You are just saying that a person has an absolute right to own a gun, until the day they no longer have that absolute right, and then they can’t own a gun.
In this case, your trigger is “they become a felon”; but an absolute right would be a right you had no matter what you did with it. A right cannot be an “absolute right” if it can be taken away.
I have the absolute right to my own opinion. There are probable other internalized “absolute rights”. Some rights are more universal than others — I have nearly the absolute right to life (realize we are talking about “absolute” relative to state action, not the “natural order” of things). There are a limited number of cases where the state finds that I have forfeited my right to life — but they do exist, for example if I kill another human being, then my right to life may no longer exist.
inalienable, in law means “Not subject to sale or transfer; inseparable.”
You could say we are arguing over definitions. You could even say the argument is circular on both sides - if there truly were no such thing as an “absolute right”, there would be no point in having the term “absolute right”. Why have a name for something that can’t exist?
But obviously that was not what Rick was talking about. He was correctly noting that NONE of our rights as expressed in the constitution are truly “absolute”, they all have boundaries. Your right to freely move your fist ends where my face begins.
The left treats rights as the freedom to impose their will on others. That is clearly something we need to fight back on.
I have on several other threads (but not this thread) indicated that Santorum's problem on this might just be semantic, that he may understand and agree with the correct concept, but that he may use the incorrect terminology.
You could even say the argument is circular on both sides - if there truly were no such thing as an “absolute right”, there would be no point in having the term “absolute right”. Why have a name for something that can’t exist?
I was going to point that out to you about absolute rights. You've apparently given it more thought since our last conversation. And no, my side of the argument isn't circular. Something can be described as absolute, given a condition. For example, if the variable "x" is equal to "2", then the value of "2x" will always equal "4", given that value of "x".
But obviously that was not what Rick was talking about. He was correctly noting that NONE of our rights as expressed in the constitution are truly “absolute”, they all have boundaries.
We'll have to agree to disagree. Saying that there are "no absolute rights" in the Constitution or even outside the Consititution is at the very least, a miscommunication of some very fundamental concepts about liberty, freedom and our Constitution.
Your right to freely move your fist ends where my face begins.
Your example does best boil it down to the simple concept. One doesn't have the right to begin with, to move one's fist through another's face. It's one's right to move one's fist without impinging on somebodyelse's right, that is a right that is unalienable and "absolute".