Do Natural Rights Exist Without Government ?

[M.D. Rawlings]

Establishing What the Inalienable Rights of Man Are

G.T. et. al., the immediate origin of natural rights is, uh, you know, nature, and the God of nature is the ultimate origin.

While one need not appeal to God to demonstrate their actuality and inviolability, as I have already shown, Quantum, one must never forget the fact of their ultimate origin. One does not prove what innate rights are with syllogisms predicated on ability or free will. Natural rights are not synonymous to ability and they are not predicated on ability. The matter is not abstract in the sense that the know-nothings would have it, but it's not that simple either. The origin and the essence of the natural rights of man have been established for centuries. The concrete concerns on which they are immediately predicated and their identity have been established for centuries.

Disregard the implications regarding the ultimate origin of natural rights, you will end up making indefensible arguments regarding their nature and identity.

Please, stop trying to reinvent the wheel. It only confuses matters.

Natural rights are immediately predicated on the same real-world, dichotomic dynamics that divulge their exact identity: light and transient transgressions-prolonged and existential transgressions and its correlate initial force-defensive force.

Period. End of discussion. They are real-world concerns. They are natural. They are concrete. They are material. They are absolute. Hence, they are identified and demonstrated accordingly. They are not identified and demonstrated with syllogisms predicated on secondary concerns.

I have the ability to wiggle my toes. So what?

I could lose that ability should some paralysis strike me. The point here is that when one argues natural rights on the basis of innate abilities, one fallaciously implies that they are subject to negation by the whims of other agents. They are not inalienable in the sense that they cannot (ability) be suppressed or violated; they are inalienable in the sense that they may not (consent) be suppressed or violated without dire consequences, which may include the use deadly force.

In the absence of violation, we have peace; in the presence of violation, war.

In other words, they are identified and demonstrated on the basis of the material impact that human actions have on the material concerns of human life, liberty and property. Period.

So much for the silly red herrings of (1) the abstractions of social constructs and (2) the notion that natural rights are not inalienable because they can be suppressed or violated on the fallacious basis of ability.

RABBI, G.T. ARE YOU PAYING ATTENTION?

DO YOU GET THE POINT OF THE FOLLOWING NOW?

Your claim that the mutual obligations of morality are not pertinent to understanding the essence of natural rights, particularly as they are carried over from the state of nature and expressed in the state of civil government, is false and irrational. Obviously, the understanding of this goes to their parameters, RABBI, one of the several things that accordingly you supposedly cannot be determined by sentient beings--for crying out loud! And that is self-evident too, given the necessities of the government's regulatory and judicial authority regarding the legitimate extent of civil liberties in the face of conflicting interests.

How about you stop wasting our time with your obviously ill-considered and fallacious claims as you think to preemptively negate the manifestly essential premises of natural law.

Your ignorance and closed-minded, intellectual bigotry are not the stuff of real arguments.

___________________________________________

Edit: So much for the silly red herrings of (1) the abstractions of social constructs and (2) the notion that natural rights are not inalienable because they can be suppressed or violated on the fallacious basis of ability.

 

[dilloduck]

Wow---still talking about something that doesn't exist except in the fairy tales that men tell themselves ?

 

[dblack]

Wow---still talking about something that doesn't exist except in the fairy tales that men tell themselves ?

Yep. Some people just can't get past childish notions like liberty and justice.

 

[M.D. Rawlings]

Wow---still talking about something that doesn't exist except in the fairy tales that men tell themselves ?

Right. Try to refute my posts in the above.

Or more to the point, deal with this everyday reality, the one I will share with Sallow again momentarily. . . .

Tell that to the man with the business end of loaded gun pointed at your head should you be caught with your hand in the cookie jar, and see how far your talk about his right to stop you is not real prior to the abstractions of social constructs.

Bang, bang.

 

[beagle9]

Wow---still talking about something that doesn't exist except in the fairy tales that men tell themselves ?

Yep. Some people just can't get past childish notions like liberty and justice.

When one is born or while one is still in the womb, he or she has the right to live of course, and it is up to the parent and not the government to insure that the right is therefore nurished and protected be it from pregnancy on up to leaving the home finally. The only time the government should get involved, is if the right is being taken away in an unjust manor or it is abused by the parent who may be attempting to take away that right in which the child would have been kept safe with or was born with because of the protection for the life in which he or she is expected to have (or) that he or she has been born with afterwards all due to that protection in which had allowed the birth along with the upbringing that comes next for years afterwards to materialize.

