The Glade 4.0

That makes no sense at all. If the government is the one establishing the rights, what exactly is it that regulates them from infringing rights? The government regulates itself? What if they don't?

You're trying to have it both ways here.



Make up your mind. Do they not exist, or do they only exist insofar as you can kill to protect them?



Why do we need the government to do it? Why can't we have whatever it is that mysteriously regulates the government establish those rights? Wouldn't that make more sense? What if the government says "well, we aren't going to give you any rights, so therefore there are no rights to infringe, and therefore there's no need to regulate us!"



You might be on to something here, but what you posted before this makes no sense.

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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."

So a man alone on an island has no right to speech or religion?

What force of nature intercedes his actions when he attempts to undertake those rights?

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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

Monte:

Your base premise is flawed. Man existed before societies, and societies before governments. They were formed willingly by the individuals because of a like mindedness of belief, seeking to protect similar things which they knew they already had with a greater ease. The human mind, conditioned as it is, for better or worse, is constructed naturally with the inherent recognition of property. The right to hold property as an absolute is the foundational right, and the steward of all others. The word "property" was coined from a necessity to describe the containment of a thing which one man owns, and holds total privilege over, in exclusion from others. Property, by literal execution of it's function, implies ownership. But why do men believe in rights at all? The answer, easily enough, is exclusive ownership of man's own mind. Only you have the natural privilege of your own thoughts and feelings. No one else may peek a glimpse save the barest you might grant them of your own will. We are built that way, regardless of the manner of our engineering, and as such our thoughts must conform to our basic making. Extensions of a man's acknowledgement of his own basic ownership of his thoughts flow logically into ownership in general, and given that property is the original right from which all of our other rights logically stem, your right to property can't have logical conflict with mine. What's mine is mine and what's yours is yours. From your thoughts, to your labor, to your value, to your land. If government can, as a manner of it's construction, deny a man who he is in the workings of his own mind, then you are right. If government cannot, then you are wrong.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

The same force of nature that intercedes when someone else in the world tries to infringe on another's "rights."

Rights are an internal moral construct, right and wrong are what you believe they are, and that belief doesn't have to matter to anyone else unless they want it to or you force them to.

This is awesome. We have people here in this thread advocating "Might makes right" but when questioned in other areas, these same people claim otherwise.

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Darksiege
Traveller, Calé, Whisperer
Lead me not into temptation; for I know a shortcut

Yes rights are moral constructs that are inherent in humans, I don't believe anyone said that they couldn't be infringed. Monte is claiming they don't exist without government so I simply ask him to show what stops them in nature.

I would have thought this would have been easy enough to understand for most readers of the board.

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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

It was, for most.

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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

You're making the definitive statement that moral relativism is correct, just so we're clear. As such, you believe that, for example, the Rwandan genocide was justified.

I just want to be sure you're comfortable with the extension of your beliefs.

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

Based on what has been said in this thread....

Yes Rwandan genocide is justified: They had the strength to do it.
Killing off the native Americans was justified: They had the strength to do it.
Iraq is justified: We have the strength to do it.
Andrea Yates was justified: She had the strength to do it.

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Darksiege
Traveller, Calé, Whisperer
Lead me not into temptation; for I know a shortcut

Exactly.

And see, here's the thing: I'm not trying to say one way or another that moral relativism is wrong, I'm merely trying to emphasize the correct logical extension of that belief.

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

I'm not sure what your point is, Elmo.

Do you think that any behavior one is capable of exhibiting is a right?

One guy kills another. What right, in nature, is violated? Animals do it all the time, don't they? It takes some kind of governance to establish order if that behavior is to be discouraged.

"Might makes right" is only an acknowledgment of fact, it's not a moral philosophy - "justified", if you will - unless you want it to be. Even if you don't want it to be, unless someone 'mightier' than the Hutu put a stop to it (thus reestablishing the adage, by the way), it's like I said, just an acknowledgment of the facts.

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In time, this too shall pass.

Unless you are also stating that, by necessity or definition, it takes a Government to perform that governance, I'd be inclined to agree. I believe people should govern themselves first and foremost.

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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

No it isn't. The human mind is constructed naturally with the inherent desire to take, and to keep. That's not quite the same quality. The concept of "that is yours and not mine" is a concept that came as a benefit to collective protection of rights. In a state of nature, what is yours is only yours so long as you can defend it yourself. There are no consequences for using violence to take it from you.



I appreciate that the philosophy you cling to says that. I simply disagree. There is no right to property outside of collective society. Without society, that right does not exist. It is a thing (a good thing) of our imagining. It is not an inherent quality of being a human being. If it is, please show me the "property rights" gene in our genetic code.





That can be taken away, as well. With ease, really.



Government is not an entity. It is a construct of man, as are rights.

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It feels like all the people who want limited government really just want government limited to Republicans.
---The Daily Show

Yes, but we have ample evidence that significant numbers of people will not.

