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To: Valpal1
No, a human being can never be property, since property can be bought and sold and humans cannot not be bought and sold.

A human being can never be the property of someone else (i.e., slavery), but likewise, doesn't that mean a human being retains sovereignty over himself, or herself? And as that means that one has full and unlimited control over herself or himself, does that not, in essence, make one's body one's property?

If your body is not your own property, whose property is it? Since we're talking about secular things, "God" does not count as an answer.

94 posted on 08/01/2007 11:25:04 AM PDT by Hemingway's Ghost (Spirit of '75)
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To: Hemingway's Ghost

You posted: If your body is not your own property, whose property is it? Since we’re talking about secular things, “God” does not count as an answer.
***

I am not sure a body is property at all (until it is dead). Does it have to be property? It is made up of substances, but the concept of property infers ownership, as well as the ability to transfer that ownership, if desired. In this country you can’t sell persons, including their bodies, not even your own.

What persons have are rights, or freedoms. There are much more articulate people than I on this site who can better explain what rights are, and what are not rights.


95 posted on 08/01/2007 11:58:57 AM PDT by NCLaw441
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To: Hemingway's Ghost

It’s nobody’s property, because a human being cannot be property. Property is something that can be bought and sold, title or ownership of property can change hands and be disputed in a court.

Defining humans as property, even self-owned propety harms the concept of property rights and opens a can of philosophical worms that redefines the natural rights debates.

This is why it’s a bad idea to argue for drug legalisation on the basis of property rights in one’s own body. Property can be bought, sold, confiscated, legislated, regulated, etc.

Do not confuse one’s right to life and liberty with property rights, they are distinct and seperate rights and should not be conflated. Sovereign rights over oneself are liberty rights, not property rights.

A property right is a lesser right than liberty. There is no such thing as a property right in a human being that does not logically extend to slavery, because if something can be owned as property, it can also be sold as property.

Liberty rights can not be bought or sold, so don’t sell yourself down the river and reinstitute slavery in an attempt to legalize drugs.

There are other and better ways to argue for it. The fastest method to drug legalization would be to institute the FAIR tax. Once congress is unable to enhance revenues through income tax tinkering, they will quickly turn to sin taxes on legalized drugs the same way they did to alcohol when the depression reduced income tax revenues so precipitously.


96 posted on 08/01/2007 12:04:22 PM PDT by Valpal1 ("I know the fittest have not survived when I watch Congress on CSPAN.")
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To: Hemingway's Ghost

Try suicide, fail, and see how fast your property gets incarcerated in the looney bin.


104 posted on 08/01/2007 3:30:32 PM PDT by Scotsman will be Free (11C - Indirect fire, infantry - High angle hell - We will bring you, FIRE)
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