This is the great problem in our country today: even many of our more intelligent citizens are no longer capable of logic or reason, merely rationalizations expressed with a formidable vocabulary and a superficial sheen of logic… “truthiness”, as it’s been called. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. That’s very well-illustrated in this comment section.

At any rate, very disappointing, since the analysis up to the final point had been very good.

The final comparison is fallacious. Slaves were not free to vote out their masters and vote in ones more favorable to their views. Slaves were not free to improve their situation by their own efforts. Slaves were not in a position where, if they rose up and overthrew their masters, larger corporate masters whom they could not see, could not vote out, could not make appeal to, and sometimes even could find out the identity of, and from whom they did not have the constitutional protections that they had from their current masters were waiting to simply step in and take control of them.

Then please stop abusing the term “Orwellian”.

I am not. What you said right now just convinced me even more.

Sure there is. Libertarians do not tolerate any evil, and know it is unnecessary for a functioning and healthy society.

Except the evil of Nazis, or Gaddafi or Saddam Hussein. At that time there is silence. But the evils of the US government are not tolerated, they are trumpeted. But when the US government acts against these big evils some stupid people start getting very noisy. But they are not reflective enough to realize that they in opposing those that oppose a big evil they are giving a shot in the arm to evil. I already explained that. So you cannot feign ignorance. You can willfully ignore. Which is what you are doing. And by doing so you bring shame to yourself.

And just like I anticipated you brushed off the Declaration of Independence as a ‘piece of paper’. You are not intelligent enough to realize the great truths represented in that document.

To ask for proof here is an insult to common sense.

To repeat a claim after being asked for proof, without providing proof, is avoiding substantiating your argument. Either your argument is true or not. I know it is true, and I suspect you do as well, which may be why you didn’t provide any proof of it.

To claim “even a blockhead knows” is not an argument. Would you like to try again to prove your argument?

Compare that to the relatively event-free life of a private citizen without that burden of responsibility.

lol

As for Orwell, I have taken the trouble to read him yes.

Then please stop abusing the term “Orwellian”.

It is the lesser of the two evils argument and there is no logical reasons that libertarians cannot make it.

Sure there is. Libertarians do not tolerate any evil, and know it is unnecessary for a functioning and healthy society.

If you read the US declaration of Independence, you will see this argument too.

Ever heard of Lysander Spooner?

That document is still the most influential pro-liberty document in the world today, so try not to push it aside.

It’s just a piece of paper. It’s not law, and it has no value in court. It does nothing to protect anyone’s life or property. No American today can exercise his liberty under the declaration, and your beloved President regularly ignores the will of the people, and would never tolerate any right of the people to rebel and replace their government.

Still waiting for you to accept the debate invitation.

I don’t understand what you mean by self-evident. If you cannot prove it exists, then does it really exist?

Can you substantiate this charge with some proof?

Even a blockhead knows that Hitler is worse than FDR and Saddah Hussien is worse than Bush and Gaddafi is worse than Obama. Calling both parties tyrants is an insult to common intelligence. One side has a self-declared strong man, the other has the leader of a free-world selected according to proper procedures of the free country. To ask for proof here is an insult to common sense.

I am not an American, and the President is not under the influence of every individual American.

The US president is under the direct and indirect influence of not just every American, but more or less every person. Even the mob that burns the American flag in the remote village in tribal Pakistan has some degree of influence over the US president. He is no one’s puppet to be sure. But he is not insulated from the happenings of the world. He is part of it, he impacts it and is impacted by it. Compare that to the relatively event-free life of a private citizen without that burden of responsibility.

As for Orwell, I have taken the trouble to read him yes.

This is a lesser of two evils. Libertarians don’t make lesser of two evils arguments.

It is the lesser of the two evils argument and there is no logical reasons that libertarians cannot make it. If you read the US declaration of Independence, you will see this argument too. That document is still the most influential pro-liberty document in the world today, so try not to push it aside.

(Wildberry, if consistent opposition to the use of aggressive force against non-aggressive people is too “ideological” )for you I am sorryblockquote>

It is this issue (emphasis added) that become ideological. Casting the net too widely destroys any relevant distinctions that could be made between one act and another.

General rules are easy to state, but difficult to follow in every case, unless you intend to cut a wide, indiscriminant swath through the subject.

Would you agree that the issue of human rights and how they arise as a social convention begins with the ethical question?

If so, then I would assert that ethics like all human rights are a human device, just as animal rights from the particular view of a given species, is an “animal device”. This means that a given society of humans may establish an ethical principle with which you personally disagree, but rules and/or laws based on that principle would be “legitimate” within the frame of reference of that particular society and any given time. Therefore, the concept of jurisdiction becomes relevant.

