Iowa Debates

Off Topic Politics and World Issues
21

[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:

Relativity doesn’t work that way. It is always individually defined. Absolutes only exist individually as value judgments.

I believe these rights exist but you may not. That is relativity; however, I don’t think morality has anything to do with rights and vice versa.

Then they aren’t “rights” - if you have no absolute claim on other men w/r/t to them, they aren’t “rights”. They are policy “preferences” - and you keeping 100% of your hard-earned property is no greater or lesser from a moral point of view than my preference that 95% of your property must be handed over to a government agency.

As for your last paragraph, it defies description - a “right” is a moral claim. You can’t think morality and rights have nothing to do with one another - otherwise, it isn’t a “right” that you are entitled to exercise in every circumstance.

You’re sputtering.[/quote]

uhhh…what is morality? Rights have no axiological basis.

22

[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:

uhhh…what is morality? Rights have no axiological basis.[/quote]

uhhh…do you have a go-to move that doesn’t resort to uninformed incoherence?

“Rights” certainly have an axiological basis - because whatever good the rights protect and convey have value. If they didn’t, why bother giving them protection by elevating to the status of a “right”?

Every “right” is an absolute moral claim that entitles a rights-owner to something they should enjoy as a good - otherwise it wouldn’t be a “right”. A “right” - especially those natural ones you like to refer to - transcend relative attitudes and opinions, else you would call is something else other than a “natural right”. The designation of something being a “right” signifies that it deserves a transcendent quality that means if that “right” is denied, it is a “wrong” that also transcends relative opinion.

It is the difference in “preferring something” and “being entitled to something” - the former is a policy preference, the latter is a right.

The entire point of morality is that some system of “right and wrong” exists transcendent of pure individual measurement and choice. And that is exactly what a “right” confers - by virtue of merely being alive, you are entitled to a good as defined by morality even if someone thinks you shouldn’t have it.

Your “theory” is facially inconsistent.

You want to be able to tell Person A that they can’t tell Person B that Person B is wrong for engaging in a behavior - such is the anarcho-libertarian’s purpose for existence - but you can’t do it by suggesting “there are no moral absolutes, so you can’t tell him that”, not when your belief in the existence of “natural rights” contradicts that suggestion outright.

23

[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:

uhhh…what is morality? Rights have no axiological basis.

uhhh…do you have a go-to move that doesn’t resort to uninformed incoherence?

“Rights” certainly have an axiological basis - because whatever good the rights protect and convey have value. If they didn’t, why bother giving them protection by elevating to the status of a “right”?

Every “right” is an absolute moral claim that entitles a rights-owner to something they should enjoy as a good - otherwise it wouldn’t be a “right”. A “right” - especially those natural ones you like to refer to - transcend relative attitudes and opinions, else you would call is something else other than a “natural right”. The designation of something being a “right” signifies that it deserves a transcendent quality that means if that “right” is denied, it is a “wrong” that also transcends relative opinion.

It is the difference in “preferring something” and “being entitled to something” - the former is a policy preference, the latter is a right.

The entire point of morality is that some system of “right and wrong” exists transcendent of pure individual measurement and choice. And that is exactly what a “right” confers - by virtue of merely being alive, you are entitled to a good as defined by morality even if someone thinks you shouldn’t have it.

Your “theory” is facially inconsistent.

You want to be able to tell Person A that they can’t tell Person B that Person B is wrong for engaging in a behavior - such is the anarcho-libertarian’s purpose for existence - but you can’t do it by suggesting “there are no moral absolutes, so you can’t tell him that”, not when your belief in the existence of “natural rights” contradicts that suggestion outright.[/quote]

You are wrong.

What if I don’t believe a person has those rights?

24

[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:

You are wrong.[/quote]

Hilarious - if you don’t believe in moral absolutes and certainties, then you can’t tell me I am wrong - I just merely have a different and equally valid point of view.

If you are “right” and I am “wrong” on whether any of the above exists, then you have refuted your own claim that there are no absolutes.

It’s clear you just haven’t thought much about this.

  1. If there is “natural law” to the contrary (Lifticus’ first opinion), then your belief that people don’t have those rights is in contravention of that law, and you are wrong.

That is based on one thing you have said.

