Ender_Sai posted: Which is subjectivity dressed as objectivity, flyer. I may have those rights here, but will I have them if I opt to move to GuanZhou in GuangDong province? E_S
Ender_Sai posted: The state can happily chose to violate them at any point, Jediflyer. It's an illusion to suggest otherwise. Look to nationalisation as proof of the fickle nature of property rights. Look to the death penalty for proof the state can violate the right to life. And look to autocracy for proof the state can take away all three. E_S
Declaration of Arbroath posted: But from these countless evils we have been set free, by the help of Him Who though He afflicts yet heals and restores, by our most tireless Prince, King and Lord, the Lord Robert. He, that his people and his heritage might be delivered out of the hands of our enemies, met toil and fatigue, hunger and peril, like another Macabaeus or Joshua and bore them cheerfully. Him, too, divine providence, his right of succession according to or laws and customs which we shall maintain to the death, and the due consent and assent of us all have made our Prince and King. To him, as to the man by whom salvation has been wrought unto our people, we are bound both by law and by his merits that our freedom may be still maintained, and by him, come what may, we mean to stand. Yet if he should give up what he has begun, and agree to make us or our kingdom subject to the King of England or the English, we should exert ourselves at once to drive him out as our enemy and a subverter of his own rights and ours, and make some other man who was well able to defend us our King; for, as long as but a hundred of us remain alive, never will we on any conditions be brought under English rule. It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours that we are fighting, but for freedom -- for that alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself.
Ender_Sai posted: Kimball please outline for me the extent of freedom of a) the landed gentry and b) the serfs under them at the time of the Declaration. Include in your outline a rough outline of how free the everyday serf was. Many thanks, old boy.
Ender_Sai posted: Of course it does, because I never ask pointed questions ever. Ever. If these rights were indeed so preexisting and so universal - and, dare I say, natural - why was there no evidence of it at the time the Declaration was made? If these rights really do preexist, where do they come from? What good is this right if there's no capacity to organise this? What is wrong with you fairy-dust believers in that none of you can tell me how you're not confusing "ability to do" with "a right to"
Kimball_Kinnison posted: They exist as the natural state for man. If you want the religious view (which is by no means necessary), then they are granted by a higher power (the Judeo-Christian God, or whatever other deity you choose). However, even in a secular view they are preexisting as a state in nature (like the six forms of atomic spin, or valence levels of electrons - where do those come from? ).
I prefer this freedom, which seems to me simple and clear: we are all at a table together, deciding which rules to adopt, free from any vague constraints, half-remembered myths, anonymous patriarchal texts and murky concepts of nature. If I propose something you do not like, tell me why it is not practical, or harms somebody, or is counter to some other useful rule; but don't tell me it offends the universe.
Ender_Sai posted:As for jus cogens, how do you think the concept arose - God whispering in Raphel Lemkin's ear, or consensus? It came about from consensus; the philosophical content goes back to Hugo De Groetius, arguably, but it was only after the Holocaust that people said, "this is bad, it ought be above the state."
