Natural Rights versus Legal Rights

^ It is not a law of nature that murderers are put in jail, it is a law of man. But I still believe that murderers should be jailed. Same principle.

Really, this entire thing is semantics. I think we all technically agree with each other.

edited 3rd Aug '11 1:58:56 PM by feotakahari

Yes, probably, but legal rights give to much power to the State in that a State could legally abolish all rights.

Sure they could. And then they'd be a shitty state and sooner or later have an uprising or a foreign intervention on their hands.

Secretist, you're putting the cart before the horse here. The State is not some entity created magically out of nowhere for the purpose of oppressing you. It is the representation of the collective will of its people to form a governing body. The State and the People are not diametrically opposed factions in perpetual warfare; they are one and the same thing.

You cannot avoid government in human affairs. When people huddled around a campfire in the African savannah, they had a leader who told them how to survive; this leader was chosen by collective will of the tribe, in whatever form that took. In any group of people, someone is always in charge.

edited 3rd Aug '11 2:28:50 PM by Fighteer

Though practically speaking, I don't think the state is ever all the people.

Sometimes, it's Louis XIV!

Oh, no. But it doesn't matter what I, specifically, believe in unless I can convince society as a whole. Just the same, I would oppose something. I believe morality is relative, but I have morals. I simply acknowledge that I alone cannot hope to exercise any sense of control over humanity as a generality.

But the UDHR uses a moral universalist tone, how does that affect a relativist like yourself?

It can presume its morals to be correct all it wants, but it's only a piece of paper if society does not implement its ideas. I may very well agree with things in it, but that doesn't matter in the wider scope of things if a large majority of people don't agree as well. Claim that there is a definite right and wrong all you like, but history continually proves that to be wrong.

"We have no rights but those we are willing to kill and die for."

I do like reading Max Stirner from time to time. Egoist anarchism is a very logical system. Pournelle chart closeup◊. I'm interested in forming a union of egoists.

The Ego and His/Its Own He thought rights were spooks of the mind.

edited 6th Aug '11 12:10:11 PM by secretist

If you like Stirner, you should track down down The Myth of Natural Rights by L.A. Rollins; it's kinda a 20th/21st Century addendum to Ego .

And when you're done with that, chase down Natural Law, or Don't Put a Rubber on Your Willy by Robert Anton Wilson.

edited 8th Aug '11 12:38:17 AM by MRDA1981