People are pretty comfortable talking about their rights.  Where do these rights come from?  The US Bill of Rights was added on to the US Constitution as our 1st set of Amendments.  These are a set of “unalienable human rights” as derived by the founding fathers; relatively well educated thinkers of the enlightenment period.  The UN Bill of Rights came later and was derived by a multicultural panel of relatively well educated thinkers.

How did these people derive these universal truths?  Do you believe there are universal truths?  Hopefully by now you will be able to acknowledge that universally knowable truths about ethics can be derived through introspection, verified by the same means and validated  through consensus.  These past documents were formed through an understanding of ethics, even if not directly stated as such.  We are born with a sense of harm/care and fairness/reciprocity.  All human rights are derived from these abilities.  Our rights are derived from ethics.  It is more important to understand ethics that to be schooled on your rights.

You need to understand how the rules are formed, not just know what the rules are.  Remember, “Any fool can make a rule and every fool will follow it.”  You should obey the rules that make sense, and question the ones that don’t.