The real issue isn't whether rights are inherent or not; it largely doesn't matter. They aren't like laws of physics; not respecting them has no inherent consequences. Calling someone who doesn't respect your rights immoral is not likely to be much of a deterrent to them, especially when there's no benefit in being moral beyond consistency with the moral system of inherent rights for its own sake.

The real issue is what sort of government allows the most citizens to exercise the most rights, regardless of where they come from.

If all the government does is say "ok, we're going to stop those guys from the other side of the mountain from coming over here and stabbing you to death" that's an improvment over when those guys could come stab you. If the government then says "Ok, while we're at it, we're going to make sure you can freely express your opinion on how to go about stopping those assholes, no matter what it is." That's better still.

The real problem occurs when those people that don't really believe the stabby guys actually want to stab anyone start claiming that we shouldn't do anything to stop them, and the people who are afraid of getting stabbed want them to not say that. When one of those groups starts telling the other one they can't have the right they care about.. we have trouble.

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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."

Not only will people not govern themselves, but when it becomes clear that some won't bother with morality in a state of anarchy the individual is faced with a simple and brutal reality. Either they take what they want with force, or they die at the hands of those who will.

Please don't take my position on rights as a condemnation of the concept. I certainly support the concept of collective establishment and protection of rights for all people. I will not, however, delude myself into thinking that the right to free speech is simply another inherent quality of being human. It isn't. It never has been. It's something we as a collective society established and have defended.

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It feels like all the people who want limited government really just want government limited to Republicans.
---The Daily Show

That's a different position. Soceity establishing rights is not the same as the government doing it.

That's what we've done in this country; we established a government to protect rights that we, as a society, have decided we have. It really doesn't matter if we just decided we have them or they are inherent, but it is not the same thing as government establishing them. That's why the government cannot jsut change any right any time it wants.

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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."

Just an aside and without regard to your position, those last two responses of yours Monte are significantly better than your normal posting style.

Thank you.

DE - I'm using Society as something interchangeable with government. Really, Government is a part of our Society. Without it, we don't have much of a society. Our society includes the collective establishment and defense of these things we call "rights". Without our society (and government, or government, whatever) those rights are just so much vapor.

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It feels like all the people who want limited government really just want government limited to Republicans.
---The Daily Show

People won't govern themselves tha its why societies throughout history have formed governments to...

Oh I've gone cross-eyed.

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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

Government is part of society, yes, but you can't use them interchangeably and expect to be understood. What you're saying doesn't make any sense when you do it that way. A government is part of society but it is not the same thing.

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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."

Some people will govern themselves. They form governments to deal with those who won't. The problem arises mainly in determining who falls into what group, especially since many people govern themselves well in some ways and poorly in others.

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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."

You know, I was going to argue with you in sound bites, and take each sentence as a separate statement. The I read the whole thing, and, on the whole, I agree.
The only argument I'll offer is to:

Not respecting the rights of myself and those I love does carry inherent consequences. As I'm sure they do for you and yours.


There you go again conflating government with society, and the collective with individuals.
See, I'm not a part of your "society" even though I grew up within 45 minutes of you. I'm not part of your "collective", despite the fact that our mothers were the one's who paid the bills on a lower middle-class income. It might be that my mother chose to work to be preeminent in her field, despite no one granting her privilege, cash, or credit for her work. Maybe it's because I never had someone to write a check in an attempt to give me the opportunities my mother couldn't afford. It might be my reality is one that is derived from my own work and choices, and yours is derived from blaming grandpa with the check book. You are responsible for all you have done in what is rapidly approaching 40 years on this planet. As much as you choose to blame and curse those who have it better, what really belittles you, is the fact that you haven't been able to do it yourself. I don't blame you for your youthful experiences; maybe if if Grandpa had just given just a little bit more...

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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

Those are consequences, yes, but they aren't inherent to the rights themselves. They're dependant on your ability to inflict them, or that of society to do so on your behalf.

Even if you had no rights, inherent, legal, or otherwise, that really wouldn't stop you from retaliating against a perceived wrong. Similarly, when you get to be 85 years old, violating your rights might carry a lot less consequences from you personally than right now, or at least less likelyhood of them being successfully inflicted.

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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."

I would argue that government is an essential part of human society in the present age.

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It feels like all the people who want limited government really just want government limited to Republicans.
---The Daily Show

That's lovely. It's also not what you've been arguing, at all. So either your arguments are lousy, or this line is a complete non sequitur.

And, for the record, you typically argue many things. And rarely do so at all convincingly.

In this single sentence, however, I can agree with you. I don't think you'd agree with me, however, because I would stipulate that the essentialness of government in our modern, western society is limited to just a few things; defense of our sovereignty, dealing with foreign nations on our behalf, and offering law enforcement geared toward defending the rights we have as outlined in the Constitution.

Beyond that, government is not only non-essential, it is often harmful.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades