Who owns you?

Then how can it always "make right"?

Congratulations. You have just declared yourself unfit to live under the protection of the US Constitution.

 

Then pilgrim, you don't think too good.

Obviously that has nothing to do with it; and if you meant proscribed, you didn't understand a word I said.

Again, this has no bearing on the legitimacy of the contract, since it can be fulfilled without any third party enforcement whatsoever.

 

As I'm pretty sure the signers of the DoI had never heard of Ayn Rand, I believe we can take this as yet another example of a stopped clock being right twice a day.

 

I do not recall saying "always"but nevertheless.....

Might is right because those with the might, make the rules or havent you noticed?
If the wielder is bad, he will only get punished when he loses that might.

So you don't think those with the might determine what is good or bad?

Worse you pull out the old "Constitution" argument as if it a magic bullet.

I recall the drafters (men of political might) of "all men are created equal" owned slaves.

I believe that it only took 100 years or so (plus hundreds of thousands of deaths) before those with the might forced integration and equal rights on the white majority.

And that sad situation existed even tho the constitution's checks and balances were supposed to ensure that equality of rights and freedom from tyranny were firmly entrenched in the rule of law.

Guess you missed that little episode in American history.

 

Well so much for that right to a jury trial of yours when they can just send a drone and whack you instead.

Natural rights theory is just my personal opinion? That's a good one.

So how do you know what anarchy would do? My question about spontaneous order was not rhetorical, btw.

You've been using the singular form. Which one are you talking about?

 

There's that singular society again. Which one?

 

You are more than welcome to explain why that shouldn't be taken as a necessary implication of your own words.

Non sequitur, obviously, since there are rules which exist independently of any human contrivances.

That's not something I need to think about, since I know for a fact that, speaking quite dispassionately, it's a *******ned lie.

I did no such thing, because there is nothing arguable in that statement. As John Adams observed, the Constitution is only fit for the governance of a moral people, and no such people believes might makes right.

While that certainly reflects badly on some of the Founders, it contravenes nothing I've said.

No they were not, as the 1808 and fugitive slave clauses attest to explicitly; but 13A has since rendered Adams' pronouncement even more true than it was when he made it.

 

The Constitution is a suicide pact for those of us who weren't born rich, white, male, landowners. How you ever convinced anybody that it is anything else is way beyond me. You had ME convinced for quite a long time.

 

exceptions to the rule.

Oh really? Did those "rules" stop Pol Pot? Hitler? Milosevic? Taylor? No, they had the power and remade the rules to suit themselves. Wasn't until they lost power that those that attained it carried out retribution.

Not a student of history it seems. Let's take some classic examples,. Hitler absolutely thought he was doing the right thing by removing the racially inferior and he had the might to attempt it (at least). Look at Mao - his "cultural revolution" killed a few million and his "great leap forward" killed up to 30 million.

Yes you did. Now how do you figure that "moral" people don't believe that might makes right? Have you reviewed the history of American foreign policy? Do you think that the British were immoral people when they conquered 2/3rds of the planet? Strip it down and it ain't about morals, its about power.

Okay, so you accept that the founders actually enacted "might makes right" with their support of slavery despite the moralistic "all men are created equal". And that position went well beyond the founder's generation.

Are you suggesting that equality and individual liberty were not entrenched in the Constitution? That it does not describe the checks and balances to mitigate the possibilty of tyrannical government?

I take a different view. Those in power did not grant equality to blacks with the 13th. "Jim Crow" ruled in the south for another 100 years and the white power establishment suppressed the rights of blacks. That was yet another example of might over right.

 

Slavery goes back as far as the anthropological record.

The enslavement of peoples of other 'races' is a relatively new thing (last 600yrs)
The first 'racial' slavery was the enslavement of the Slavic people by the people of north Africa.
The Slavs were enslaved by them in such numbers and for so long that we eventually got from that the word "slave".
The very word slave comes from the enslavement of Europeans by Africans.

The vast majority of slavery, historically, was completely voluntary. How, you ask, could people voluntarily give away possesion of themselves? Because, until 1776 almost everyone who ever lived was owned by their government.

The idea of each person being self-possessed is a relatively new idea. Endenturing oneself amounted to little more than subletting. Even the slave owner was owned, was someone else's subject, someone else's property.

Almost everyone I have read or talked with has a gross misperception of histortical slavery. However, there are many very good historical resources. A very good start are Thomas Sowell's works of "Intellectuals and Society" and "Intellectuals and Race".

Being owned by someone else is the historical norm. Freedom, self-possession is the exception. I do not agree with those who claim that freedom is the natural state of man. There is little historical and vertually no contemporary evidence of that. Man is a bunch of b1tches.

