Thoughts on individual rights

[Jon Letendre]

The question is whether or not babies have a basic, negative right to life. (Questions of positive obligations that we can attach to the parents or the state should be left for later.)

The existence of an abundance of people able and willing to adopt unwanted babies, treating them as though they do have a right to life and even showering them with positive obligations, does not resolve the question.

Bidinotto wrote, and Michael and I agree with him:

“But when we talk of "babies," "children," and "adults," we are talking about US -- at various ages. That's all. And rights are moral principles that pertain to humans as a species -- not merely to time periods in the lives of humans.”

In this view, babies have at a minimum the negative right to life as established in the standard Objectivist derivation of rights. (So you cannot put one in a dumpster when people who will care for it are a 911 phone call away.) This view says that babies are covered by the Objectivist derivation.

Rowlands view is that babies are NOT covered by the Objectivist derivation:

“I just don't think being a part of the species is relevant to the concept of rights. If the principle is formulated in the context of adults, establishing a harmony of interests between them, then the principle is applicable to adults. Spreading it out to all humans, including babies, is an example of using one criteria to formulate the concept (rational men living harmonious), and another criteria to expand it (part of the human species). I don't think it applies.”

Now, if babies are not covered by the standard Objectivist derivation of rights, then it becomes an open question as to whether or not they have any rights, even the minimum negative right to life. Imagine a researcher who acquires unwanted babies from their unwanting biological mothers for $1,000 and conducts pharmaceutical research on them. You can see that an abundance of people ready and willing to adopt those babies are irrelevant, because these acquired babies are not available for adoption—they belong to the researcher and he ain’t sellin’.

Rowland’s contention is that any attempt to establish rights for and a reason to respect the rights of babies must appeal to the self-interest of he who considers the issue, just as, according to him, is the case with rights vis-à-vis adults. He explains the reason one should respect the rights of other adults is that it is the best way to ensure that one’s own rights are respected, it is the way to establish a harmony of interests. He writes:

“We respect the freedom of others because their freedom benefits us. It does so first because it makes it more likely that our own freedom will be secure. And also, because there is a harmony of interests between rational men, and we benefit from others living their lives effectively, through trade, education, etc.”

He holds that ultimately the appeal must be to the self-interest of the individual considering whether or not to respect another’s rights.:

“The value in respecting the rights of a human shield that protects a psychopath about to kill all your loved ones and yourself still exists. There is value there. But the costs completely outweigh it.”

Well, what if I need an organ transplant and the researcher mentioned above can sell me an organ? What if I am considering taking an anti-tumor drug and the researcher can establish that it is or is not effective and safe? My self-interest, and his, will lie in the acquired-for-research-babies not having rights, and therefore they do not have rights, according to Rowland’s chain of reasoning.

My contention is simply that if the Objectivist derivation of rights does not include babies, and that if a separate case for rights of babies must appeal to the self-interest of those considering the question (we adults,) then the case will fail. We adults would benefit much more from pharmaceutical research, efficacy and safety testing on babies, than we would otherwise. There will always be plenty of wanted babies, the species will go on. And the research-babies could hardly retaliate for what we do to them, so harmony is preserved.

Rowlands likes to say that I am an emotionalist. He means that I have an emotionally-motivated desire to conclude that babies have rights, are included in the Objectivist derivation of rights. (Fascinating that Bidinotto has not yet been labeled an emotionalist.) I shouldn’t complain, he said much worse of MSK for essentially the same ‘babies are covered’ arguments.

[Brant Gaede]

Rights are a human invention appertaining to actual human need built into the human organism. They are not metaphysical identifications, the need, though, is quite metaphysical. The need is "natural." The need is metaphysical and the meeting of that need epistemological made metaphysical by virtue of law derived from political/moral philosophy.

--Brant

[Brant Gaede]

Babies have rights because they are human beings. There is no situation where some humans have rights and others don't. The only question is whether the rights are in law and effectively protected by law. To say babies don't have rights is to say the mentally infirm don't have rights. Those who are punished by law still have rights, they just aren't allowed to exercise some of them because they have violated the rights of others and might do so again. There are a lot of rights that babies and the infirm cannot exercise, but if, mirabile dictu, they suddenly do then they do so out of their right to do so.

