You, just like the rest of us, are an infinitesimal speck of dust on a surface of an unremarkable ball of rock orbiting a star just like trillions of others, whose existence as a thinking entity will likely span less than 100 years out of the 100 trillion years that the universe will exist in a meaningful sense before the stars die and the last black holes evaporate.

The universe owes you nothing; human rights are nothing more than the common decency we owe one another in the face of an uncaring universe, and the idea that anybody other than the ruling class should even have them in any meaningful sense has a surprisingly short history. In contrast, the idea that might makes right is as old as the first predatory microbes. If a society believes in the value of human rights, it needs to be ready and able to vigorously defend them against would-be strongmen who don’t feel constrained by rules and norms of behavior, who will happily banish those rights back to the philosophical ether from which they came if it means they can secure more power and comfort for themselves.