Do Natural Rights Exist Without Government ?

[Listening]

I'm still waiting for an example of an inalienable right---do you have one ?

I'll give you three.

Life, liberty and the pursiute of happiness.

I can take away all three----try again

You can try. But you better bring a big gun.

 

[dilloduck]

I'll give you three.

Life, liberty and the pursiute of happiness.

I can take away all three----try again

You can try. But you better bring a big gun.

Oh they will--- governments have lots of them and are trying to control everyone elses

 

[M.D. Rawlings]

...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....

In one sentence you nullified your argument. Understanding is a human event and thus no natural right would exist without the observer and chronicler. No where in nature is there a natural right and as animals that should be clear. If I believe in the Great Pumpkin there is no way you can prove me wrong, just as you hold on to your security blanket.

Indeed, it is a human event, but more to the point, sentience is an innate human attribute. We understand because that's the essence of what we are, the essence of what we do. I don't see how that nullifies my argument, and I don't see why I'd have to prove anything to you in order to assert my right to live, to freely exercise my fundamental liberties or to enjoy the fruits of my labor. I don't see how these basic aspects of the human condition are derived from government or how the innate proclivities, expressions or aspirations thereof disappear should some cabal or another physically oppress me in the state of nature or in the state of civil government.

MD sorry I never got to your eloquent post. But this is my precise point. There is no such thing as natural rights. Humans are born, live and die. There are no rights that can be fundamentally and innately attributed to us any more than snakes attribute rights to other snakes. We must first exist AND possess conscious faculties in order to articulate natural rights in a coherent fashion. Only then do they take on meaning; and the meaning ascribed is not absolute. It changes from era to era.

So what you're saying is that rights can only be apprehended or granted by sentient beings, and that rights would not exist in the absence of sentient beings. I have no argument with that. But why would a sentient being have to articulate them in order for them to exist? They either innately exist as a matter of the sentient being's existence or they don't. What I know is this: I would not that anyone threaten my life, violate my liberty or steal my property, and would use deadly counterforce in the face of any existential transgression of these things if possible. Otherwise, in the face of overwhelming force, I'd flee or submit, but only outwardly, not inwardly, to fight another day. The rest is just semantics.

Now the debate about what are natural rights takes on two tasks. A descriptive and prescriptive task. Descriptive is how our biological and innate structures gives rise to moral action. This has only begun to make progress since the 90s, likely having originated with Chomsky in linguistics during the 50s.

The prescriptive task has been a mostly fluid discussion and has sloshed from one side to the other for millennia. There is a range within most humans behave and this likely refers back to a biological component but is not determined solely by that. Our desire and abilities come into focus and help determine our actual action. This is what we are debating about.

But humans in the state of nature and in the state of civil government have always asserted them under one banner or another, variously, human dignities, human prerogatives, human entitlements or human rights. And as you suggest, and rightly so, their essence is the morality of self-preservation and empathy. Humans know the difference between killing a human being in self-defense and murdering a human being, even sociopaths know the difference. The rest is academic.

BTW, I touch on that here:

Uh, currently, the reigning opinion in the epistemological literature, due to recent advances in the neurological sciences, holds that along with a universal baseline of geometric-logistic predilections: humans are born with a universally innate moral code latently embedded in the structures and consequent biochemical processes of the human brain. The traditional, Aristotelian blank slate of Empiricism, at least in this respect, is dead.

Do Natural Rights Exist Without Government ? - Page 35 - US Message Board - Political Discussion Forum

The prescription is a question of ethics, not natural rights. Natural rights is a way of understanding prescriptive ethics, albeit a useful one. Nevertheless, it possesses no more inherent qualities than does any other passing thought. To be sure, I certainly agree to a universal norm and only then does moral action take on a sensible. That's why you think natural rights are inherent, because they must exist universally in order to carry weight. But don't mistake universal for inherent qualities. I doubt I need to explain them to you...

Semantics.

The essence of natural law and the inalienable natural rights of man thereof are the imperatives of the Golden Rule concerning the inherent, material exigencies and outcomes of the human condition, and the essence of the Golden Rule is universally recognized and adhered to at some level or another by all of mankind--in the state of nature and in the state of civil government.

