Thanks. But it does get tiresome at times.
Is it too much to ask that Debaters of a given issue would stake a claim?? Assume advocacy for their positions??
Sheesh.
Incidentally, concerning ourselves with Debate opponents who are willing to stake an intellectual position and defend it, I think that the "nut" of your ongoing disagreement with "annalex" over the matter of existential Property Rights is found in the (arguably Objectivist, among others) notion of "Prior Claim"... that is, the recognition of Rights creates the moral basis for the assumption of Rights.
My recognition of the Right to Life entitles me to Life, given that I extend that respect to others.
My recognition of the Right to Liberty entitles me to Liberty, given that I extend that respect to others.
My recognition of the Right to Property entitles me to....??
His counter will run something like, "But why can you 'recognize' the Right to Property, in the first place?" I expect that the trump runs something like, "I am here; I require farmland for my family." His counter-counter will claim that since Land is Finite, Prior Claim should not enjoy Absolute Right. The response thereto is Julian Simon's stuff demonstrating that "resources" are, in fact, infinite -- being a creation of human ingenuity -- which makes the "finite" argument against Prior Claim a moot point.
Tried this angle with him?
I have been pushing my own made-up theory of rights for a while ie; rights are really just what we describe as choices that already existed. All rights come from the superset (all choices) and in fact can be observed in nature. Thus they really are inalianable. They are like matter.
The "infinite resources" angle is a bit unique to humans I suppose because only a human can turn a cold-war era missile silo into a sheep farm. But my theory would mean that animals have some rights too.
Certainly the right to life.
Would this mean that I can't kill an animal? I've mulled that one over and over. The only thing I can come up with is based on my experiences hunting and from what every single hunter has ever told me: The animal is actually chosing to let you kill it. I can't tell you how many stories I've heard (and experienced for myself) where the animal "offered" itself to the hunter. It has happened to me more than once and that is the only way I can describe it.
But that's just not somewhere you can take the argument because it's not really based on "reason." Which is another one of those things about objectivism that I can't quite get my arms around. Perhaps I am mentally lazy or perhaps I am right to believe that rights are as much (or more) faith-based as they are reason based. Simply because somebody can with "objective" reason describe them, doesn't mean that they really exist. They have no shape or form. Yet we KNOW they exist. We feel them in our bones and if you tried to snuff out the life from our bodies we would struggle without even switching on our reason. In fact reason would be abandoned and often is when the situation calls for action.
Annalex and I have our divide because he believes that national sovereignty is a form of collectivism and that the arm of justice can knock over nations like bowling pins if the perpetrator is hiding behind their claim of Soverignty.