When the child grows older, and he or she leaves the home, and then the care of their parents, well the right to live, and to seek out liberty and happyness does still exist along with many other rights that are also granted along the way. Many rights either born with or are next granted unto us afterwards, do always coinside with each other always. The rights in which we are of course naturally born with, therefore gives us the ability to think for ourselves also, and that is another natural born right that we have been born with as well. Once born we begin a constant journey of increasing our rights, and we begin seeking out those for whom we can trust in the protection of those rights. We then choose them as our protectors of course, and they are to do this only, and they are to do no more unless we ask for them to, yet all the while believing that we are good and capable of these things in which we should control for ourselves always. Wouldn't you agree ?

 

[dblack]

Wow---still talking about something that doesn't exist except in the fairy tales that men tell themselves ?

Yep. Some people just can't get past childish notions like liberty and justice.

When one is born or while one is still in the womb, he or she has the right to live of course, and it is up to the parent and not the government to insure that the right is therefore nurished and protected be it from pregnancy on up to leaving the home finally. The only time the government should get involved, is if the right is being taken away in an unjust manor or it is abused by the parent who may be attempting to take away that right in which the child would have been kept safe with or was born with because of the protection for the life in which he or she is expected to have (or) that he or she has been born with afterwards all due to that protection in which had allowed the birth along with the upbringing that comes next for years afterwards to materialize.

When the child grows older, and he or she leaves the home, and then the care of their parents, well the right to live, and to seek out liberty and happyness does still exist along with many other rights that are also granted along the way. Many rights either born with or are next granted unto us afterwards, do always coinside with each other always. The rights in which we are of course naturally born with, therefore gives us the ability to think for ourselves also, and that is another natural born right that we have been born with as well. Once born we begin a constant journey of increasing our rights, and we begin seeking out those for whom we can trust in the protection of those rights. We then choose them as our protectors of course, and they are to do this only, and they are to do no more unless we ask for them to, yet all the while believing that we are good and capable of these things in which we should control for ourselves always. Wouldn't you agree ?

Uh... what?

 

[dilloduck]

Wow---still talking about something that doesn't exist except in the fairy tales that men tell themselves ?

Right. Try to refute my posts in the above.

Or more to the point, deal with this everyday reality, the one I will share with Sallow again momentarily. . . .

Tell that to the man with the business end of loaded gun pointed at your head should you be caught with your hand in the cookie jar, and see how far your talk about his right to stop you is not real prior to the abstractions of social constructs.

Bang, bang.

actions are real---rights are invented

 

[M.D. Rawlings]

Nothing you cited is natural.

"Rights" by their very nature are a human construct.

Yeah. That's only like the 100th time that claim has been made on this thread. Heard that. Dealt with that. Got the T-shirt.

You're making a bald assertion that is actually contingent upon a relativistic-materialistic, metaphysical presupposition.

What none of you on this thread have ever done is provide a rational justification for that claim. There it is again suspended in midair.

What is the argument which actually demonstrates that the realities of human conduct and interaction are not governed by any absolute, universal imperatives at some level of being or another?

Here's an easier one for you: how does one distinguish the formal difference between civil liberties and civil rights? Note: the question is not what they are, respectively, though one must begin with the what, but how one distinguishes the former from the latter.

There's no argument really.

You got that right, in the sense that you didn't provide any argument, really, let alone answer the only question that would demonstrate that all rights are nothing more than social constructs, assuming your answer is coherently rational and backed by some discernible empirical data--either historical or biological.

Once again: What is the argument which actually demonstrates that the realities of human conduct and interaction are not governed by any absolute, universal imperatives at some level of being or another?

You guys have to rely on esoteric constructs which have little or no meaning in the real world.

Further Proof Regarding the Facts of Natural Law


False. That's you guys and you guys alone all day long. You just think that's true because you've never gotten beyond the red herrings of relativism, and you think the strawmen arguments proffered by others on this thread are the actual stuff of natural law.