Rowlands is simply trying to sneak in a woman's right to have an abortion by positing, implicitly at least, that if babies don't have rights, then natch, fetuses don't either. But rights appertain to social context and the fetus only has a biological one, courtesy of the mother. The mother does have a social context. Ergo, she has a right to an abortion. The grey area is generally in the third tri-mester, and Roger Bissel has done the best Objectivist work exploring this.

If we go with Rowland's rights' formulations I am assured we will eventually end up with no rights and call it "Objectivism." We can protect babies and the infirm, but when it comes to fetuses we run into the mother who is not to be enslaved to an unborn child. That said, if I impregnated a woman and she insisted on an abortion, unless it was for a special reason--not "I want to go to Barbados instead"--that would be the end of the relationship. She can abort our child and I will walk. Goodbye, bitch! Or, just goodbye, if not a bitch. But note, this is not a matter of law, except to protect the right to an abortion, euphemistically referred as a "right to privacy."

--Brant

Edited November 15, 2007 by Brant Gaede

[James Heaps-Nelson]

Jim,

Did you read my essay correctly? I stated precisely what you just did about children being ward of the government if no proper adults are available (I used my own words). I did not deal with the mentally incompetent, but I agree to having care provided by the government as a last resort to ensure their right to life.

Michael

Michael,

I reread the essay. Yes, you do say that. I've never seen this as a huge problem for Objectivists because the solutions for this already exist. I disagreed with you in the starving baby in the wilderness example, because there is no such thing as a positive obligation on someone who doesn't assume it. \

Jim

We all know that "the starving baby in the wilderness" will be taken in and raised by wolves so we can pass it by in good conscience.

--Brant

I don't know of any sane person who could pass by it in good conscience, Objectivist or not. I just don't know of any rights based argument whereby someone could be forced to take it in or feed it.

Jim

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I don't know of any sane person who could pass by it in good conscience, Objectivist or not. I just don't know of any rights based argument whereby someone could be forced to take it in or feed it.

Jim,

Neither I (nor anybody) have brought that argument up this time, yet you sound like you are arguing against someone who has.

But aside from that, your comments show that you completely missed the point I made about the word "rights" having more than one meaning. The way you comment, you are imputing the restricted Objectivist meaning to all contexts and all statements by all people, when I showed that even Rand used the word with two meaning in her essay on rights. The above quote is a good example. I can think of a perfect argument "whereby someone could be forced to take it in or feed it" (an abandoned baby). The Divine Right of Kings would easily allow such, but that would be a different definition of rights than what you mean.

I am nitpicking on this point this time because I wish the conversation to remain conceptual and not veer off (like such discussions usually do) into emotional rhetoric where people talk past each other because of unacknowledged different meanings. This takes a bit of conceptual unpacking, but I think it is worth it for the sake of clarity.

Michael

[BaalChatzaf]

If we go with Rowland's rights' formulations I am assured we will eventually end up with no rights and call it "Objectivism." We can protect babies and the infirm, but when it comes to fetuses we run into the mother who is not to be enslaved to an unborn child. That said, if I impregnated a woman and she insisted on an abortion, unless it was for a special reason--not "I want to go to Barbados instead"--that would be the end of the relationship. She can abort our child and I will walk. Goodbye, bitch! Or, just goodbye, if not a bitch. But note, this is not a matter of law, except to protect the right to an abortion, euphemistically referred as a "right to privacy."

--Brant

Controlling what is in or stays in or goes in or goes out of your body is a quintessential aspect of privacy. If the inside of one's body is not private, then what is? I do not see it as a euphemism at all, but a fashioning or construction of the issue so that it falls under the rubric of 9th amendment.

The Roe v Wade decision says, in effect, what goes in or out of a woman's body in the first trimester is her private business. Restricting the domain of privacy to just the first trimester is wrong-headed (in my opinion) but at least the Court agreed it was a privacy issue and was protected under the 9th amendment.

I think shaping the issue to fit legal molds and conform to legal usages is NOT euphemism or deception or double talk. It is a necessary thing to make the matter able to be judged in the courts.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[syrakusos]

I have certainly gotten used the idea of having "rights." However, there was on You Tube, a John Stossel 20/20 about what makes America Number One. It was not rights. Now, it may be said correctly that what follows are examples of IMPLICIT rights, examples of imperfect capitalism. Stossel compared Hong Kong with India and both of them with the USA. Hong Kong is more capitalist than the USA. Yet, people there have fewer political rights. For a century, the British ruled on the theory of benign neglect. On the other hand, India is the world's largest democracy and people there also have fewer rights -- but in a totally different sense, of course.

