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but the issue with society defining rights is that you end up letting the mob decide the "right" of green eyed people to live has just become a privilege.That's what those in power try to sell, who think they know better, and that the people are savage animals that need to be kept in place.
In reality, the worse atrocities have been performed not by mobs, or at least not by mobs on their own, but by well educated, powerful people. All those gentlemen slave owners in the South, all those smooth talking Nazi higher ups (with support from Germanys financial elites), the higher echelons of USSR Party power, colonial gentlemen, and so on. Mobs have nothing on them.
>Rights stem from nature, and exist with, or without society.
There are no rights in nature -- something anyone who ventures outside of society (in a jungle, in the woods, etc) will very soon find out. Nobody in nature (outside of a human community) will ever protect their live to live, property, or anything else.
Rights are a social contract, made because man is a conscious, social, animal. The problem is that the contract is more often than not, presented like Terms of Use, already written from those in power.