We're not talking about the social constructs of political science: civil rights or civil liberties. The latter, by the way, are those readily and universally recognized innate rights as translated from nature into the political conventions of civil government.

How does one discern the difference between the civil liberties predicated on innate rights and the civil rights or privileges of the collective under the rule of law in the state of civil government?

Gee wiz. If what you claim were true that would be a monumental task of the inscrutable kind. But fortunately for you and me, your claim is bunk, so it's a relatively simple matter.

We are talking about innate rights, hence, those that pertain life, to the fundamentals of human action and to property, not the theoretical delegations or arrangements of the institutional powers of political science relative to the state of civil government.

"Rights" aren't even universal and differ between human cultures.

Stop it. You know better. The inherent, universal traits of humanity are self-evident: thought, volition and the related material exigencies and aspirations of self-preservation. We're not vegetables. We're sentient beings. Once again, with regard to these elemental facts of human physiology and consciousness, the elementary innate rights of man pertain to life, to the fundamentals of human action and to property. They are concrete, not esoteric. Your claim is risible. Absurd. Ridiculous. Once again, see above.

You're walking down the street, and someone jumps you out of nowhere and beats on your ass. . . .

Every human being on this planet knows that you have but three alternative courses of action: fight, flee or submit. Every human being on this planet knows that what is being threatened/violated is (1) life, (2) the fundamentals of human action and/or (3) property. Every human being on this planet knows that the violation of these things is wrong, because every human being on this planet knows that the violation of these things constitutes existential transgressions they would not have perpetrated on them. Every regime that exists or has ever existed, including authoritarian and totalitarian regimes, recognize three categories of criminality and punish those who engage in them: murder, the various forms of criminal subjugation, and theft, which correlate with the innate rights of life, liberty and property, which pertain to life, to the fundamentals of human action and to property.

These three things and their respective aspects are universally apprehended.

Say it isn't so again now, and know that you're talking like a fool.

RABBI, G.T., ARE YOU PAYING ATTENTION?

Even despotic psychopaths like Hitler, Stalin, Mao and others apprehend this truth as such always justify their atrocities by first declaring some group or another to be something less than human, renegade citizens or non-citizens (the timeless caveats), who may, therefore, be murdered, enslaved or reeducated. There's always a pretext relative to these three things.

Totalitarian or authoritarian regimes, or institutions akin to such regimes within societies that are otherwise generally freer have always existed. All persons under the sway of the former are decidedly less free, but these three categories of rights and their respective aspects obviously persist and strain against the chains that bind the overtly "subversive" expressions of them therein.

These basic, innate functions of sentient beings have always been known to man, and have been referred to, variously, as the prerogatives of man, the dignities of man or the rights of man, not to be confused with any of the politically abstract accommodations made for them by government, at whatever level, or with any of the additional political privileges afforded by government. They are centuries old, predating the modern expression of them from the Enlightenment in terms of natural law proper, and their historical actuality sure as hell predates the retarded, post-modern, relativistic construct that there exists no universally absolute moral principles or innate rights.

Tell that to the man with the business end of loaded gun pointed at your head should you be caught with your hand in the cookie jar, and see how far your talk about his right to stop you is not real prior to the abstractions of social constructs. Bang, bang.

Your sloganeering is not a material or ontological assertion, let alone an argument, against the fact of these things; you're quibbling over semantics!

Call them prerogatives, dignities, rights, inherent inclinations, the fundamental exigencies and expressions of sentient beings: they clearly are not and have never been the stuff of mere social constructs, niceties, accommodations, or the civil rights afforded directly by government.

The fact that this country had slavery absolutely destroys your argument. Even more so that this country participated in torture in the modern age.

You can't even coherently state (1) what you're implying and you're utterly oblivious to (2) the inherent contradiction of your claim.

First, you're implying the same goofy idea as that asserted by gnarlylove: that no rights can be inalienable because all rights, whether they be innate or not, can be infringed. The term inalienable as it pertains to rights doesn't carry any such connotation and never has.

They are inalienable because, as opposed to abstract political rights, they inherently and benignly adhere to the nature of the creature as incontrovertibly demonstrated in the above and, therefore, the violation of them constitutes a transgression that is subject to being put down by deadly force, legitimately and justly so. In the state of nature their violation is an act of war, and in the state of civil government their violation is a crime.

