YOU HAVE NO RIGHTS - George Carlin
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN quotes it in threads about civil liberties and government overreach for its line about rights being privileges.
What it is
A George Carlin stand-up routine arguing that rights are really temporary privileges that can be taken away. The uploader frames it with conspiracy-leaning tags.
Recommended by 0 HN commenters across 0 different months, 2010 to 2015.
What Hacker News said
Cites scythe · 2010-02 · on “FIXME: zero ideas in the dept. of education's open government idea board”
Please stop mincing words; you know as well as I do what the phrase "free and compulsory education" refers to. Yes, it's tax-funded. No, taxes do not constitute enslavement . (And before you mention that you said "payment or enslavement of others", let's both agree to admit that you included the word "enslavement" solely for dramatic effect.) I'm not going to play the "human rights" game, because you have no rights [1]. I'm going to say that providing education to everyone has been proven time and again to be good for society [2]. The attitude of "oh well it's not a right" is perhaps the greatest piece of sophistry I've been subjected to in some time, in that the definition of a "right" is e
Cites icebraining · 2011-12 · on “'TSA Arrests Me for Using the Fourth Amendment as a Weapon'”
To quote George Carlin (RIP): Now, if you think you do have rights, I have one last assignment for ya. Next time you’re at the computer get on the Internet, go to Wikipedia. When you get to Wikipedia, in the search field for Wikipedia, i want to type in, “Japanese-Americans 1942″ and you’ll find out all about your precious fucking rights. Alright. You know about it. In 1942 there were 110,000 Japanese-American citizens, in good standing, law abiding people, who were thrown into internment camps simply because their parents were born in the wrong country. That’s all they did wrong. They had no right to a lawyer, no right to a fair trial, no right to a jury of their peers, no right to due proc
Cites sarciszewski · 2015-01 · on “I Was Arrested for Learning a Foreign Language. Today, I Have Some Closure”
> What you describe is doing everything you can in order to try to avoid a situation in which you might be required to flex your rights. I like to think of it as maintaining a preemptive strategy. I don't like this, but the world we live in is unfair and full of assholes who don't play by their own rules. > How can you describe it as a strategy for "making sure your rights are respected"? A man who faces no wars carries no battle scars. > It is on its face an attempt to make the question of whether you have rights or not a no-impact detail. [this video]