@TheSingingSword,
TheSingingSword wrote:
The establishment of legal rights is a promise to use force. Basically, the idea is that rather than defend myself naturally, I will sacrifice my will to society, and surrender my right to use force to a government entity. Every law, right, entitlement, etc, added to a society, necessarily restricts freedom. If it is freedom you cherish, then you should say no to rights.
In France and in Germany, the word for right became the word for law, and yes, people have been combining to protect their sense of right for a long time... There is a certain dynamic at work, where the individual is expected to stand for himself, Yet where the others are supposed to take up the hue and cry in defense of the injured individual.... And rationally, we can see what life would be like if every person had to go about armed to defend his own rights as he defined them...The Illiad, or the story of Cu'chelain capture a certain moment in time where each man's honor was his own lookout... But society in order to progress must make common cause with the injured in order to achieve peace and stability, and we can see this also in Ancient Greece, where the Orestian Trilogy was written in response to the commonwealth taking vengeance out of the hands of the injured... The social contract is not a bad idea, but it is fatal for a society to deny justice to the injured when it is their obligation, and anyone who thinks people give up their right to justice just because they give up the weapons necessary to achieve justice are wrong...
In fact, the moment when the right to pursue individual justice is removed from the individual is the moment of doom for a society... It goes from health to sickness in one stride.... When each person was his own defense, and it was the obligation of every community to police, and to defend their own then no one would trifle with the rights of another... It is the problem with law, Western law, that having peace means justice is no longer an issue, and people who must live that way, seeing no way out, attack other countries and peoples and try to steal from them what they are denied at home... I am certain that is what happened in the Peloponnesian war, and in many wars since... Justice at home equals peace abroad...
Rights and freedom are the same thing... Government does not have rights, but powers... And that power is limited to the defense of right if the government is legitimate...Rights are enjoyed individually, and defended communally; but no one should expect any community to defend rights it does not see as essential to its well being... At bead rock there is only one right, to life... Then everything that makes life possible and meaningful follows..
