(Replying to PARENT post)
Presumably you were downvoted because the comment completely derails from what was under discussion. (EDIT: For what it's worth, I didn't downvote you, but I did think it was a bit of a weird digression)
And while I agree with you in theory that "laws don't "actually grant any rights", that's a matter of ideology. For all practical intents, they do.
E.g. in the specific case of the European Convention on Human Rights, it has the effect of granting rights by preventing signatories that have subordinated themselves to it from enforcing laws that try to take those rights away. The UK for example, have had parts of terror legislation struct down as a result, and have complied.
👤vidarh🕑11y🔼0🗨️0
(Replying to PARENT post)
I don't really see how people have down-voted you other than the fact that they don't agree with your opinion and I really don't think that should be an excuse to just grey out someone's opinion unless it is downright stupid/misinformed/ or extremely offensive.
Is it not better to have the opinion visible and actually have a constructive argument about that vs down-voting it to the point at it is barely readable.
👤Jekyll🕑11y🔼0🗨️0
(Replying to PARENT post)
The Fourth Amendment grants "the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures", except that it doesn't, as evidenced by "Aggressive police take hundreds of millions of dollars from motorists not charged with crimes": http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/2014/09/06/st...
The moral of the story here is that laws don't actually grant any rights. The rights we have are not bestowed upon us by governments, but are inherent to all of us by virtue of being human.
Laws don't apply to the ruling class and their cronies and enforcers. You need to see that there's no room for doubting that claim anymore. Not after zero Wall Street bigwigs have gone to jail for wrecking the world's economy, and not when police officers are actively just plain looting people.
Words on a piece of paper somewhere don't magically prevent people with political power from abusing you in the here and now.
EDIT: Downvoters? Care to tell me how I'm wrong?