They are an artificial safety blanket which restricts real protection. Claiming you have ‘individual rights’ hides the fact that you still need to protect your rights. PDA’s and DRO’s are the best way to protect the individual. Hoping that some involuntary set of ‘rights’ will protect the individual against the realities of the world is not the best way to to protect the individual. Be realistic, it has been tried, and it has failed miserably. A new approach is necessary.
It also leads to involuntary ‘protective’ laws, and restricts individuals rights to voluntary behavior. Voluntary contract should always be upheld over involuntary social contracts.
Are you advocating murder? Natural laws are voluntary. You break them voluntarily and it’s an abomination. Why advocate murder, stealing, and rape? You don’t have your property either, unless violence is how you keep it, cause you are not supportive of just property in the first place. So your reasoning becomes circular and when humans abandon reason then a “might makes right” full of despicable dangers are ever-present.
Really? Are you questioning your own sanity? (read: antonym of insanity is reason)
The thief did not contract with Trigger-Happy to be executed. End of your fallacy. From the point of view of the thief’s DRO (and natural law) Forde is a murderer.
Are you seriously asserting that joining a murdering club means that the members can ‘legally’ murder ? Trigger-Happy inc. has NO AUTHORITY to murder and can grant NO AUTHORITY to murder.
So I can’t sign a one year contract to work? If I do sign it, and change my mind in six months, the employer has no right to sue for specific performance? I dont see how this is any different from any other contract. One offer is being exchanged for another. The damaging party is liable.
I guess I am missing what you are saying. Why is requiring someone do labor any different than requiring someone give up something of which their labor has produced?
I would interject, if the Natural laws are voluntary in a psychological sense. Can an individual still retain his/her sense of humanity after committing an act such as murder or rape? Do we rationally committ crime or are we guided under an irrational mind?
Good question. I do believe there are cultural interpretations of what a psychiatrist will decide in giving such an answer. Also though to be able to define if free-will occurred or not inclines towards mind-reading. I assume criminals know what they are doing and if not they still committed a crime that ought to have the same repercussions in my opinion.
Oh, and I would add. By irrational I mean the absence of reasoning and thus discourse during the event in question. A natural law criminal would be leaping to anti-social behaviors that are not necessary recognizing humans are rational and social animals.
I don’t believe ‘might makes right’, but that might is what wins unless right has a better way to defend itself. I am simply stating that claiming rights without sufficient ability to protect them is ludicrous and very dangerous. Look where it has gotten us today.
I believe in voluntary should always be held over involuntary, no matter the case. I don’t advocate murder, theft, or rape, because these imply an involuntary action. Now, if we made them voluntary, it would be assisted suicide, mutually beneficial trade, and love making. [:)]
Could you clarify who you are getting your definition of natural laws from for me?
@Pablo: Read The Ethics of Liberty. The answers to all your questions are contained within.
Rights are not something that you claim to have and then suddenly you DO have. They are something intrinsic in the nature of human beings, that we have whether we know it or not. We are facilitated with reason, and thus we are able to learn what rights nature has given us.
Rights have never been protected fully. Rights though have been sneaking their way into public discourse for centuries and have been gaining ground in my opinion. And of course self-defense is necessary (noting you mentioned protecting rights).
Oh you are orienting your perspective on the “victim” or “receiver” of an action by another. I’ve been orienting my perspective from the where rights come from - the individual, not the other. Meaning a criminal voluntarily murders, but yes, as you say, the victim isn’t volunteering to be murdered.
I never implied that he did. I stated that the thief was in violation of Forde’s property, which is protected by a DRO (Trigger-Happy) which allows for summary executions.
If I shoot someone whom is robbing my home, am I a murderer? It has been done whilst he was acting with involuntary aggression towards me or my property. He is subject to my whims if he is violating me. The same way that I fully support a woman if she uses deadly force to protect herself from being raped.
For the purposes of this conversation, I agree. They can however defend the use of deadly force in the event that someone is violating you or your property, which is exactly what the analogy depicts.
The thief is commiting violence. He is opening himself up to any form of involuntary action. Fordge is acting in defense of his property. Forde is not a murderer.
Why are you defending the thief? He has a right to use violence, while another has no right to defend himself? That is absurd.
Look, you’ve done absolutely nothing to prove that proportionality doesn’t apply. You did not address the counter arguments and just assume that the action you are expected to rationally justify - cold-blood-killing - is justifiable (it is not).
I’m not defending the thief or thievery, I’m attacking the nonsensical idea that the death penalty administered by a wholly biased party is the proper and morally correct response. It is not, by any means.
Let me know which definition of natural rights you are using. Individual rights exist because they are protected, not because they are granted. They undermine my ability to voluntarily contract.
I never said it does not apply. I specifically said it is between the DRO and contractee. If they decree proportionality applies, then it does.
You have created a strawman and are demagoging the issue. I have addressed all arguments put forth thus far. I am not attempting to justify ‘cold-blood-killing’, I am justifying the defensive use of force against an aggressor in any form the defender chooses. This does not mean that I personally endorse their method of protection, but I fully support their ability to choose.
What exactly is the universally applicable moral response? Please don’t use arbitrary numbers like, “double the damage inflicted”, or any other subjective value played off as an objective truth. It is impossible to determine how much damage has actually been inflicted to the injured party.
Depending on your definition, they could be: a figment of your imagination, secured through protection of an otherwise absence in nature, or arrive from contractual agreement.
What they are not, is a mystical force that prevents ‘bad’ things happening to individuals.