Hence, enslavement and torture in the absence of due provocation are existential transgressions of inalienable rights: acts of war or crimes.

And the Founders knew from the beginning that slavery was a peculiar and destabilizing institution, as it has always been throughout history in the face of the imperatives of human nature, and hoped it could be peacefully and incrementally abolished before tensions escalated to an armed civil war.

Oops.

Second, if, according to you, there are no absolutes of any kind, except the absolute that there are no absolutes, and, therefore, according you, the absolute that there are no absolutes is necessarily false, inherently contradictory and self-negating. . . . Oh, never mind.

*crickets chirping*

But let's pretend for a moment that your contention does not absolutely violate the laws of logic--the law of identity, the law of contradiction and the law of excluded middle--and note the absurdity of a relativist talking about slavery and torture as if these things weren't merely the allocation of human resources and sport.

*crickets chirping*

The point will fly over the heads of some.

Governments are human constructs set up to protect human rights.

That's right. You can't maintain a rationally consistent argument in defense of an absurdity, as you cannot evade the innate and universal imperatives of the rational forms and logical categories of human consciousness and moral decision, can you?

They're natural, innate, absolute . . . inescapable.

Congratulations. You've finally awoken from your fantasy, for whether you realize or not, you just conceded that the materially innate exigencies and aspirations of humanity, including rights, precede the abstract constructs of civil government.

But wait a minute!

But even that construct doesn't work out all the time. If right were "natural"? That simply wouldn't be the case.

Back to fantasyland. You just contradicted yourself in the space of four short sentences.

HEY, RABBI, G.T., ARE YOU PAYING ATTENTION? DO YOU GET THE RELEVANCE OF MY PREVIOUS DECONSTRUCTION OF RELATIVISM, WHICH YOU POOH-POOHED, NOW?

The only ones dabbling in abstractions and esoteric claptrap are those going on about social constructs in the face of real-world scenarios and consequences.

BTW, as a matter of preempting any more nonsense about my posts being paragraphs of empty rhetoric, let's get something straight: any braying jackass can write slogans parading as arguments. Thoroughly deconstructing such crap from first principles and examples routinely takes more space. While the basic facts of the matter before us are self-evident, the reasons they are self-evident in the face of the convoluted machinations of the falsehoods that would obscure them are more complex.

 

[dilloduck]

Universal imperatives ?

 

[dblack]

Wow---still talking about something that doesn't exist except in the fairy tales that men tell themselves ?

Right. Try to refute my posts in the above.

Or more to the point, deal with this everyday reality, the one I will share with Sallow again momentarily. . . .

Tell that to the man with the business end of loaded gun pointed at your head should you be caught with your hand in the cookie jar, and see how far your talk about his right to stop you is not real prior to the abstractions of social constructs.

Bang, bang.

actions are real---rights are invented

I'll try again. This whole thread is just stupid equivocation. Civil rights, those freedoms protected by government, are indeed "invented", in the sense that they are designated by the state. But the inalienable freedoms, those we are empowered to exercise as an innate property of volition and consciousness, exist whether they are protected or not. It's just a matter of how you're defining "rights".

 

[dilloduck]

Right. Try to refute my posts in the above.

Or more to the point, deal with this everyday reality, the one I will share with Sallow again momentarily. . . .

Tell that to the man with the business end of loaded gun pointed at your head should you be caught with your hand in the cookie jar, and see how far your talk about his right to stop you is not real prior to the abstractions of social constructs.

Bang, bang.

actions are real---rights are invented

I'll try again. This whole thread is just stupid equivocation. Civil rights, those freedoms protected by government, are indeed "invented", in the sense that they are designated by the state. But the inalienable freedoms, those we are empowered to exercise as an innate property of volition and consciousness, exist whether they are protected or not. It's just a matter of how you're defining "rights".

rights and freedoms are the same thing ?

 

[M.D. Rawlings]

Wow---still talking about something that doesn't exist except in the fairy tales that men tell themselves ?

Right. Try to refute my posts in the above.

Or more to the point, deal with this everyday reality, the one I will share with Sallow again momentarily. . . .

Tell that to the man with the business end of loaded gun pointed at your head should you be caught with your hand in the cookie jar, and see how far your talk about his right to stop you is not real prior to the abstractions of social constructs.

