this post was submitted on 09 Nov 2025
139 points (88.0% liked)
Not voting (in your election)
128 readers
1 users here now
Place to hang out, memes, share experiences or just vent.
Welcome to all not wanting to vote, not able to vote or just annoyed by the US presidential election taking over Lemmy and other social media.
Coming here to argue about voting will result in a ban.
Be kind to each other & follow the server rules.
Be specifically aware that not everyone here is from the so called USA.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Rights as a political concept are essentially a form of social and cultural pressure that make it harder to oppress and abuse the populace. The idea that we have rights due to the passage of laws may not make it impossible for those rights to be violated, but it gives us a way to talk about it that lends legitimacy to pushing back against injustice.
Normalizing the idea that no one has any rights is extremely counterproductive to defending from tyranny. Frankly, trying to push the perception of rights from something we're owed to a convenient fiction is straight out of the fascist playbook.
Anyone pushing this line of thinking should not be trusted. Whether it's on purpose or not, they make themselves a tool of authoritarians by alienating people from the idea that they deserve to have their rights protected.
The whole concepteofa "right" is authoritarian in nature since only an authority can grant any rights.
Having that thought and concluding that authorities ought to be able to do as they please is the wrong way around.
I like having freedom. Any authority that deems ithas legitimagy to grant (and thus: take away and/or limit my rights) is illegitimate by my standards of having freedjm.