Comments | ravens_hearth: I suppose I should have known better than to extend the bait in the first place, but...

ravens_hearth

I suppose I should have known better than to extend the bait in the first place, but...

Jan 12, 2008 09:37

http://dinpik.livejournal.com/134915.html

I said "Food, water, roads, heathcare, etc., are not God-given rights at all. Life, liberty, and the fruits of your labor: Those are God-given rights."
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"If you seriously believe people deserve to die because they can't afford food or water or ( Read more... )

Comments 23

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ravens_hearth January 12 2008, 14:52:30 UTC

Why's that?

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ravens_hearth January 12 2008, 15:09:56 UTC

Oh. Right. I guess from experience I've become entrenched in the idea that Libertarian women are mythical creatures. ;)

Thread 6

ravens_hearth January 12 2008, 15:00:37 UTC

Another amusing portion of the thread was this:

You're only 25 years old. Save these comments, little boy -- they'll make you cringe in fifteen years.

I'm only 25, and yet I have an infinitely better understanding of natural human rights than a 39 year old. Furthermore, I'm only 25, but the self-same 39 year old doesn't understand the difference between liberty and privilege.

The only thing I see myself cringing about in fifteen years is our economic collapse under neo-Keynesian central management. Hell, I've been cringing over the coercive redistribution of wealth since I was 15.

But I'm just a dumb kid, what do I know?

elfwreck January 12 2008, 15:57:19 UTC

Food, water, healthcare etc. are indeed not God-given rights. They are, to some extent, civil rights--granted to all living in this society (to limited extent, in the case of healthcare), so that everyone benefits. (In theory ( ... )

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elfwreck January 12 2008, 17:43:16 UTC

we'd like the choice, rather than have it forcedThat choice is a general thing, rather than specific. You choose to live here. You choose to live in a city (or some reasonable facsimile thereof), and not on a mountaintop alone with a small garden that supports you. You choose to have a computer, pay an electric bill, have a job... those choices include the choice to pay for some of the support for people who haven't managed to earn as much as you have. (This support includes "make public roads" and "provide a fire department;" I'm not just talking about food stamps ( ... )

ravens_hearth January 12 2008, 21:49:56 UTC

Participation in society implies consent to be governed? Nay, do not confuse the two. Government derives its power from the explicit consent of those so governed; One does not participate in society at the enjoyment of their government, but one governs at the enjoyment of society.

To quote Locke, "The reason why men enter into society, is the preservation of their property; and the end why they chuse and authorize a legislative, is, that there may be laws made, and rules set, as guards and fences to the properties of all the members of the society, to limit the power, and moderate the dominion, of every part and member of the society: for since it can never be supposed to be the will of the society, that the legislative should have a power to destroy that which every one designs to secure, by entering into society, and for which the people submitted themselves to legislators of their own making; whenever the legislators endeavour to take away, and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power ( ... )

Thread 17

hexar_le_saipe January 12 2008, 18:52:16 UTC

Can't say that I totally agree with your position (I'm a bit more of a pragmatic libertarian myself) but I do think that banning you from their journal on top of that sort of comment is particularly chickenshit.

Whatever happened to rational discourse?

ravens_hearth January 13 2008, 18:28:43 UTC

YOU'RE ALL BANNED FOR DISAGREEING WITH ME!!!

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ravens_hearth January 13 2008, 16:55:32 UTC

Yes, the playing field is uneven. This separation between the advantaged and disadvantaged exists largely due to rampant historical extension of state privilege to some at the cost of depriving others.

To quote Professor Rothbard (I quote him extensively, as you may have noticed):

"I see the liberty of the individual not only as a great moral good in itself (or, with Lord Acton, as the highest political good), but also as the necessary condition for the flowering of all the other goods that mankind cherishes: moral virtue, civilization, the arts and sciences, economic prosperity. Out of liberty, then, stem the glories of civilized life. But liberty has always been threatened by the encroachments of power, power which seeks to supress, control, cripple, tax, and explot the fruits of liberty and production. Power, then, the enemy of liberty, is consequently the enemy of all the other goods and fruits of civilization that mankind holds dear. And power is almost always centered in and focused on that central repository of power and ( ... )