Rights and Social Responsibility

Where do rights come from? Who or what entitles us the rights we hold so dear? I contend that moral rights do exist, although they are not always protected. First, I feel the need to outline my definition of a moral and legal right. I differentiate these two partially on the consequences of acting out of accordance with the right. If a person infringes upon the legal right of another, that person is subject to penalty imposed by the government enforcement to which that legal right pertains. On the other hand, I see a moral right as something that should be adhered to and infringing upon these rights results in a person being seen as a bad (immoral) person, but does not result in penalty, unless the moral right coincides with a legal right. That being said, I believe that moral rights are universally and individually owned. What I mean by that is that every individual (human, for the sake of this discussion) have certain moral rights from the start of life (you can pick where you want life to start). These rights are inherited by all humans from the fact that we have reason. I will use reason as defined by early philosophers (take Aristotle's definition for example). The rights obtained by birth I would term natural or human rights. One of the human rights that I believe exists in this manner is the right to life. I believe that all humans have the right to life. Even though these moral rights are bestowed upon humans just because of their humanity, it does not mean that the rights will be enforced. Most humans live in some sort of community. It takes action from the community to enforce even the most basic human rights to ensure that these rights are protected. I recognize that there may be certain rights that do not exist at birth, as well. These rights may have arisen as humans adopted communities as a way of life. Some things are not necessary to own as rights when alone, but suddenly become a reality when living in a community. Now, to change topics, I will move on to social responsibility as I see it. I recently had a discussion about politics with a friend of mine and it actually did not get out of hand. I did come up with a realization of the nature of society today and its relation to politics. The specific topic being discussed was the basic nature of Democrat vs Republican economic policies (note that all of the discussion of political party policies come only from my perception and are not based on any affiliation with either party). We (my friend and I) agreed that the basic plan proposed by Republicans puts money in the hands of the highest levels of the biggest companies in America in hopes that the money will work its way down the market to all branches of society. We also agreed that the Democrats' plan would take money from (figuratively) the highest levels of the biggest companies in America with the intention that it could be directly given to those at the lower end of society. Again I want to say that these are assumptions of the basic economic plans, not from any reputable source. We noticed, however, that neither plan would work and this is why. The Republican plan assumes that the people in the highest levels are willing to share with those below them. I contend that people who have risen to this level have only done so by not sharing (this is also from my own observation). The Democrat plan assumes that giving money to the people in the lower branches will allow them to climb and to increase the middle class. I don't think this will work as the big wigs in the company will have to decrease wages or move to another country to achieve the level of wealth that they once had (something I see as a big problem right now). I believe that America has lost the sense of Social Responsibility. This is my term for the belief behind JFK's famous speech. He said something along the lines of "Ask not what your country can do for you..." you know the rest. If we look more towards the overall goal of things, I believe our country and individual communities can rise back to the level of world respect that we once held. Sorry this is so long.