kings, I can 'pursue happiness' as long as my brain lives—but neither gods nor saints, wise men nor subtle drugs, can insure that I will catch it."
-R Heinlein
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