See: Do Natural Rights Exist Without Government ? - Page 57 - US Message Board - Political Discussion Forum

While I appreciate the distinction you're making between universal qualities and inherent qualities, and especially your insight regarding the essence of natural law in accordance with the Anglo-American tradition--that's refreshing!--the rational forms and logical categories of human consciousness and moral decision would necessarily be inherently hardwired in order to be universal. In other words, its interesting that you grasp the fact that the mutual obligations of morality are the essence of natural law in the history of its exegesis, though you hold the latter to be a mere corollary in some sense: in nature, I don't know of any universal quality in any given category of thing that isn't also inherent to that category of thing.

Besides, the reason that all humans know that it's wrong to murder or to oppress or to steal from others is because they would not have anyone do these things to them. Hence, everyone knows where their rights end and the rights of others begin. Even the sociopath/psychopath knows this. He just doesn't care, as one bereft of moral shame and empathy, until these things are perpetrated on him.

I saw your other post as well.

My answer to that. . . .

Two women are trying to do the same thing well within their natural rights. One is "permitted" to do so. Why? Because it's well within her natural rights. The other is treated like a criminal. Why? The only difference between them is that one is in a position to wield the strictly artificial and clearly arbitrary trappings of a renegade bureaucracy, while the other is not. Everybody knows there's nothing morally reprehensible about what they both wish to do. The underlying fact remains: natural rights are not inalienable in the sense that they cannot be violated or suppressed; they're inalienable in the sense that they may not be violated or suppressed without dire consequences, including the use of deadly counterforce. But perhaps you'll wish to dig deeper into that.

 

[M.D. Rawlings]

I'm still waiting for an example of an inalienable right---do you have one ?

I'll give you three.

Life, liberty and the pursiute of happiness.

I can take away all three----try again

Then you'd have to flee or otherwise evade detection.

But natural rights are not inalienable because they cannot be violated or suppressed; they're inalienable because they may not be violated or suppressed without dire consequences, including the use of deadly counterforce.

Your point is a red herring.

See: http://www.usmessageboard.com/showthread.php?p=8888817#post8888817

 

[Listening]

Once again, I'll argue that if I take the position that we all have unalienable rights, then I have locked myself into a position where I must restrict government with regards to it's actions.

I then have to address the human conditions through other institutions.

 

[M.D. Rawlings]

By the way, dblack, when I talked about the quality of minds, I had yours in mind along with those of others, in case that wasn't clear. But only one or two others consistently make the right distinctions.

In my posts, make no mistake about it, I'm cognizant of the denotations and connotations of the various terms pertinent to this discussion and the context in which I use them: freedoms vs. liberties, civil rights vs. civil liberties, fundamental political rights versus additional "privileges," positive rights vs. negative rights and so on; human dignities, human prerogatives, innate rights, natural rights, inalienable rights and so on.

The primary thing I'm hoping you would see from my posts concerning your defense of natural rights it that they are natural. There's a reason natural law is called natural law. It's ultimately premised on the concrete and absolute imperatives of nature in general and on the state of human nature concerning the realities of natural human interaction. These things are absolute and universal, and these things are self-evident to those who are paying attention.

Make the concession that they are not absolute and universal, you concede all. You don't seem to appreciate why that's true. Why do you make that concession about something that would necessarily have to be concrete, universal and absolute in some sense?

It's the relativist, not the absolutist, dabbling in abstractions and esoteric conundrums regarding the order of things. No one escapes these absolutes, not even the relativist.

Another way of putting the logically indefensible position of the relativist, illustrated in my last post: if there are no absolutes then how can any two ideas be diametrically opposed? Is the relativist disagreeing with me or not? Think about that for awhile.

Classic Relativism is Ontological Irrationalism. The leading classical proponents of it in history have always known that. Their position is that in spite the fact that the laws of logic and moral decision are seemingly absolute and universal, they have no actuality beyond the confines of human consciousness.

But, objectively speaking, even if that were ultimately true, how does one prove that by making a distinction that makes no difference to us? The Classic relativist honesty responds by saying that he can't prove it because the universal rational forms and logical categories of human consciousness and moral decision do not permit two diametrically opposed ideas to be true at the same time, in the same way within the same frame reference.

The classical relativist believes this to be true about ultimate reality as a matter of dogma in spite of the universally absolute laws of logic and moral decision of human consciousness.

The typical relativist laymen of the post-modern era doesn't consciously hold his worldview as a matter of dogma. He thinks he can argue relativism logically, but the universal laws of logic do not provide any means of conciliating diametrically opposed ideas except by the processes of synthesis. The only consistently valid synthesis is one that removes the fallacious aspects of the seemingly opposed ideas, thereby producing a more comprehensive exegesis of things without contradiction. Opposing ideas that are entirely contradictory cannot be reconciled.