The Bill of Rights in the US Constitution guarantees you a right to a just and speedy trial. Myself, I look to the fact that we call them "kangaroo" courts because "justice proceeds by leaps and bounds." I demand a slow and deliberate trial! Never mind this "speedy" stuff. It's my life here and I want people to stop and think about it

What is there about a jury trial that is written in the stars, i.e., "natural" law? If you are innocent, ask for a bench trial. It is more reliably just.

Is there a right to travel? How would that work in a world without public property?

Is there a right to privacy? What does that mean? In fact, you have no right to privacy in your own backyard as viewed from the air... or so the courts have ruled. They also ruled on the other hand, that looking at someone's home with Infrared viewers does violate their privacy, even though infrared exists naturally in the electromagnetic spectrum. What if you had your eyes biologically or organically altered to see higher and lower than everyone else? Would you be naturally always and in every moment guilty of a crime? What if you were born this way? And in the famous words of Penn & Teller: "What's the difference?"

Edited November 16, 2007 by Michael E. Marotta

[Chris Grieb]

Michael; I wish it were true that a bench trial was more just but I understand that requesting a bench trial is considered like a guilty plea. I know of one case here in the DC area where that was true.

Your points about jury trials and speedy trials are good ones.

A further point about speedy trials is a great difference might depend on whether you are free on bail.

I think our Founding Fathers saw correctly the jury as being made up of your neighbors whereas a judge might be an outsider.

[Guyau]

The Winter 1993 issue of Social Philosophy and Policy was devoted to the topic Altruism: http://www.bgsu.edu/offices/sppc/altruism.htm.

Contained in that issue is an excellent paper

“Abortion, Abandonment, and Positive Rights: The Limits of Compulsory Altruism” by Roderick T. Long.

From the Introduction of this paper:

(1) Every person has the right not to be treated as a mere means to the ends of others.

(2) A woman who voluntarily becomes pregnant but later changes her mind has the right to abort her unborn child.

(3) A woman who voluntarily bears a child but later changes her mind does not have the right simply to abandon her child, but must care for it until she can arrange for a substitute caretaker.

Dr. Long’s Summary at the end of his paper:

We began with three propositions [listed above] . . . . These propositions initially seemed inconsistent, for the prohibition on treating others as mere means appeared to rule out the possibility of positive rights, thus making it impossible to countenance the right to abort or the right not to be abandoned (both of which, it was argued, are positive in form).

But we have seen that the prohibition on treating people as mere means to the ends of others is best understood as ruling out basic positive rights while permitting derivative ones. Since a willing mother is responsible for bringing her child into the world in the first place, she cannot abandon it without violating its negative right not to be killed, and so such a child has a derivative positive right not to be abandoned. A pregnant woman, on the other hand, has a negative right not to have her body invaded, and from this negative right derives a positive right to abort her fetus, so long as doing so is not disproportionate to the seriousness of the threat (as it is not in the case of involuntary pregnancy, or of pregnancy which has become involuntary). Therefore, far from being in conflict, propositions (1), (2), and (3) have been shown to be in harmony with one another, the latter two being plausibly grounded in the first. Insofar as we have reason to accept (1), then, we have reason to accept (2) and (3). Moreover, we have seen that a proper understanding of (1) allows us to embed (2) and (3) in a larger moral perspective in which the limits of compulsory altruism are firmly drawn: enforceable rights to the use or assistance of others may be allowed into the moral domain only if they are “sponsored” by some negative right. Every putative positive right must find such a sponsor, or perish. (p.191)

Edited November 16, 2007 by Stephen Boydstun

[Brant Gaede]

The Winter 1993 issue of Social Philosophy and Policy was devoted to the topic Altruism: http://www.bgsu.edu/offices/sppc/altruism.htm.

Contained in that issue is an excellent paper

“Abortion, Abandonment, and Positive Rights: The Limits of Compulsory Altruism” by Roderick T. Long.

From the Introduction of this paper:

(1) Every person has the right not to be treated as a mere means to the ends of others.

(2) A woman who voluntarily becomes pregnant but later changes her mind has the right to abort her unborn child.