 

This is really a question about axioms or first principles. Either you believe in self-ownership or you do not. Those who would profess not to believe in it, are almost without exception totally inconsistent in their reasoning and behavior, and almost always refuse to follow their rejection of self-ownership to its conclusion, which is a world where murder, rape, and slavery have no real moral consequence.

 

Well, you have to define "society" and explain how it comes into being before we can answer that question.

 

Yes, proscribed.

Except a legitimate contract doesn't mean a whole lot if you cannot enforce it.

 

Good point.

Nope, its a statement of your belief as to what rights should be.

Where did I say I knew what anarchy would do?

The one that you live in that sets the customs, mores, rules and laws.

- - - Updated - - -

Why do you need me to define society for you in order to answer my question? Who determines what rights we have if not society through the government? Take the last part off. Who determines what rights we have?

But here you go.

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=society+definition

 

No one really "determines" it, individuals either accept the reasoning of natural rights or they don't. That is why the phrase "self-evident" appears in the Declaration of Independence, because the truth of the propositions contained therein are taken to be axiomatic, which is why I said this is really a question of first principles. At a certain point, an argument becomes irreducible and all you are left with are certain basic assumptions or axioms about the nature of reality and/or morality.

Which definition are you using? There are multiple entries. And how does a "society" come into being?

 

If no one has determined what our "natural rights" are, who can you say we have "natural rights"?

So our "natural rights" are based on someone claiming they are self-evident in a document? If I write up the "Declaration of Stoners" and I proclaim that there is a self evident "natural right" to smoke pot, does that make smoking pot an inalienable inherent "natural" right? Why not?

The argument you are making is irreducible because ultimately, there is no logical defense for it.

Very first one on the list works: "the aggregate of people living together in a more or less ordered community."

The relevant society depends on the rights you are talking about. The nation as a whole is certainly one where rights can be established. The international community can also be one. But it can also be more local.

 

All these questions can easily be answered if you reference the axioms contained in the country's charter:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Any form of coercion, whether it's income taxation or drug prohibition, is a violation of self ownership principles, and should be opposed on both moral and utilitarian grounds.

They are "nailed" to the axiomatic statements of law and morality which appear throughout western and American culture. Historians typically refer to this era as the Age of Enlightenment.

 

Already discussed earlier in this thread. That is a statement by the founders as to what *they* hold to be truths about rights. And confirming my point. Governments secure rights.

And pretty flimsy ones at that, given the disenfranchisement of slaves and women.

Thanks for admitting the obvious.

And subject to change over time as we become more "enlightened".

 

It's incredibly easy, actually. Not that I'm an atheist, but one could easily "justify" (to whom must they justify these rights?) rights using reason and even empirical arguments. Naturally, they would begin with some kind of axiomatic moral statement, perhaps, it is wrong to kill peaceful people; or perhaps they could start with some kind of utilitarian axiom derived from moral principles, like, killing peaceful people is wrong because it undermines aggregate utility; really, there is no limit to the amount of "justifications" that an atheist could proffer in defense of their rights. Of course, you could disagree, you could say they were wrong, but arguing over axiomatic statements is pointless. Either you believe in them or you do not. For example, virtually everyone on this forum has the shared assumption that we're actually having a discussion in reality and not just some dream-state. If we didn't share that assumption, we could not have a rational discussion. And because it is an assumption, there is no point in arguing about it. So what happens when people do not share the same axioms with each other yet live in relatively close proximity to one another? There is confusion, there is disorder, and there is the potential for violence.

The creator could simply mean nature or your mother. It could mean almost anything.

My rights come from my application of reason to the world around me.

 

Yes, this is very good. The protective instinct, the inherent knowledge of right and wrong. These are the things that authoritarians want to ignore.

 

How does something become the "law" then? A magic ritual in Washington DC?

 

He either does not understand or refuses to acknowledge it is axiomatic. There in lies the issue.

 

Dodging, I see. You begged the question with your reference to it. And you're still ignoring the other one. Never mind then.

 

Such as...?

Yeah, really.

The question is, of course, hopelessly idiotic, since no rule by itself ever stopped anybody from doing anything.

Be that as it may, it doesn't matter a lick, because what I said is no more dependent on history for its truth value than is the Pythagorean Theorem.

Not a syllable of this contravenes a word I said, obviously.

No I didn't.

There is nothing to figure, as it is a self-evident truth.

There is no need in this context; and even if there were, I'm nowhere near fool enough to get into a discussion of of American foreign policy with someone who doesn't understand the first thing about morality.

No, I'm saying it outright.

I said precisely what I meant, so your paraphrasing serves only to create confusion.

And I never said they did, obviously.

It means plenty to people who say what they mean and mean what they say. That you do not number yourself among them is not exactly a surprise.

 

The law of the land is the godless Constitution.