All the typical relativist laymen of the post-modern era is saying is that his worldview is . . . wait for . . . self-evident, something a classical relativist would never be caught dead saying as (1) he knows that's not true at all in the face of the universal laws of logic, and (2) he knows that utterly negates his contention regarding the ultimate nature of reality despite the imperatives of human consciousness.

Do you follow?

How can something that defies the universal laws of logic of human consciousness be axiomatic to human consciousness? No classical relativist is going utter the nonsense that such a thing could be self-evident, because it's obviously not logically self-evident in any way, shape or form to human consciousness.

Guys like Rabbi and G.T. have never consider any of these things or thought any of this through. They merely spout slogans as if they were arguments, while they regard the absolutist as being stupid because he fails to see that which is "self-evident" . . . but there's no such thing to see!

In any event, both the classical relativist, who understands that his worldview is held as a matter of dogma, not logic, and the post-modern relativist laymen, who unwitting mistakes the sloganeering of his dogma for logic and argument, are fooling themselves.

As Saint Paul puts it: "They hold the truth in unrighteousness."

The first principle of natural law is that reality must be absolute beyond human consciousness as well, given the fact that the exigencies and consequences of human conduct and interaction are apparently absolute as a matter of empirical demonstration.

Self-evident in terms of the rational forms and logical categories of human consciousness and moral decision.

Self-evident in terms of the real-world outcomes of human experience.

Hence, it is self-evident that there must be an absolute Consciousness that precedes nature: the natural law of God and the God of nature must be observed by government as these facts of reality precede government. It cannot be the other way around.

This formal political argument from first principles is not originated by, but merely reiterated by Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence: "We hold these principles to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain [not abstract or esoteric] rights, that among them are the right to life, to liberty and to the pursuit of happiness", which is Locke's triadic formulation of the right to be secure in one's life, in one's liberty and in one's private property.

And Locke's formulation is predicated on the centuries-old exigencies of human nature (the fact of sentient life and its sanctity), action (the fundamental expressions of sentient creatures) and self-preservation (the fundamental assets and aspirations of sentient creatures). We are sentient creatures of moral decision who can suffer and empathize, not vegetables, and the dichotomic correlate of reward-punishment inherently obtains. These facts of the human condition obviously precede the social constructs of government.

Ultimately, what are the inalienable natural rights of man?
.
Answer: the inherent attributes and objectives of what it means to be human in the state of nature, whether they be arbitrarily and artificially suppressed by tyrants in the state of civil government or not!

The relativists on this thread are not arguing over anything of any ontological or epistemological significance; they're quibbling over semantics. Clearly, these things are inherent, natural, concrete, absolute, universal and, therefore, inalienable in the sense that the may not be violated without provoking the dire consequences of resistance, up to and including the use of deadly counterforce.

Human beings are not rocks that can be picked up and thrown around willy-nilly. What rock ever picked up a club or a gun and put down its oppressor? Rocks have other abilities or properties in terms of chemistry, but that ain't one of them. Rocks aren't sentient.

Further, in terms of nature, what does the tyrant have that I don’t? Nothing. What he has, what he has usurped at the expense of others, are the social constructs of government power. In fact, the relativists on this thread argue as if the abuses of government power were perpetrated by some inanimate object, when in fact tyranny is merely the innate avarice of some sentient beings leverage against the interests of other sentient beings via the trappings of bureaucracy.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Declaring that inalienable rights exist does not make it so. It is a concept that was invented basically to contest the divine right of kings. We have no such rights.

Yet, somehow, declaring that they don't actually does make it so, despite the fact that multiple posters have actually provided evidence that natural rights exist, and not a single poster who disagrees has anything but bald assertion.

I reject the evidence submitted as errors in human perception and interpretation. What right cannot be taken away from us ?

Wrong question.

Which natural right can be granted to me by government, or any other entity? Does the government give me life? Free will? Speech? Until you can show me how my rights come from another source than nature your rejection of the evidence that they actually comes from nature makes as much sense as a Young Earth Creationist rejecting the evidence that the Earth is 4.5 billion years old. You might think you are clever, but all you really close minded.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

We all saw how well Marx's philosophy worked, yet you are still using him to try to prove that a system that actually outlasted it is an abject failure.

Do you also believe in alchemy?

#1 You have no clue what Marx's philosophy is except through generations removed propaganda.