(3) A woman who voluntarily bears a child but later changes her mind does not have the right simply to abandon her child, but must care for it until she can arrange for a substitute caretaker.

Dr. Long’s Summary at the end of his paper:

We began with three propositions [listed above] . . . . These propositions initially seemed inconsistent, for the prohibition on treating others as mere means appeared to rule out the possibility of positive rights, thus making it impossible to countenance the right to abort or the right not to be abandoned (both of which, it was argued, are positive in form).

But we have seen that the prohibition on treating people as mere means to the ends of others is best understood as ruling out basic positive rights while permitting derivative ones. Since a willing mother is responsible for bringing her child into the world in the first place, she cannot abandon it without violating its negative right not to be killed, and so such a child has a derivative positive right not to be abandoned. A pregnant woman, on the other hand, has a negative right not to have her body invaded, and from this negative right derives a positive right to abort her fetus, so long as doing so is not disproportionate to the seriousness of the threat (as it is not in the case of involuntary pregnancy, or of pregnancy which has become involuntary). Therefore, far from being in conflict, propositions (1), (2), and (3) have been shown to be in harmony with one another, the latter two being plausibly grounded in the first. Insofar as we have reason to accept (1), then, we have reason to accept (2) and (3). Moreover, we have seen that a proper understanding of (1) allows us to embed (2) and (3) in a larger moral perspective in which the limits of compulsory altruism are firmly drawn: enforceable rights to the use or assistance of others may be allowed into the moral domain only if they are “sponsored” by some negative right. Every putative positive right must find such a sponsor, or perish. (p.191)

I would say that (1) is false. That is, a person has the right not to let another do this. (2) A woman has a right to an abortion but no one has the duty to be the abortionist. (3) Abandoning the child in a way that threatens its life is initiating force against a ward.

I realize this (1), (2) and (3) is just a contrived construct to support a woman's right to an abortion, but that right should be dealt with head on and aboveboard not with clever, essentially circular formulations which traduce and obscure rights' theory. Only in the context of a woman's right to an abortion does it make sense to me to then deal with any possible exceptions and grey areas.

--Brant

[Wolf DeVoon]

Howdy,

Moral right is a personal attribute, which varies from person to person.

The right of petition (fair trial, due process) is created by compact among the best and brightest. There is no bridge between moral judgment and public justice.

[Guyau]

Roderick Long writes in the quoted Summary that the right to abort and the right not to be abandoned are positive rights. What is his distinction between positive rights and negative rights?

“One natural way of drawing the distinction might look like this: A positive right is one whose correlative obligation is the obligation to take some positive action on behalf of the right’s bearer; a negative right, on the other hand, is one whose correlative obligation is merely to refrain from interfering in some way with the right’s bearer.” (p. 169)

Why, then, does he take the right to abort to be a positive right? Where is the correlative obligation on some others to take some positive action on behalf of the woman seeking an abortion?

Long maintains that the proposed simple statement of the distinction between what we mean by a positive right and a negative right is inadequate. Suppose I maintain that I have an enforceable right to have one of your eyes (even though you will not consent to giving me an eye). Say, you have two working eyes, and I have none. Is this rights-claim a claim to a positive right or a claim to a negative right? Under the proposed simple way of making the distinction, it is a negative rights-claim. Surely that is false; it is a positive rights-claim and not a negative rights-claim.

Long therefore makes an addition to the statement of what is a positive right and what is a negative right. He takes a negative right to be a right to be treated in a way that does not involve taking positive action on behalf of the right’s bearer and does not involve being used as a mere means by the right’s bearer. Under this formulation, my claim of an enforceable right to one of your eyes is not negative, for by such a rights-claim of mine, you would be used as a mere means, rather than as an end-in-yourself.

Not negative, but is it positive? Long makes the formula for a positive right adequate to this sort of case by amending the initial simple formula. In his amended formula, a positive right is a right to be treated in a way that involves taking positive action on behalf of the right’s bearer or involves being used as a mere means by the right’s bearer. Under this formulation, my claim of an enforceable right to one of your eyes is a positive rights-claim because by such a rights-claim of mine, you would be used as a mere means.

