And it is thus guilty of the begs the question fallacy.
It’s what the labels represent. You do not care for Liberty it seems and you are rejecting a profoundly powerful tool - the argument from morality. You have logical objections to that of the status quo then? Just preferences? lol
3. Natural Law versus Positive Law
If, then, the natural law is discovered by reason from “the basic inclinations of human nature … absolute, immutable, and of universal validity for all times and places,” it follows that the natural law provides an objective set of ethical norms by which to gauge human actions at any time or place.[37] The natural law is, in essence, a profoundly “radical” ethic, for it holds the existing status quo, which might grossly violate natural law, up to the unsparing and unyielding light of reason. In the realm of politics or State action, the natural law presents man with a set of norms which may well be radically critical of existing positive law imposed by the State. At this point, we need only stress that the very existence of a natural law discoverable by reason is a potentially powerful threat to the status quo and a standing reproach to the reign of blindly traditional custom or the arbitrary will of the State apparatus.
In fact, the legal principles of any society can be established in three alternate ways: (a) by following the traditional custom of the tribe or community; (b) by obeying the arbitrary, ad hoc will of those who rule the State apparatus; or (c) by the use of man’s reason in discovering the natural law – in short, by slavish conformity to custom, by arbitrary whim, or by use of man’s reason. These are essentially the only possible ways for establishing positive law. Here we may simply affirm that the latter method is at once the most appropriate for man at his most nobly and fully human, and the most potentially “revolutionary” vis-à-vis any given status quo.
Another common charge is that natural-law theorists differ among themselves, and that therefore all natural-law theories must be discarded. This charge comes with peculiar ill grace when it comes, as it often does, from utilitarian economists. For economics has been a notoriously contentious science – and yet few people advocate tossing all economics therefore into the discard. Furthermore, difference of opinion is no excuse for discarding all sides to a dispute; the responsible person is the one who uses his reason to examine the various contentions and make up his own mind.[22] He does not simply say a priori, “a plague on all your houses!” The fact of man’s reason does not mean that error is impossible. Even such “hard” sciences as physics and chemistry have had their errors and their fervent disputes.[23] No man is omniscient or infallible – a law, by the way, of man’s nature.
No, it doesn’t. I objected; with this - and you haven’t exactly addressed it.
You make no distinction between “rights” and privileges?
You don’t make a distinct between negative rights and positive rights?
How on earth do you determine what “rights” society will be “expected to be respected and enforced.” - Vote?! You choose not reason to arrive at what constitutes rights, but the mob?
These appeals to “society” are growing tiresome.
“They don’t exist without force to back them up” - We have been over this already. Why are you muddying the waters between normative rights, and defacto / legal rights?
It is indeed puzzling that so many modern philosophers should sniff at the very term “nature” as an injection of mysticism and the supernatural. An apple, let fall, will drop to the ground; this we all observe and acknowledge to be in the nature of the apple (as well as the world in general). Two atoms of hydrogen combined with one of oxygen will yield one molecule of water – behavior that is uniquely in the nature of hydrogen, oxygen, and water. There is nothing arcane or mystical about such observations. Why then cavil at the concept of “nature”? The world, in fact, consists of a myriad number of observable things, or entities. This is surely an observable fact. Since the world does not consist of one homogenous thing or entity alone, it follows that each one of these different things possesses differing attributes; otherwise they would all be the same thing. But if A, B, C, etc., have different attributes, it follows immediately that they have different natures.[18][19] It also follows that when these various things meet and interact, a specifically delimitable and definable result will occur. In short, specific, delimitable causes will have specific delimitable effects.[20]
The observable behavior of each of these entities is the law of their natures, and this law includes what happens as a result of the interactions. The complex that we may build up of these laws may be termed the structure of natural law. What is “mystical” about that?[21]
In the field of purely physical laws, this concept will usually differ from modern positivistic terminology only on high philosophical levels; applied to man, however, the concept is far more controversial. And yet, if apples and stones and roses each have their specific natures, is man the only entity, the only being, that cannot have one? And if man does have a nature, why cannot it too be open to rational observation and reflection? If all things have natures, then surely man’s nature is open to inspection; the current brusque rejection of the concept of the nature of man is therefore arbitrary and a priori.
The owner is not their to impart rules for the use of his property. Thus the relationship of the officer must be put to question. It is much like the example Rothbard gives:
An even starker version of the “lifeboat” case — and one where there is no question of someone’s prior ownership of the lifeboat — occurs when (to cite an example mentioned by Professor Eric Mack) two shipwrecked men are battling over a plank that can only support one. Does the concept of aggression and property right apply even here? Yes, for again, our homestead principle of property right comes into play: i.e., the first person who reaches the plank “owns” it for the occasion, and the second person throwing him off is at the very least a violator of the former’s property and perhaps also liable for prosecution for an act of murder. Again, neither of the persons may use force against the other in preventing the latter from reaching the plank, for this would be an act of physical aggression against his person.[4]
It may well be objected to our theory as follows: that a theory of property rights or even of self-ownership is derivable from the conditions by which man survives and flourishes in this world, and that therefore in this kind of extreme situation, where a man is faced with the choice of either saving himself or violating the property rights of the lifeboat owner (or, in the above example, of the “homesteader” in the boat), it is then ridiculous to expect him to surrender his life on behalf of the abstract principle of property rights. Because of this kind of consideration, many libertarians who otherwise believe in property rights gravely weaken them on behalf of the “contextualist” contention that, given a choice between his life and aggressing against someone else’s property or even life, it is moral for him to commit the aggression and that therefore in such a situation, these property rights cease to exist.
The error here on the part of the “contextualist” libertarians is to confuse the question of the moral course of action for the person in such a tragic situation with the totally separate question of whether or not his seizing of lifeboat or plank space by force constitutes an invasion of someone else’s property right. For we are not, in constructing a theory of liberty and property, i.e., a “political” ethic, concerned with all personal moral principles. We are not herewith concerned whether it is moral or immoral for someone to lie, to be a good person, to develop his faculties, or be kind or mean to his neighbors. We are concerned, in this sort of discussion, solely with such “political ethical” questions as the proper role of violence, the sphere of rights, or the definitions of criminality and aggression. Whether or not it is moral or immoral for “Smith” — the fellow excluded by the owner from the plank or the lifeboat — to force someone else out of the lifeboat, or whether he should die heroically instead, is not our concern, and not the proper concern of a theory of political ethics.[5]
That is for de-facto rights, not normative rights. Again, completely missing the point. So you have no logical objections what so ever to the Patriot Act? Or anything “society” sets up? It’s ok to rob you, they say they have a “right” to your property… you have no problems with that? Absurd.