#2 You have never read Marx. (I have studied and written on Marx).

#3 If you think Marx's philosophy was ever practiced, you'd be 100% wrong and keep in mind it's essential to know exactly what Marx's philosophy is in order to know if it was ever applied. Otherwise saying it didn't work is utterly incoherent.

#4 History Lesson: When Bolshevism and Leninism in its later forms took power in 1918, that was the absolute termination of any of Marxist thought. The rest was a struggle for power under a command economy, which was the same type of economy we had during WW2 and it had full employment.

#5 Get a clue and only after you have that clue make an assertion. It's a good principle to follow. Assertions based on multiple steps removed from the source is often a bad source; as are governments and powerful institutions that make declarations of anti-communism and anti-marxism it's usually propaganda, not fact.

#6 I wasn't quoting Marx for a reiteration of Marxism. I quoted him because he had a point! I don't believe much of Marx but he has got lots of points accurately and all of his intelligent critics admit this. I can quote you several such admissions. Read the point and make a response based on the point, don't abstract it out by an utter distraction of logical cowardice and completely bogus propaganda.

You just argued that Marx rejected the concept of free competition, were you lying? If not, your post makes less sense than your use of Marx to somehow prove that capitalism needs to be tightly regulated to actually work.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

The problem is... everyone has a different definition of natural rights

I secretly suspect that's because there aren't any but some people would very much like to have them. Name me one thing in nature that concerns itself with rights other than a human.

additionally we are still in the process of deciding what the natural state of man is. Wasn't long ago that homosexually was seen as not natural.

Why should anyone attempt to answer that question when you already stated that you reject anything that contradicts your opinion?

Nonetheless, ants concern themselves with the welfare of the hive, so do bees. Some might argue that this rpoves that the rights of the collective overiride the rights of the individual. That, however, would require one to acknowledge that rights do not come from government. Then we have the fact that many animals have a moral code, which is hard to explain if we insist that morality, and rights, come only from human society.

On the other hand, one can always chose to believe he is right, ignore all evidence to the contrary, and declare oneself the winner by default.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

I'm still waiting for an example of an inalienable right---do you have one ?

I'll give you three.

Life, liberty and the pursiute of happiness.

I can take away all three----try again

How are you going to take away the pursuit of happiness?

By the way, unalienable does not mean you cannot kill someone, it means you cannot transfer that right to someone else. Show me a single example in all of the thousands of years of human history, or even the billions of years the universe has existed, of anyone taking the life of one person and giving it to another one. All it will take is one, and you will conclusively prove that everyone who challenged you is an idiot.

 

[M.D. Rawlings]

That is factually inaccurate. The term Democracy is from the ancient Greek where all citizens had a vote to elect the leaders of their city states. The Athenian democracy was even more direct where all citizens voted on the laws themselves.

The Magna Carta written in 1215 is the basis for the Constitution and many of the concepts stem from there. The Constitution itself was written in 1787 and had been in effect for 60 years by the time Marx wrote his Communist Manifesto in 1848. Self governance was also in effect in France during most of that period too.

Correct, and the Assizes of Henry II before that, all forming the foundation of the Constitution, all acknowledging the fact of inalienable rights, well over six hundred years before the advent of the Founding Document.

Declaring that inalienable rights exist does not make it so. It is a concept that was invented basically to contest the divine right of kings. We have no such rights.

False. And I've written about this already. The idea of natural rights predates the Magna Carta and the Assize of Clarendon as well. The formal term from natural law proper is merely the latest historical iteration of it. It goes all the way back to the dawn of man. It goes back to Hammurabic Law, for crying out loud. These innate rights--essentially life, liberty and private property--have been called the human dignities, the human prerogatives, the human entitlements: that is, natural rights.

And the divine right of kings goes all the way back too under one banner or another. It is the inalienable right of revolt, extrapolated from Judeo-Christianity's ethical system thought relative to the abomination of statist idolatry vs. true religious liberty, that was finally and formally asserted in natural law proper against the supposed divine right of kings and theocracy, by the way: the assertion that God, not the state, is the Source and Guarantor of human rights, and, accordingly, no theocratic despot may legitimately declare himself to be the mediator between God and man. Kings have no absolute, divinely endowed right to rule. The political anthem that every man is the king of his own castle derives from the right of revolt in the face of despotic monarchies/theocracies. Hence, also, the separation of Church and State.

