Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

To: Alan Chapman
So, is man the origin of rights?

Men have the right to form societies to protect their rights and promote their collective interests.

Agreed?

547 posted on 06/15/2002 5:42:23 PM PDT by Roscoe
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 546 | View Replies ]


To: Roscoe
Men have the right to form societies to protect their rights and promote their collective interests.
If every person has the right to defend -- even by force -- his person, his liberty, and his property, then it follows that a group of men have the right to organize and support a common force to protect these rights constantly. Thus the principle of collective right -- its reason for existing, its lawfulness -- is based on individual right. And the common force that protects this collective right cannot logically have any other purpose or any other mission than that for which it acts as a substitute. Thus, since an individual cannot lawfully use force against the person, liberty, or property of another individual, then the common force -- for the same reason -- cannot lawfully be used to destroy the person, liberty, or property of individuals or groups. - Frederic Bastiat

A group of individuals has no more rights than they had as individuals. Incorporation of civil government does not engender rights which did not previously exist.

"It is strangely absurd to suppose that a million of human beings, collected together, are not under the same moral laws which bind each of them separately." — Thomas Jefferson, (letter to George Logan, 1816)

556 posted on 06/15/2002 6:08:46 PM PDT by Alan Chapman
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 547 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson