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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: Valpal1; NCLaw441
Perhaps I misspoke; I meant "property" in more of a philosophical sense than in a legal sense, because I understand that "property" connotes something very specific when used in a legal sense, including the right to buy or sell property. Then again, put in a proper historical context, the fact that human beings aren't property in a legal sense is a modern notion; even Locke in his Second Treatise argued that slavery can exist.

What, then, is the word to describe the right, or the ability, to express sovereignty? Is the individual sovereign over himself?

97 posted on 08/01/2007 12:37:02 PM PDT by Hemingway's Ghost (Spirit of '75)
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