 

[gnarlylove]

You just argued that Marx rejected the concept of free competition, were you lying? If not, your post makes less sense than your use of Marx to somehow prove that capitalism needs to be tightly regulated to actually work.

I don't know what your reading but I doubt it's the post we're allegedly discussing. Marx was accurately describing the free competition, set to play, will lead to accumulations of capital that consider free competition a threat to further accumulation. There is nothing more to it. The part I quoted was not saying this is good, bad or anything. Marx is describing the historical fact that was true then and has only piled up evidence as it rings true today in quite obvious ways, most recently, Mccutcheon v FEC.

Insorfar as I was "using" Marx, I countered dblack's proposition that all we need is love and free markets (and small/no government). Free markets don't last and thus cannot be the final stage of development that only if we reached life would get as good as it can; they internally corrode freedom as powers use their leverage to receive special treatment or equal treatment as persons (i.e. corporations).

 

[Quantum Windbag]

You just argued that Marx rejected the concept of free competition, were you lying? If not, your post makes less sense than your use of Marx to somehow prove that capitalism needs to be tightly regulated to actually work.

I don't know what your reading but I doubt it's the post we're allegedly discussing. Marx was accurately describing the free competition, set to play, will lead to accumulations of capital that consider free competition a threat to further accumulation. There is nothing more to it. The part I quoted was not saying this is good, bad or anything. Marx is describing the historical fact that was true then and has only piled up evidence as it rings true today in quite obvious ways, most recently, Mccutcheon v FEC.

Insorfar as I was "using" Marx, I countered dblack's proposition that all we need is love and free markets (and small/no government). Free markets don't last and thus cannot be the final stage of development that only if we reached life would get as good as it can; they internally corrode freedom as powers use their leverage to receive special treatment or equal treatment as persons (i.e. corporations).

Yes, he was accurately describing government sanctioned crony capitalism, not free market capitalism. Your problem, and his, is that neither of you can admit you don't know what you are talking about.

 

[gnarlylove]

While I appreciate the distinction you're making between universal qualities and inherent qualities, and especially your insight regarding the essence of natural law in accordance with the Anglo-American tradition--that's refreshing!--the rational forms and logical categories of human consciousness and moral decision would necessarily be inherently hardwired in order to be universal. In other words, its interesting that you grasp the fact that the mutual obligations of morality are the essence of natural law in the history of its exegesis, though you hold the latter to be a mere corollary in some sense: in nature, I don't know of any universal quality in any given category of thing that isn't also inherent in that category of thing.

Besides, the reason that all humans know that its wrong to murder or to oppress or to steal from others is because they would not have anyone do these things to them. Hence, everyone knows where their rights end and the rights of others begin. Even the sociopath/psychopath knows this. He just doesn't care, as one who's bereft of moral shame and empathy, until these things are perpetrated on him.

Excellent point. It forces me to clarify my own position in a meaningful way and that rarely happens on here. Many thanks.

My reply is that I'm not saying human beings don't have these hard wired. I've said indeed there is a biological component that pervades all culture. You can call it the golden rule but we don't really know much about this topic; though good work has been done by John Mikhail on this subject.

So I have no trouble saying these rights exist just like flesh does on our face. But they do not exist outside of our species. The point of this code or natural rights being a portion of biology shows that these rights depend on fundamental recognition of each other as the same and that cannot be done easily without a brain, particularly a human brain. It doesn't ensure we act on them but it sure plays a role. Hence, to say lions afford other lions rights is not intelligible because lions do not have such cognitive capacities. Only when the human brain arrives on the scene do we see natural rights taking form.

So these natural rights are universal among the human species and do not exist outside the human species. Thus, if we died, so does natural rights as we present them. I guess this was the gist of my "they aren't intrinsic" bit. I don't know if this contradicts or supports your belief but it seems axiomatic, really, once we understand natural rights for what they are. A highly useful description in our current age, even a "true" description, but one that does not extend beyond the human species or into the metaphysical realm we so often wish to ascribe such rights and "truths."

Many harp on natural rights as the only way to discuss relations between human beings but it's fundamentally skewed, forgoing other important relations, namely our responsibilities if we are to maintain a decent planet and society. I see "rights" being used for ill as often as good. Moreover I hardly consider rights as important to my understanding of ethics and morality because they come from aligning yourself with self-evident and intuitive principles--one need not understand the concept natural rights in order to do this--and the doing is the only important part. Rights are abstractions of action and are thus subject to misconstrual or worse, misapplication. I don't advocate the getting rid of natural rights but we certainly need to expand it to make sense: to include economic rights.

