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Nature. Self-defense is a natural right -- it is an aspect of nature that an entity with the power to do so will tend to defend itself. There is no need to consult a mythical authority, no need for a tablet of stone detailing the right of self-defense to be handed down from on high, no need to vote about it, no need to consult about it. Indeed, there is no need to convince your attacker that you have the right of self-defense. You simply assert it as needed.

It is also an aspect of nature that the stronger animals will more often than not subjugate the weak -- which is, after all, the manner by which evolution ensures that beneficial mutations are passed on, whereas harmful ones are not.

Which is to say, if nature gives one the right to self-defense, nature compensates by giving one the right to initiate force as well.

Despite this, I seem to recall that you assert that the initiation of force is wrong, while in contrast self-defense is morally justified. Yet if we go by the evidence of "nature" there is no logical basis for your claim.

Indeed, if "nature" is to be our moral guide, then the evolution of predators (including humans who prey on other humans) must cause us to conclude that might makes right.

then the evolution of predators (including humans who prey on other humans) must cause us to conclude that might makes right.

False. It would require that self-defense be forbidden in some absolute sense. Since that is not the case, since even the weak still have the prerogative to attempt self-defense, that would be inconsistent with a view that "might makes right."

Self-defense is universal, every creature can apply it without contradicting another's. "Might makes right" is asymmetrical -- it immediately contradicts another's assertion of same, as well as their self-defensive right.

Indeed, if "nature" is to be our moral guide, then the evolution of predators (including humans who prey on other humans) must cause us to conclude that might makes right.

Evolutionists like to say that their theory does not extend so far as to use the struggle for life as justification for mass murder, euthanasia, etc.. However Darwin clearly thought so as the following shows:

"I could show fight on natural selection having done and doing more for the progress of civilization than you seem inclined to admit. Remember what risk the nations of Europe ran, not so many centuries ago of being overwhelmed by the Turks, and how ridiculous such an idea now is! The more civilized so-called Caucasian races have beaten the Turkish hollow in the struggle for existence. Looking to the world at no very distant date, what an endless number of the lower races will have been eliminated by the higher civilized races throughout the world." Darwin to Graham, July 3, 1881.