Originally Posted By: rabbit
Far as I'm concerned there is only one "natural" right: the right to eat or be eaten. Way of all flesh and some vegetables; sort of a universally-sanctioned competition. I don't think it makes much difference whether you're using your teeth, the jawbone of an ass, or waving your arms while the buffalo stampede over the cliff. However, I find that I get more sleep when the County and State fellers do the night shift around nearby Ferris School for Boys. A social compact is trusting provisionally those you can't trust absolutely; something which you get used to as you get older. I've lost all interest in Greg's Green Mtn. Boy rhetoric, King's bona fides as someone present at the creation of everything, and wrangling over biblical, and by extension, divine justification.

I'm throwing in with Jack. (Also agree 100% with Jack Maloney that trashing liberals universally is worse than not helpful.)

Who told the high-flying philosophers which rights to include on their lists of natural rights? Who's the authority? Trying to find someone who can tell me which rights are natural God-given and which aren't leads into foggy dark places where I can't see if it's God or the devil who's talking.

What matters is whether or not we have the power to exercise our rights. If voting power shifts against and the Constitution is amended to repeal RKBA, the cultural norm would be a view of RKBA as an anachronism that no longer promotes the general welfare. Natural rights are a lovely idea, but absent divine intervention we better win the pragmatic argument about the general welfare in the 21st century.

Jay

Last edited by Gunflint Charlie; 05/07/07 07:11 PM.