I think the parent commenter was trying to say that rights only exist as a productive concept when other people agree with them.
You can argue that certain rights are fundamental, but it doesn’t mean anything if most people disagree with you. Whether or not rights are “fundamental” (i.e. exist outside of an enforcement structure) not a useful distinction, because it’s meaningless - whether or not you get to exercise that right has nothing to do with your claim being correct, it has to do with other people agreeing and sanctioning your behavior.
Like most normative claims, personal rights do not really exist coherently if you don’t first define them in the context of a relationship. This is demonstrably the case because the idea of a right would be redundant or meaningless if it were not for an adversary threatening that right in the first place.
You can argue that certain rights are fundamental, but it doesn’t mean anything if most people disagree with you. Whether or not rights are “fundamental” (i.e. exist outside of an enforcement structure) not a useful distinction, because it’s meaningless - whether or not you get to exercise that right has nothing to do with your claim being correct, it has to do with other people agreeing and sanctioning your behavior.
Like most normative claims, personal rights do not really exist coherently if you don’t first define them in the context of a relationship. This is demonstrably the case because the idea of a right would be redundant or meaningless if it were not for an adversary threatening that right in the first place.