The Glade 4.0

Well once you're old enough, you can just leave.

So it is acceptable to impose costs on others because they won't consent to an agreement you offer? If you walk into Sears and don't consent to any of their offered products its acceptable for them to impose a fee on you for not doing so?

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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

Well if Sears was massively big and you want to be bussed around instead of walking, for example to leave, then yes it's ok to charge you.

For the service of busing - sure. But that is a contractual relationship with consent on both sides. Not what you originally established with your "don't like it - move" position.

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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

The short answer, Rori, is that it ends with discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation being treated, as a legal matter, and viewed, as a cultural matter, as roughly the same as discrimination on the basis of race. The law will generally prohibit such discrimination for governmental entities and most publicly-offered businesses, while allowing it for private, members-only types of businesses, wholly private social groups (of course), and religious institutions. The one caveat to that, however, is that as memories of intense and widespread discrimination fade, libertarian arguments in favor of letting businesses do as they please will gain some ground. Culturally, although pockets of overt discrimination will always exist, they'll be relatively small and viewed by most Americans as morally reprehensible, while the more diffuse and subtle cultural biases in favor of traditional hetero relationships will gradually fade over the course of decades. Given simple demographics, though, they'll probably never go away entirely.

That's basically the story of the next 20-30 years, Rori. The "culture war" is basically decided on this point, though it will still take a while for everyone to realize and accept that.

Elmo:

No dice.

1. What moral framework are you working with? Cite your sources, inspirations, associated reading.

2. We're not discussing consent, assent, coercion, or rights, etc., until you explain your assumptions and starting point. I've stated mine. Within the framework of the Constitution and existing legal errata, X is Y. You are obviously operating within a different axiomatic set. So, kindly explain what that is. I'm asking you questions because your assumptions are not clear.

3. My opinion of what ought to be has little to do with this discussion, because it is what it is. States have rights. They have fewer rights than people and more rights than the Federal government, which should effectively have none. Current juridical theory and practice may differ on that point in the United States.

So, please, help me understand what you're trying to say. I'm willing to debate it.

RangerDave:

You're a nitwit. This stuff is trivial nonsense and bullshit. The government has very little business in regulating interpersonal contracts.

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Yeah, well, you're a crumb bum, so there! Hmph.

In any event, note that my response to Rori was simply a prediction of where the US is headed on the issue, not necessarily a full endorsement of said trajectory.

I think we could slide a lot further before it gets better, but it's entirely possible for the cultural progressives to over reach and the general populace to recoil, like they did slightly in the 80s and at other times.

Or maybe things are really that bad and this is the slide that takes us to the end. My destination and duty are the same either way.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

My argument is that inventing a new definition of "right" doesn't change the initial. I could say my scissors have rights and by that I mean that they have the freedom to open and close and act according to the laws of physics. That doesn't mean scissors now have rights - it means I used a term incorrectly. It has nothing to do with the Constitution or any framework of law whatsoever. You're talking from the point of view of law and I am not. I don't care if a law says "x is a right" it either was and is before the law said so or it wasn't and still isn't despite what the law says. Rights cannot exist for non moral actors. As I stated before you could just have used the word "power" for the powers that states have that are reserved to them.

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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

Elmarnieh:

You must tell me what this initial definition of the word right happens to be. You are making assumptions. Until you deliver that definition, this conversation goes nowhere.

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Rights only exist when there is a government or other powerful entity that backs them. Otherwise you have lawlessness and anarchy.

Elmarnieh only ever uses metaphysical mystical nonsense when describing "rights." He believes that they are something natural and inherent to the human -- and ONLY the human -- condition. No other species that might exist possesses them, they are somehow natural things that entitle you to their protection, and not connected to law at all. Nevermind that he cannot demonstrate that these rights exist, nor that they actually do anything. They're an issue of faith to him.

