When I was young, "rights" seemed to be natural, God-given, eternal truths. Now I'm not so sure. Ralph Waldo Emerson said it well, in the first sentence of his essay Politics:

In dealing with the State we ought to remember that its institutions are not aboriginal, though they existed before we were born; that they are not superior to the citizen; that every one of them was once the act of a single man; every law and usage was a man's expedient to meet a particular case; that they all are imitable, all alterable; we may make as good, we may make better.

^z - 2011-05-15