 

[gnarlylove]

Yes, he was accurately describing government sanctioned crony capitalism, not free market capitalism. Your problem, and his, is that neither of you can admit you don't know what you are talking about.

This isn't about crony capitalism.

Competitive free markets always result in winners and losers. Yes?

Yes.

Eventually the winners accumulate ever greater sums. Yes?

Yes.

This accumulation of capital inevitably views free markets as a problem: it neither favors nor disfavors them. They want it to favor them and so their capital is applied to political power. Make sense?

Yes.

Free markets always lead to this type of influence. Either you don't think there are winners and losers in competitive free markets or I just don't know.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Yes, he was accurately describing government sanctioned crony capitalism, not free market capitalism. Your problem, and his, is that neither of you can admit you don't know what you are talking about.

This isn't about crony capitalism.

Competitive free markets always result in winners and losers. Yes?

Yes.

Eventually the winners accumulate ever greater sums. Yes?

Yes.

This accumulation of capital inevitably views free markets as a problem: it neither favors nor disfavors them. They want it to favor them and so their capital is applied to political power. Make sense?

Yes.

Free markets always lead to this type of influence. Either you don't think there are winners and losers in competitive free markets or I just don't know.

If you want a lesson in economics and why Marx was wrong examine every country that implemented his ideas. If all you want to do is prove you don't know what you are talking about, go talk to someone else.

 

[dblack]

Marx RESPONDS to dblack:
the absurdity of considering free competition as being the final development of human liberty...

LOL... can't same I'm interested in engaging here, but the thought of Karl responding to me personally gave me a tickle. I used to have a fair amount of fun going to the underground communist party meetings when I was in high school. Let's hear it for the 'masses'!

Anyway, gnarly, I'm not interested in anyone's ideas about the 'final development' of human anything. "Live and let live" will do us fine.

 

[Foxfyre]

Yes, he was accurately describing government sanctioned crony capitalism, not free market capitalism. Your problem, and his, is that neither of you can admit you don't know what you are talking about.

This isn't about crony capitalism.

Competitive free markets always result in winners and losers. Yes?

Yes.

Eventually the winners accumulate ever greater sums. Yes?

Yes.

This accumulation of capital inevitably views free markets as a problem: it neither favors nor disfavors them. They want it to favor them and so their capital is applied to political power. Make sense?

Yes.

Free markets always lead to this type of influence. Either you don't think there are winners and losers in competitive free markets or I just don't know.

You are wrong. Free markets do not of themselves create winners and losers IF AND WHEN our unalienable rights are recognized and protected. The free market allows the free man and/or woman to pursue his/her ambitions, dreams, hopes, wildest imagination. Those who are wise enough to develop or choose the right product in the right market at the right price will prosper. Those who do not will not. But failure in a free market is never the fault or failing of the free market itself, but rather the choices made by those who engage in it.

If we define recognition of unalienable and/or natural rights as non interference with that which requires no participation or contribution by others, a free market within that principle becomes one of the pillar foundations of that principle. The only role of government should be enforcement of sufficient laws/regulation to prevent one person from violating the unalienable rights of another.

 

[gnarlylove]

dblack, glad it tickled you. It tickled me hehe

Fox, I like your efforts but again I'm going to have to call you out. So free markets don't enable humans to garner wealth? Strange. Pretty sure you're not living in the same world I am.

 

[dcraelin]

You are free to believe whatever you want, just don't expect the world to change simply because you believe something that isn't true.

So You dont think Carlin agreed with Jefferson...perhaps not,.... I'm not sure I do entirely...but I do agree with him in the picture below....and I agree with Hobbes that life without government would be nasty brutish and short .

http://www.usmessageboard.com/membe...ture5998-jefferson-on-mtrushmore-w-quotes.jpg

I don't pretend to know what Carlin believed, I just can see that his actions and his words lead to a different conclusion.

By the way, it always amuses me when I meet a person that thinks quoting other people is actually debating. Debating is defending a position through argument, not quoting. If you read back through the thread you will see that, with one notable exception, you are the only person that thinks quoting other people is debating. Come back when you have enough confidence in your beliefs to actually defend them yourself.

Jefferson said it more eloquently than I ever could. Carlin came right to the point, rights are an idea. I wouldnt have said CUTE idea....perhaps noble idea....but ideas differ among different people.....and are only instituted among men by government.