  1. If there are no moral absolutes (Lifticus’ second opinion), then your belief that people don’t have those rights is equally as valid as the opposite belief that people do have those rights, and ipso facto…that means there is no “natural law” that transcends individual opinion on the matter.

That is based on the other thing you said.

Woefully contradictory, and just plain ridiculous.

25

[quote]
tedro wrote:
He is the only nominee that recognizes that the biggest problem in America today is our lack of morality. Fix this first…

LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
Give me a f’n break. Who is “us”?

…don’t lump me into this group. Morality isn’t the issue. Government cannot regulate morality…are you delusional?[/quote]

Just as a digression, pretty much all laws legislate morality, economics, or a mix of the two. Even a prohibition on murder is essentially a legislation that it it is morally wrong to take someone’s life without just cause (e.g., self defense).

ADDENDUM: Looks as if I should have gotten further into the thread before replying - Thunder’s giving a discourse on my point.

26

The issue isn’t necessarily related to a moralist-based viewpoint per se, but rather the regulation against consensual activity that another might consider be reprehensible enough to coercively remove. Perhaps this is what LIFTICVSMAXIMVS was attempting to suggest.

Basically, this subject appears to be currently debating between consensual vs. non-consensual activity, moral or otherwise. The libertarian viewpoint considers all consensual activity legal while an opposing viewpoint, well intended or otherwise, deems certain activity too detrimental to “society” (essentially a collectivist construct), thus requiring its prohibition.

27

"Ah, yes, the ‘unalienable rights.’ Each year someone quotes that magnificent poetry.

"Life? What ‘right’ to life has a man who is drowning in the Pacific? The ocean will not hearken to his cries. What ‘right’ to life has a man who must die to save his children? If he chooses to save his own life, does he do so as a matter of ‘right’? If two men are starving and cannibalism is the only alternative to death, which man’s right is ‘unalienable’? And is it ‘right’?

"As to liberty, the heroes who signed the great document pledged themselves to buy liberty with their lives. Liberty is never unalienable; it must be redeemed regularly with the blood of patriots or it always vanishes. Of all the so-called natural human rights that have ever been invented, liberty is least likely to be cheap and is never free of cost.

“The third ‘right’–the ‘pursuit of happiness’? It is indeed unalienable but it is not a right; it is simply a universal condition which tyrants cannot take away nor patriots restore. Cast me into a dungeon, burn me at the stake, crown me king of kings, I can ‘pursue happiness’ as long as my brain lives–but neither gods nor saints, wise men nor subtle drugs, can insure that I will catch it.”

–Robert Heinlein, Starship Troopers

28

[quote]Varqanir wrote:
"A human being has no natural rights of any nature.

"Life? What ‘right’ to life has a man who is drowning in the Pacific? The ocean will not hearken to his cries. What ‘right’ to life has a man who must die to save his children? If he chooses to save his own life, does he do so as a matter of ‘right’? If two men are starving and cannibalism is the only alternative to death, which man’s right is ‘unalienable’? And is it ‘right’?

"As to liberty, the heroes who signed the great document pledged themselves to buy liberty with their lives. Liberty is never unalienable; it must be redeemed regularly with the blood of patriots or it always vanishes. Of all the so-called natural human rights that have ever been invented, liberty is least likely to be cheap and is never free of cost.

“The third ‘right’?�??the ‘pursuit of happiness’? It is indeed unalienable but it is not a right; it is simply a universal condition which tyrants cannot take away nor patriots restore. Cast me into a dungeon, burn me at the stake, crown me king of kings, I can ‘pursue happiness’ as long as my brain lives�??but neither gods nor saints, wise men nor subtle drugs, can insure that I will catch it.”

–Robert Heinlein, Starship Troopers[/quote]

Varq, I like this alot - for liberty being a “natural right”, it sure hasn’t presented itself throughout human history very naturally. In fact, the opposite seems true - and liberty, far from sprouting up everywhere like crabgrass, has been fleeting, precious, dear, and fragile.

Some treat liberty like a cheap, abundant good that they will always have in surplus, no matter the circumstances - others recognize we human beings weren’t born that lucky, and it takes work and virtue to keep liberty: it must be guarded against from the tyrants wanting to quash it from without and it must be guarded against from the jacobins from within who think it comes at no price or responsibility of stewardship.