But if, as Long maintains in (1), “every person has a right not to be treated as a mere means to the ends of others,” then “it is hard to see how anyone could ever have any positive rights” (p.170). So at the basic level, we have only negative rights. An example would be the right to not have one’s eye forcibly taken. Insofar as the fetus is not a person, a rights-bearing person, (2) is a right the pregnant woman holds simply as a negative right. Insofar as the fetus is (has become) a rights-bearing person, the woman still has a right to effect an abortion, but it is a positive right derivative from the basic negative right.

I do not go along with Long’s focus on the advanced fetus and neonate as persons. In my own treatment of rights to effect an abortion (1984), the focus is on the standing of the fetus as individual vis-à-vis the mother (individual as organism, not as DNA), and that is a concept more biologically basic than the concept of person.

Long’s idea that there are positive rights derivative from negative rights seems correct. The pertinent sort of derivative right he holds forth is the right to repel—in a measured way and without their consent—someone who has innocently entered one’s personal boundary. This is a positive right because it entails entering the personal boundary of the fetus without its consent (or the consent of any would-be guardians), and Long takes such an entry to be a form of treating someone as a mere means to one’s ends.

Edited November 17, 2007 by Stephen Boydstun

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Stephen,

I have an initial problem about examining the role of government strictly from the standpoint of positive or negative rights, at least as far as trying to remain consistent goes. I have read a lot of arguments that go off into qualifying this or that [fill in the blank] as not really being a positive right, but a negative one because of [fill in the blank]. But I think the foundation is incomplete.

My problem stems from the definition of human being and, as an aside, it became clear to me that this was a greater issue than it seemed because of a comment Rand made. She claimed that we delegate our right to use force (except in special cases of self-defense) to the government so that it holds a monopoly on it, and I know that, as a baby, I did no such thing. I was born into the system.

However, this did lead me to think a bit about human nature. We exist not only as individuals, but as individual members of a species. One of the characteristics of our species is that we live in groups. I have heard the standard Objectivist/libertarian argument that we do so only because it suits our self-interest and, although there is a large degree of truth in this, it does not convince me as the whole story. This is a large discussion, to large for here, but I do want to say that we live in groups anthropologically because this is a normal characteristic of human beings. There are exceptions like hermits, but this is the general rule. Living in groups is part of the human identity (the genus part, not the differentia). As the saying goes, A is A.

Thus we need some kinds of provisions that are species-oriented insofar as we do live in groups. This is a sticky point, especially since communism went whole-hog and claimed that the collective was all and the individual nothing. Nobody wants to go back to what that produced in the world.

I am certain that Rand knew that her provision of "delegating" the use of force was a literal fudge and I am sure that she would have explained it (I speculate) by saying something like when a person comes of age, he can change countries or go off into uncharted wilderness if he does not like such delegation. To me, that is still a fudge even on a basic level. After a person grows up, he has an entire history of mental attachments and physical property in the society in which he lives, so although he has the option of leaving, delegating the use of force was not part of a conscious choice he made to get there.

I think we ACCEPT the fact of the government monopoly on force as a kind of tax for living in a group (in a free country). This is why I think the government should be the ward of stray children and abandoned helpless people (mentally incompetent or severely handicapped) when no other adults are available to accept the charge—and laws can be made for family liability to avoid abuse—in order to protect their basic right to life as citizens.

There is a notion that has been bouncing around in my head for a while now: an 80-20 formulation (or some other number in that ballpark where there is a huge lopsidedness). This seems to be how humans work. For example, in producing goods, from the creator's end, 80% generally goes into creation and 20% into the physical fabrication, but for mass production from the worker's end, it seems like 80% generally goes into physical labor and 20% into mental work. Any wealth-creation system worth its salt will claim that 80% or so is mental. This formulation could even apply to pregnancy and abortion (as a general rule) because physical reality of biological development more or less supports it.

When we get to individual versus the group, it seems similar (for a fair balance), with 80% being individual choice and 20% being rules that need to be followed for guaranteeing minimum rights for all. If 80-20 is not good, maybe 90-10 or something like that is more appropriate.

I want to qualify this musing by stressing that it is only musing so far. There are some very serious considerations here and this is only an idea that popped into my head a while back to account for both individuality and species membership as a definition of human nature. Of course, I am working on the premise that rights are principles based on human nature and nothing else.

Anyway, something like this approach would set a ceiling on how much the government could limit freedom and not go around fudging—like saying that you delegate things that you never delegated. As it stands today, we are heading hellbent into an 80-20 controlled society, with 80 being the government's share.

