WH prepares for 2 possible SCOTUS vacsFollow

To be fair, receiving anonymous donations and free removal of unwanted calcium deposits is pretty rad.

Not protecting those rights is not subversion, it's tyranny. How does tyranny remove inherent rights?

Reagan once said, in lament, that our natural, inalienable rights are now considered to be a dispensation from government. People in this country seem to forget, and some people in the world have never been fortunate enough to experience, that this government of the people, by the people, for the people does not dispense rights to the people. The people have those rights and government is to acknowledge and protect them in a free country.

Your view of the world is touchingly naive for a Republican. It's very cute. I understand see how you get all this girl attention now.

Are you trying to refer to me living in Canada or something? Here, I have an idea, why don't you let us know what these "inherent rights" are and how you know they are actually rights?

Quick, you are.

The strain is probably killing you.

I won't fall in to an obvious ploy. As it relates to this thread, however, Man has the right to speak his mind. Citizens of this country, protected by its constitution and the enforcement there of, can exercise that right. Groups of them enjoy the same protections.

That's fine, but why is that a right?

Groups only enjoy protection through the individuals within it. We don't protect groups, we protect people and their right to form groups, which is different.

Largely because it is the natural state of Man.

But there in lies the paradox you find yourself on the fuzzy side of. As a group is made up of individuals with rights, being a part of that group being one of them, the group has inherent rights, which we do, in fact, protect.

Then you're making a meaningless distinction, as a group cannot exist without people. If a group exists, it has rights. Like I said, paradox, only in this case we know which came first.

Yeah, I sort of thought I should just ignore that, oh well.

Moe care to answer the other half of my post? Elaborate on what you meant.

Edited, Feb 5th 2010 11:45am by Xsarus

It ignores them with impunity. If these rights are a facet of the Universe then justice is not. Maybe you do not believe it is and I misapprehended you. Maybe you merely believe that the Universe, humans in particular, is constructed in a way that these ethics are those that are those that cause the least amount of harm to humans. To assume we have found it is incredibly arrogant, but that there is a best system is at least somewhat logical. I would contend that humans are too adaptable for one to fit all possible cultures and that additional technologies and unanticipated situations would always force constant changes to be optimal, and, indeed, that the human mind is incapable of noodling it out precisely, but that would be an interesting debate, at least.

ETA: No, you're religious. Tiresome.



Is it? Then why isn't there consensus on ethics, and why has it taken man thousands of years of civlisation to come up with the ones you believe are innate? it's a lot of struggle for something meant to come naturally, whatever that means.

Edited, Feb 5th 2010 5:59pm by Kavekk

Hardly. I abhor religious people. The very concept is anathemic to to the idea of faith.

Actually, I did. If it was too subtle for you, I can spell it out a bit more clearly:

You can't reason the irrational. Irrational is not a pejorative. Faith is not rational. Neither is freedom, for that matter. Society would be a simpler place to live if we were held under the thumb of an omnipotent state. Fortunately for us, in America, we have been given the foundation of an understanding that freedom is better for the individual, and the individual has given the government the position of authority.