The Glade 4.0

I see what you did there...

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In time, this too shall pass.

Wooo camel smiley face is like funny to think about cause its funnylooking I think.

Who was I originally tlaking, with aizle or rd cause i forget but qwe should totally finish that discussion because its important and **** and **** toa ll who got int he way o f it.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

Huh, I apparently missed this response.

My stances are both logically and morally consistent. Man creates rights. Different people will view those rights as either moral or immoral depending on their own personal beliefs. When you get multiple people together and then get them to agree on a mutually acceptable set of rights, people have a tendency to enforce those rights on anyone living within their communities. Some aggressive communities will then decide that their position is obviously correct and in many cases will then go an attempt to force that viewpoint on the rest of the unwashed masses they encounter.

Seriously, if you can't see that the above behavior is repeated time and time again over history then you quite frankly aren't reading it or paying attention. And I personally think that your libertarian viewpoints are clouding your understanding of this issue.

Heh, someone's drunk.

No I didn't. Nothing I posted indicates any such assumption.



No, that is entirely my point. If a man comes into your house and murders you and then burns your house to the ground, there is no way you can say he was immoral nor that he violated your rights. We know this because you just said morality and rights are a construct of man, or rather, that the rights we have are simply those we take unto ourselves. It doesn't matter that we have a codified set of statutes and regulations which define laws to protect our rights. Ultimately, what matters (if we argue from your viewpoint that rights are a construct of man and have nothing to do with any supposed objective reality) is the ability to enforce those rights. Since he acted, he was within his rights.

It wouldn't matter, for instance, for us to have in our Constitution the right that no form of government shall abridge freedom of speech the press, gathering and assembly or to petition for governmental redress of grievances, if Predators invade and conquer us. Since rights are simply the construct of man (or in this case, sentient creatures in general), you are simply arguing that rights are naturally occur based on whatever happens. Or, in other words, everything that happens is right by fact of it happening.

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"It's real, grew up in trife life, the times of white lines
The hype vice, murderous nighttimes and knife fights invite crimes" - Nasir Jones

And I personally think that your inability to have philosophical conversations is clouding your ability to ever consider the issue, much less understand it. Hence, calling me stupid for not "understanding how the world works" is not only ignorant, it's highly Lilliputian.

Furthermore, appeals to history and popularity are logical fallacies, making your viewpoint logically incorrect, as you haven't demonstrated anything.

I'm not too bothered by your inability to reason, we all encounter those without critical thinking capabilities every day. What "bothers" me, I suppose, is that so many individuals like you on this forum claim they want a "well-reasoned" discussion. They claim it here and in the general public (see "Rally to Restore Sanity). Then, when they're done claiming they want civility and reason, they piss on their opponent, either directly or through passive-aggressive insults.

It's a peeve, sue me.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

I note that you chose to ignore my rephrasing of my argument and just went to name calling again.

I'm not the one having an inability to reason here dude.

I'm perfectly happy, and more to the point, interested in having a philosophical conversation. However, you seem incapable of actually stating what your position is and your reasoning behind it, much like Elmo is. You prefer to attempt to nit pick other peoples positions while attempting to seem superior.

One, two, many.

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The U. S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself. B. Franklin

"A mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone." -- Tyrion Lannister, A Game of Thrones

Bullshit. You're using words improperly, and then using appeals to history to wave-away opposing viewpoints. Use the proper language, refrain from using fallacies to insult people, and try again.



Sure. Or, to quote you:



That being said, let's try this again, and I'll break it down into baby steps for you:

There are two viewpoints as to the origination of rights: inherent and communal. Inherent stems from god, nature, or the aliens that built them into our existence; take your pick. Communal are set up by, you guessed it, the community by democratic choice, tyrannical dictate, or pulling them out of a hat; take your pick.

There is no practical effect to this variation in "the real world," and as such failure to exclude practical effects from the conversation only introduces confounding and bias into the discussion. This is the point which you (and many others here) seem to never seem to be able to get past. You're busy going "rights don't matter if you're dead" to actually have the conversation about the philosophical and policy impact of the variance in viewpoint. For the purposes of policy and philosophy regarding rights it is a given that either rights can be violated into nonexistence or negated into nonexistence.

Now that that is out of the way, it is important to note that rights form moral foundations, and not the inverse. They are both fundamental aspects of civil society, but morals follow rights. This is true regardless of a belief in inherent or communal rights, or in religion. "Thou shalt not kill," can be argued to follow either an inherent belief in the sanctity of life (inherent right to live) or to follow communal values as to the sanctity of life (community progression of species). Either way, the moral belief follows the right.

What all of this means is that variances in the belief about rights only affects policy and personal decisions. It does not, typically, have direct effects on daily life, insofar as practicalities are concerned. Therefore, a society with a belief in one's inherent right to personal autonomy is obligated to refrain from restricting that autonomy; alternatively, a belief in communal rights can change to not believe in a right to personal autonomy and begin to restricting the individual's choice "subjectively."

Additionally, somebody brought up the idea of morality in the context of rights. At this point, we indicated a belief that Talibani oppression of women is "immoral." Given a belief in communal rights, this is inconsistent, given that morality follows rights. In other words, the communal rights, as defined above, do not extend to women within that community. Therefore, it is "just," "correct," and "moral" for them to behave in the manner they do. In order to condemn them while retaining logical and moral consistency, one must also believe rights are inherent, so that the right to life, to not be raped, to not be disfigured (etc.) guides the morals of the community.