Bang, bang.

actions are real---rights are invented

Semantics.

Here's your actual argument in the face of the facts of the imperatives of self-preservation: there are no absolutes, except the absolute that there are no absolutes; hence, the absolute that there are no absolutes is necessarily false.

I don't need to refute you. You refute yourself.

You're dismissed.

Next.

 

[dblack]

actions are real---rights are invented

I'll try again. This whole thread is just stupid equivocation. Civil rights, those freedoms protected by government, are indeed "invented", in the sense that they are designated by the state. But the inalienable freedoms, those we are empowered to exercise as an innate property of volition and consciousness, exist whether they are protected or not. It's just a matter of how you're defining "rights".

rights and freedoms are the same thing ?

The "inalienable rights" that Jefferson was referring to are just freedoms, yes.

 

[dilloduck]

Right. Try to refute my posts in the above.

Or more to the point, deal with this everyday reality, the one I will share with Sallow again momentarily. . . .

Tell that to the man with the business end of loaded gun pointed at your head should you be caught with your hand in the cookie jar, and see how far your talk about his right to stop you is not real prior to the abstractions of social constructs.

Bang, bang.

actions are real---rights are invented

Semantics.

Here's your actual argument in the face of the facts of the imperatives of self-preservation: there are no absolutes, except the absolute that there are no absolutes; hence, the absolute that there are no absolutes is necessarily false.

I don't need to refute you. You refute yourself.

You're dismissed.

Next.

what's with the imperative BS ? Is this Star Trek ?

We are free to do whatever we like.

 

[M.D. Rawlings]

Right. Try to refute my posts in the above.

Or more to the point, deal with this everyday reality, the one I will share with Sallow again momentarily. . . .

Tell that to the man with the business end of loaded gun pointed at your head should you be caught with your hand in the cookie jar, and see how far your talk about his right to stop you is not real prior to the abstractions of social constructs.

Bang, bang.

actions are real---rights are invented

I'll try again. This whole thread is just stupid equivocation. Civil rights, those freedoms protected by government, are indeed "invented", in the sense that they are designated by the state. But the inalienable freedoms, those we are empowered to exercise as an innate property of volition and consciousness, exist whether they are protected or not. It's just a matter of how you're defining "rights".

False, dblack, on all counts. Sophomoric gibberish.

Natural rights go to the imperatives of the human condition.

Freedoms go to ability relative to free will.

The Is-Ought dichotomy.

Further, your talk about civil rights is that of the unlearned laymen.

There is a formal distinction between civil rights (which pertain to freedoms/privileges) and civil liberties, which pertain to the accommodations made by civil government in the face of the preceding natural rights of man that compel them. Civil liberties trump civil rights. You’ve been unwittingly brainwashed by the political motifs of Marxism.

It would be funny, if it weren't so tragic, given your child-like attempts to affirm inalienable rights.

But you won't be taught or corrected, will you?

 

[M.D. Rawlings]

actions are real---rights are invented

Semantics.

Here's your actual argument in the face of the facts of the imperatives of self-preservation: there are no absolutes, except the absolute that there are no absolutes; hence, the absolute that there are no absolutes is necessarily false.

I don't need to refute you. You refute yourself.

You're dismissed.

Next.

what's with the imperative BS ? Is this Star Trek ?

We are free to do whatever we like.

Never said we weren't. But violate the imperatives, i.e., cross the constraints of Ought, and watch what happens. You shall have to fight, flee or submit. There's your freedom.

Next?

 

[dblack]

actions are real---rights are invented

I'll try again. This whole thread is just stupid equivocation. Civil rights, those freedoms protected by government, are indeed "invented", in the sense that they are designated by the state. But the inalienable freedoms, those we are empowered to exercise as an innate property of volition and consciousness, exist whether they are protected or not. It's just a matter of how you're defining "rights".

False, dblack, on all counts. Sophomoric gibberish.

Natural rights go to the imperatives of the human condition.

Did I say anything about "natural" rights?

Further, your talk about civil rights is that of the unlearned laymen.

Yes, if I was "learned" I'd have access to asinine insults for rhetoric, rather than rational argument.

 

[dilloduck]

Semantics.