If we attempt to arrive at a universal principle of ethics, we can postulate something like self-ownership as the self-evident axiom establishing a fundamental right. Even this axiom however, is not itself absolute, as ethical distinctions as to its application remain regarding the “ownership” rights between a mother and her child, and how these rights may evolve over time.

Yet as with all rights, if they are asserted, they must be successfully defended against challenges to violate them; else they cannot be considered “actual” rights. This does not mean “legitimate in your opinion”, but rather rights which operate in a society in a way that is consistent with all such rights, including those rights that you and I may view as legitimate.

Regardless of how we view slavery from our ethical frameworks today (which we seem to share), the facts are that at one time the right to own slaves was asserted and successfully defended as a property right, backed by law and government enforcement authority. It is the contest over the ethics of that position you have been discussing here, in my opinion; otherwise known as the Civil War. To be defensible, the majority of society must view the principle of chattel slavery was within acceptable social ethics. One attempt to resolve this conflict was to divide the jurisdiction such that this would cease to be a conflict within the resulting jurisdictions, demarcated at the Mason-Dixon line, as I recall.

If government is a function established and supported by the governed, then for a law to stand, it must remain within the boundaries of accepted ethical norms. As you point out, government can only support rights “we already have”. I think more accurately, government can only support rights that are consented to by the majority of society that is within the jurisdiction of that government system, i.e. within the ethical boundaries of the governed.

Slavery did not maintain that status, and the outcome was the same as it would be for any law which finds itself outside the boundaries of socially acceptable ethical principles within the jurisdiction of laws of that society. It is the struggle between those who were advocating a fundamental ethical principle of self-ownership and those who held that their property rights were a superior principle, that framed the conflict over slavery as an American institution.

This struggle, in which Lincoln was a prominent actor, eventually resulted in the resolution of the supremacy of the principle of self-ownership, and slavery ceased to be a property right that could be successfully defended. Therefore, it was abolished. Not to minimize the size and scope of that struggle, but isn’t this, in essence, what actually happened?

If you agree with this view and description of the subject (abolition of slavery and human rights) in which you are obviously an expert, then wouldn’t you agree that this principle of assertion and defense of rights is also applicable in general, such that we can say that all human rights are a human device, and arise when they are asserted and successfully defended? When they are unsuccessfully defended, they cease to be rights?

In the course of defending an asserted right, the first line of defense is “might makes right”. Civilized societies tend abandon this method of conflict resolution quickly. The second line of defense is the ethical principles of a society which bind the group to act in defense of the individual in the service of preserving this principle. A right that is not defended is no right at all. The third line of defense is a code of laws which seeks to reconcile these principles with the specific application of specific facts to the principles, and establishing rules and procedures for enforcement. Finally, there is an economic policy defense, which establishes principles of human interaction in the service of producing the intended social consequences of market operations. This is the essence, in my view, of the work of Mises and Hayek.

Given this view, I quibble with your use of the word “discover”. This implies that government has an independent motive to act as the result of a “discovery”, when in fact, at least ideally, government acts to enforce rights that are established in society long before that society organized that government for their own benefit. Such use misstates the proper cause and effect of self-government. To put it succinctly, society is the cause of government, not the other way around. Government is not the cause of rights, nor does it discover that from which it was originally conceived.

Respectfully,

Sir, I do not claim to get any pleasure from keeping you on point. But that is interesting, because earlier you said:
This is fun..

If what you want to achieve here is to have me follow you off on a tangent creating and defending fallacious arguments for you then yes, it is a losing effort, I will not do it and I commend you for recognizing that. I appreciate your civility as well.
Goodbye

I understand what you are saying here, but it is a very dangerous argument.

During the civil war people were conscripted (thus enslaved) in order to fight to stop slavery (assuming war was actually about stopping slavery). If I refuse to be made a slave by the local tyrant does that really make me “as guilty as” the tyrant we are fighting?

It is certainly reasonable to say “Gaddafi is a much worse tyrant than Obama”, but it seems that you are saying people should not oppose anything but the very worst tyrannies.

The second point is this: the outcome of past interventions falsifies the notion that if Obama’s hands were not tied the world would be better off for his interventions. Read the history of American interventions throughout the world over the past 60 years, all of which were carried out for very good causes, of course. You can read about mass murder, torture, unlawful imprisonment, civilian massacres and ever more hatred for America and for “capitalism”, which America’s actions abroad supposedly represent. William Blum and even Naomi Klien (among many others) tell of the terror and evil that comes with American interventions abroad… although they think capitalism is the cause of the evil they at least get their factual information right.

There is no shortage of “real tyrants” to oppose (even in the good old USA), but there is certainly a shortage of people who are willing to oppose tyranny even when the tyranny is convenient for them or when their country is the one perpetrating/benefiting from it.

(Wildberry, if consistent opposition to the use of aggressive force against non-aggressive people is too “ideological” for you I am sorry)

Can you prove natural law (I assume you mean “natural rights”) exists?