Now, in fairness, one could say that "I can condemn them for their behavior because I, personally believe it to be immoral, but I also believe in communal rights" and be consistent. What one cannot do, while retaining any consistency, is to say instead "I can condemn them for their behavior, and advocate our community act to force them to change, because I, personally believe it to be immoral, but I also believe in communal rights. What you have done in the latter case is decide to enforce the values of one community on another.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

This makes no sense. How is the larger community of the world trying to enforce it's communal rights on a subset any different than the Taliban enforcing it's communal rights?

As for the rest, there's nothing new there, and in fact it's just a regurgitation of what I've already posted in this thread. Except that I believe that the concept of inherent rights is silly, because even if that is your belief, beliefs come from man and so by definition they are all created by man and hence communal. I agree, however, that from a practical standpoint it doesn't really matter much, other than I would argue that people who view rights as communal are much more logical and reasonable about their rights than those who believe in inherent rights. Faith does all kinds of crazy things to ones ability to reason and be reasonable IMHO.

It is logically inconsistent. There is no "world community." What world communal values are there? What is the world communal religion? Etc, etc. Since there is no "world community," you're merely advocating that one group doimante and usurp another. Given that you claim to believe communities have the ability to make up their own rights, this is inconsistent.



Bullshit. You've been hand-waving away all these arguments because they "don't reflect reality." All of a sudden you're ok with an abstract discussion? This is not congruent with your posts in this thread to date.



Ad hominem.



Post hoc ergo propter hoc.



Ad hom, well poisoning.



I'll go with the staple counter against communal rights with a well-poison of my own, since logical fallacies seem to be your method of choice here: you believe the Holocaust, the Stalinist purges, and Mao's murder via neglect of 70 million people to be just. This is observably consistent with your beliefs given that 1) those communities decided those who were murdered had no rights, and 2) those countries had the "might" to enforce those "rights."


Alternatively, we could drop the fallacies and ad homs and you could actually state some reasoned beliefs to support why you think communal rights are superior besides "you people are silly and your religion/morals/beliefs R Retarded."

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

It makes sense if you are trying to be logically coherent. Our "communal rights" aren't the same as their "communal rights", but they are no better, or worse, if that is how you believe rights are derived, and your community has no business interfering with their community in that regard.

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

Ah yes, thanks for the reminder of why I really dislike discussing anything with you DFK!.

If you actually took time to read and understand what I've posted, instead of playing debate techniques, we'd get a lot farther. However, I've been reminded that you don't do that, ever. And frankly I'm not wasting my time with you.

This of course is why you support the communal rights of gays to marry? Or the communal rights of nudists to walk around everywhere naked?

I see, so it's my problem that I don't "understand" what you've written, and instead is malicious intent on my part? Ad hom.


You're seemingly not capable of refraining from utilizing logical fallacies on this issue, and take umbrage to me pointing that out. I really don't give a **** if you don't want to discuss this with me, but I'm not going to go without pointing out your inconsistency in case lurkers or other readers actually want to consider the various opinions.


I understand what you've written just fine, actually. That's how I was able to spot the fallacies contained therein. What you're written is, essentially: "I disagree with your opinion because I think it's stupid, and therefore I win." You haven't stated any logical reasons why someone would support communal rights.

As far as "debate tactics," that's what you **** do in a debate! You point out the improper conclusions and tactics of your counterpart.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

Strawman. You've ascribed to Vindicarre support for communal rights, where he hasn't claimed that viewpoint. He has instead pointed out the flaw in your position regarding communal rights.

However, in dealing with the strawman: the former is working its way through the community's decision-making process; the latter has been determined long-ago by the community's decision making process.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

Since I don't believe rights are communally derived, that's a statement without merit.
However, I absolutely support the rights of anyone to marry; as it is a contract formed with the state, anyone eligible to enter into contracts should not be hindered by those that believe a community created and doles out rights. I believe, and that's what you're obviously addressing, my beliefs, anyone can walk around clothed as the choose, but then again, I attempt to be logically coherent..

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

Right, but it's a larger community forcing it's beliefs on a smaller community.

And there is such a thing as a world community, regardless of how much you may dislike things like the UN.

Not at all. It is the highest organizational unit (community) that currently exists following its own "beliefs." Smaller organizational units (communities) have, through technology, central usurpation of control, and advocates of communal rights, been absorbed into that organization unit. Nevertheless, this is continuation of the strawman, deflecting from the core issue.



Strawman. I've never stated any beliefs in regards to the UN (that I'm aware) on this or the last 2 forum incarnations. I have ambivalent feelings about it.

Regardless, there is no observable world community. There is no global religion, culture, language, dress habit, diet, energy/resource policy, decision-making process, binding court/law, etc. Now, many individuals with statist beliefs are pushing for a creation of a world-community, but given the usurpation of autonomy this creates I have serious issues with that advocacy.

Don't confuse a world economy with a world culture/community. They are disparate.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

You seem to have difficulty distinguishing between sets and subsets.

You also have an interesting view of the UN.

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I'll assume there was no actual point to this and it was just a weak attempt at a "gotcha".

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

There are tons of shared values and cultural properties world-wide.

The more local the community, the narrower/more specific the similarities become. How similar does culture need to be to be defined as a community? What % of the population must contain these properties? These are SUBJECTIVE, and therefore not particularly applicable as a way to make a distinction.

I was merely pointing out the inconsistency of your statement.

Could you elaborate? I missed the part where I was inconsistent as well as the part where you pointed it out.

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

Inconsistent AND prone to overlooking details... you do know this is going in your performance appraisal, right?

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In time, this too shall pass.