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More on natural law and natural rights.
1 posted on 09/01/2003 10:17:35 AM PDT by NMC EXP
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To: tpaine; .30Carbine; KrisKrinkle; Voice in your head
FYI --

More grist for the mill......
2 posted on 09/01/2003 10:20:38 AM PDT by NMC EXP (Choose one: [a] party [b] principle.)
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To: NMC EXP
the term 'Natural Law' has long been a battle field of semantics.

Look it up in the dictionary. You'll find a list of common uses of the terms, although that still doesn't answer the question of what it is. The dictionary might not give the meaning of both terms together, which is . . . man was created as the pinnacle of nature and everything is here for his use.

3 posted on 09/01/2003 10:25:20 AM PDT by RightWhale (Repeal the Law of the Excluded Middle)
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To: NMC EXP
for later
4 posted on 09/01/2003 11:07:53 AM PDT by luckydevi
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To: NMC EXP
This article addresses the social contract which allows the creation of government.

The article recognizes that a "contract" presupposes that each party relinquish something of value to the other voluntarily.

The question then becomes; "What is given up and what is received?"

When a mother bear acts to protect her cubs, we recognize that she acts in her own self-interest. Most people would recognize an obligation not to bring such behavior about.

The mother bear is not expected to understand the true nature of the threat. She may act pre-emptively based on her perception of the mere ability or potential of someone or something to harm her cubs.

Humans are as fully justified as bears to protect their young. However, when we enter into a social contract with others, we choose to voluntarily give up justification for pre-emptive attacks in return for being protected from the pre-emptive attacks of others. The "right" of self defense is not given up. This is a subset of protective behavior which is not pre-emptive but which requires some greater level of threat than mere perception that harm might be caused.

The "right" of self-defense is the residual part of the freedom to act pre-emptively when protecting one's own interests.

This argument reveals a semantic problem with trying to determine whether the "right" is created by the contract or whether the "right" pre-existed the contract.

Our nations Founders believed that we are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights. They had envisioned certain boundaries between the liberties which they expected to retain and the liberties which they had decided to give up by "consent of the governed". All of their liberties were endowments from their Creator.

The right to the "pursuit of happiness" is the nearly boundless liberty of self-interested behavior. That which is outside the bounds are those behaviors which justify non-pre-emptive interference by others.

To define the word "right" to be that which is created by the contract would be to suggest that a piece of pie does not exist prior to slicing the pie. There may be a question of boundaries, but slicing does not create pie.

Our Founders decided that some rights were of such consequence to the successful creation of government that they enumerated specific limitations on what could be given up by "consent of the governed". Without amendment to the Constitution, the people may not allow their liberty to defend themselves with arms to be bounded. Nobody would reasonably suggest that a mother bear had only a "collective" justification to protect her cubs. Nor would anyone suggest that the mother bear should restrict herself to the use of her teeth but not her claws.

8 posted on 09/01/2003 12:06:35 PM PDT by William Tell
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Bump for later.
9 posted on 09/01/2003 12:09:05 PM PDT by StriperSniper (The Federal Register is printed on pulp from The Tree Of Liberty)
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To: NMC EXP
But it is valid to ask, 'are you more or less likely to achieve happiness in a violent totalitarian society or in one that respects your right to peacefully interact with others?'

This is not a rhetorical question: most people answered it in the positive in the Soviet Russia for decades. Many still do now, even in our own country.

12 posted on 09/01/2003 6:12:31 PM PDT by TopQuark
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To: NMC EXP
The spread of Stirnerite egoism within American individualist ranks emanated from Stirner's pivotal work on law, property, and the State, which was entitled The Ego and His Own.

In the original, Der Einzige und sein Eigenthum, and the entire text can be found online here.

A truly evil book.

But the whole "social contract" theory is an absurdity. If my rights are the result of a contract, whence came my right to enter into contracts? It seems pretty clear that, in order to enter into a contract, you must be (a) alive, (b) free to enter into and keep agreements, and (c) entitled to pursue those agreements that further your own ends, or, in other words, "the pursuit of happiness".

As the Founding Fathers knew.

13 posted on 09/01/2003 10:51:16 PM PDT by John Locke
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