Of course, when discussing the natural universe, humans are just walking chemical reactions contained in a framework composed primarily of oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and calcium, along with a few other trace elements. There's no rights woven into our genetic code, there's nothing special about us that sets us apart and above any other creature on the planet. Rights are just an ethical-legal construct we made up along the road of our evolution. You have to ignore Elmo when he starts discussing his magical rights.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

The problem is that the word "rights" never was limited to only the meaning you are using. You are intentionally trying to limit the word "rights" to only the meaning that you want it to have so that other definitions have no term to describe them. This is simply attempting to win the argument by linguistic legalisms.

In point of fact, words acquire definitions based on how they are used. If a word is customarily used to mean a certain thing, that becomes one of its definitions. Prior definitions may still exist, but they have no seniority. No one has "invented" a new definition of rights; rather people in general actually use the term in ways that you don't like. If others in society customarily recognize the term as having that meaning (which they do) then it has that meaning.

What you are trying to do is invent special rules for language that affects your political philosophy so that you don't have to actually defend your positions. Then again, you've been doing this for a decade so it's hardly news.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Pennsylvania, if anyone was wondering.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Nope, rights are inherent in anything capable of sentience and sapience. Also as a moral philosophy just like any moral philosophy they aren't physical objects. Prove that anything intangible exists - love, charity, being afraid.

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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

Yes it was actually limited to that. When the concept of rights existed when the word was first applied in this way in philosophy it hadn't expanded at all passed that. If we want to ignore what words mean then people have a "right to not be offended" because hell the word means what people want it to mean and by that it always means whats good for them.

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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

Ok well the type you are probably referring to, natural rights, are just ideology and don't exist any more than the divine rights of kings.

The only relevant rights are ones that are protected by law enforcement and courts.

Elmo:

Give me your definition of rights. It's really difficult to argue for or against or even question a definition you refuse to deliver. Contextual evidence indicates you are actually somewhat inconsistent in your usages. So, give me your definition of rights.

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Whether people have a certain right has nothing to do with whether that definition of the word is correct. You are appealing to tradition, appealing to consequences, and engaging in special pleading for the word "rights". Many words have multiple definitions and uses; "Rights" is not special because of its political consequences.

It has nothing to do with what people "want"; one individual cannot simply pronounce a word to mean what he wants, nor do people get into groups to sit down and assign meanings. It matters how society customarily uses the word. The appropriate time to argue that rights should only be used in the narrow fashion you want was around 200 years ago. You're too late now.

To put it more clearly, if someone says "I have a right not to be offended", that sentence has an understandable meaning to me, and practically everyone else. That is a legitimate use of the word "rights". You understand it well enough. That does not mean I, or anyone else, agree with it. What you are trying to do is have it both ways; claim that the use of the word is wrong and the sentence therefore doesn't mean anything, and that some other nonexistent word should have been used in its place. The reason you are doing this, transparently, is because no such word exists and you are trying to take away the ability of other people to discuss the issue at all by meanings of linguistic rules-lawyering, forcing them to sue as-yet-unrecognized words to express themselves and look foolish in the process.

This is not unlike your "I don't have to prove rights exist; they're intangible." No, but like any other philosophy you do have to explain your starting assumptions. You also do not get to dictate that other people use your assumptions in conversation, especially when you won't explain them. You can just say "well I won't discuss anything if we can't agree on assumptions, and we won't be able to agree if everyone doesn't agree to mine, because I won't budge" but since you never want to explain them in detail, no one will ever agree to them, since what you are effectively doing is asking people to agree to hidden assumptions that you can alter at a whim any time the discussion doesn't go the way you want it.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Emotions are just biochemical brain reactions. They are not intangible.

So you're going to line up to ensure the rights of elephants, great apes, european magpies, and bottlenose dolphins are respected by humans, now? Because they're all capable of sentience and sapience in greater quantity than a 4-5 year old human child.

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Talya: topicality violation on magical rights fairies
Elmo: topicality violation on magical rights fairies

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

As an aside, the counter to this is that you're comparing a fully adult member of one species to a child of another.. but you still do have a point in regard to what Elmo is saying.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

That would be a valid logical counter to a statement that they have sapience equal to a human. (They certainly have sentience equal to a human.) But Elmo does afford human children his magical rights. Therefore, he should agree that several other terrestrial species also have those same rights.

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Repeat 1st Down!

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Hence the aside.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."