Here's your actual argument in the face of the facts of the imperatives of self-preservation: there are no absolutes, except the absolute that there are no absolutes; hence, the absolute that there are no absolutes is necessarily false.

I don't need to refute you. You refute yourself.

You're dismissed.

Next.

what's with the imperative BS ? Is this Star Trek ?

We are free to do whatever we like.

Never said we weren't. But violate the imperatives, i.e., cross the constraints of Ought, and watch what happens. You shall have to fight, flee or submit. There's your freedom.

Next?

LOL I never said we were free from dealing with the natural consequences of being alive.

 

[M.D. Rawlings]

I'll try again. This whole thread is just stupid equivocation. Civil rights, those freedoms protected by government, are indeed "invented", in the sense that they are designated by the state. But the inalienable freedoms, those we are empowered to exercise as an innate property of volition and consciousness, exist whether they are protected or not. It's just a matter of how you're defining "rights".

rights and freedoms are the same thing ?

The "inalienable rights" that Jefferson was referring to are just freedoms, yes.

False, unadulterated crap.

 

[M.D. Rawlings]

Still at I see. If any such thing as a 'natural right' existed I think you would have found it by now ...

Is that really how you think of abstract concepts like freedom and rights? Like physical quantities that will be 'found'? Or are you just playing the demagogue for rhetorical flourish?

Of course, midcan is wrong as he can be, given the centuries-old understanding of their existence, their nature and their actual substance, but you are just as wrong as he.

The essence of innate/natural rights is not abstract, dblack, and that's why Rabbi ran circles around you. You have conceded the central fact of natural rights to that which is utterly false.

And that's why you incessantly contradict yourself.

First, you utter the absurdity that innate rights are inalienable . . . yet not sacrosanct.

Now, you utter the absurdity that they are natural (something that would necessarily be concrete in some sense) . . . yet abstract.

But you won't be taught, dblack, because in spite of my demonstration of the tangible essence of natural rights, you can't imagine how that could be so, though it be nothing more complex than the material exigencies of self-preservation and the aspirations of self-interest that every swinging Dick and Jane on the planet necessarily exerts every friggin' day of their lives. Self-evident.

Monkey see no truth, hear no truth, speak no truth.

The more you talk, the more apparent it becomes that you don't hold to any real belief in inalienable natural rights at all. You don't grasp the substance of their apprehension at all.

Are you still holding onto the delusion that the sociopolitical philosophy and affirmations expressed in the Declaration of Independence are the brainchild of Jefferson? Or that the common term of art pursuit of happiness was first uttered by Jefferson? It precedes him by decades and pertains to private property (the ownership of one's own self, one's aspirations and one's material assets, for starters). Concrete. Not abstract. Are you still thinking that the central dichotomy of natural law proper, light and transient transgressions-prolonged and existential transgressions, and its correlate initial force-defensive force, were first advanced by Jefferson? The inalienable right of revolt, Jefferson? LOL! These things and many more that pertain to the absolutes of the human condition have been observed since the dawn of man, and the modern expressions of them in the above from the Enlightenment were common knowledge before Jefferson was born.

Are you still implying that Jefferson was just being cute? Pickin' a fight with the Brits? Waxing poetic about things he didn't really believe to be rationally self-evident or materially absolute? Are you still confounding the distinction between the essential facets of democracy and republicanism? The distinction between freedoms and innate rights? Between civil rights and civil liberties? In other words, are you still making things up about that which you know next to nothing about? Still pretending that your opinions about what Jefferson meant is the cat's meow when what Jefferson meant is known to be, as a matter of academically and empirically demonstrable fact, diametrically opposed to your thesis?

And all the while the Declaration of Independence is merely Jefferson's abbreviated reiteration of Locke's Two Treatises of Civil Government and Sydney's Discourses Concerning Government. Make no mistake about it, they believed every word of it to be gospel, to be rationally self-evident and materially absolute . . . and so did Hamilton's most ferocious nemesis, namely, Jefferson.

You're trying to reinvent the wheel as you foolishly spite the demonstration of the natural and, therefore, concrete realities of inalienable rights in terms of the material consequences of human conduct and interaction, and the subsequent exegesis of that demonstration in the historical cannon of natural law written by intellectual giants.