Believing in an absolute basis for rights ignores the reality that every single right people have was usually fought for during a time when people did not have that right. You can lose rights and you can gain them.
It’s also how you get people arguing that the rights people have in some places (e.g. healthcare, higher education) aren’t legitimate rights even though they most certainly are.
Believing in a relative basis for rights means that slavery is ok as long as the consensus agrees on it. So slavery in the US was completely moral right up until the start of the Civil War and it's moral anywhere in the world it is fine today (as long as it is legal / consensus). I don't think that's moral at all. An absolute basis for rights is above law or human discourse - slavery was appallingly evil exactly because it was an stain against the enslaved peoples' human rights to liberty (regardless of whether the law allowed it or not).
African Americans didn't earn the right to not be enslaved. They always had the innate human right to liberty regardless of what the law said, abolitionists defeated the oppressors that suppressed their innate rights to liberty.
I can see now why we’re talking past one another. I am making a statement about the usage of the word “rights”. When I say “you have a right to due process” it is not a statement about an abstract concept but a matter of fact statement about the legal protections you have, which depends on the jurisdiction in which you are physically located.
You’re talking about the philosophical basis for how we come to our individual beliefs about what rights we should have. Note that the conversation is teetering on the edge of an appeal to the law fallacy: what the law currently says is entirely irrelevant when considering what it should say. To say that slavery is legal is not to say that it is moral, it’s just a question of fact.
In any case, if you have an absolute basis for rights I’d like to hear it. I’m not an expert and I’m curious about people’s theories about these things.
> if you have an absolute basis for rights I’d like to hear it
Societies based on free men do far better than societies based on slaves. Armies of volunteers are much more formidable than armies based on conscripts. Economies based on free markets are much more prosperous than command economies.
I don't know what you'd find compelling, but I see a consistent pattern there. It's almost as if being free confers an inherent advantage. :-/
Anyhow, if you had a job where you are paid to work and could leave any time to get a better job, would you say you'd perform better at the job than if you were forced to work there and whipped if the overseer didn't like your work?
It’s also how you get people arguing that the rights people have in some places (e.g. healthcare, higher education) aren’t legitimate rights even though they most certainly are.