Michael

[Guyau]

Two good articles on rights are these in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

Rights

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rights/

Legal Rights

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/legal-rights/

[tjohnson]

From a general semantic point of view there is no such thing as 'a right', individual or otherwise. There is not a thing you can point to and say "that is a right", like an object. What we have is various statements of rights and it is imperative not to confuse the two. So for example, just because someone says they have a right to do X doesn't mean in practice they will because all statements are subject to interpretation and someone else may interpret it differently.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

GS,

The danger with that kind of thinking is that there is no slavery, either. There are some evil bastards out there who love that idea and would not hesitate to act on it.

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

From a general semantic point of view there is no such thing as 'a right', individual or otherwise. There is not a thing you can point to and say "that is a right", like an object. What we have is various statements of rights and it is imperative not to confuse the two. So for example, just because someone says they have a right to do X doesn't mean in practice they will because all statements are subject to interpretation and someone else may interpret it differently.

Why should we care about the "general semantic point of view?" You can't point at it, "like an object." Why do you care about rights anyway?

--Brant

[tjohnson]

GS,

The danger with that kind of thinking is that there is no slavery, either. There are some evil bastards out there who love that idea and would not hesitate to act on it.

Michael

My point is that 'rights' are embodied in our various laws, which are formulations about how we are to behave in society. So if Smith says he has a right to do X and Brown says he doesn't then they could end up in court where a judge will interpret the law and decide who "is right". All I'm saying is that 'rights' are a kind of law, like a law against slavery, and like all laws they are man-made and subject to interpretation, improper application, etc.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

GS,

That is one meaning of rights. That is not what we generally discuss, however.

To stay on point, do you think there are such shades of meaning for slavery?

Michael

[tjohnson]

GS,

That is one meaning of rights. That is not what we generally discuss, however.

To stay on point, do you think there are such shades of meaning for slavery?

Michael

Considering that all our language is built on 'undefined' terms then there is a certain amount of ambiguity in every statement - no matter how clear we try to make it. I could say certain aspects of our tax system amount to slavery but that's just my opinion.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

GS,

It is nice to live in a free country where we can express such opinions, isn't it?

Michael

[BaalChatzaf]

GS,

It is nice to live in a free country where we can express such opinions, isn't it?

Michael

Semi-Free. Some opinions cannot be freely expressed everywhere. For example, a racist remark made by a teacher in public school is grounds for dismissal, by law. Write an e-mail expressing a great desire for the assassination of the President. Expect visitors very soon. Or try exchanging child porn photos with a correspondent on the Web. Very great trouble will come your way very soon. Or try advertising the sale of canibis seeds on the Web. You want trouble? You got trouble.

Margret Sanger, at one time, was arrested for teaching women methods of birth control Is that Free? Fortunately that has changed.

Inside the walls of our homes we are pretty free. Our in home privacy finally was nailed down in Griswald v. Connecticut in 1964.

On the street, not so free. Try walking naked down Main Street in broad daylight. On second thought, don't. Please.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Bob,

Your context, i.e., eroding freedom, is vastly different from GS's context, which is that freedom cannot be properly identified. It is only an opinion.

My remark was made in light of GS's context. He was not expressing an opinion to assassinate the President or any other such nonsense. He was claiming (er... expressing an opinion) that freedom itself was an opinion.

Of course, under slavery, he would not have that luxury. And that is more than an opinion.

EDIT - Broad daylight? OK. Got it. Anything wrong with dawn?

Michael

[BaalChatzaf]

Bob,

Your context, i.e., eroding freedom, is vastly different from GS's context, which is that freedom cannot be properly identified. It is only an opinion.

My remark was made in light of GS's context. He was not expressing an opinion to assassinate the President or any other such nonsense. He was claiming (er... expressing an opinion) that freedom itself was an opinion.

Of course, under slavery, he would not have that luxury. And that is more than an opinion.

Michael

The holdings of the Courts are opinions. Jails and guns are facts. We are permitted as much freedom as the government allows, given that too much government repression may trigger a revolution. We have as much freedom in our system as the electorate demands from the government. As long as the government hands out goodies the sheeple will permit many outrages against their liberties.

As I said, we are semi-free. Not slaves. And not free and autonomous individuals either. We won't be really free until taxes are eliminated. Until then you work for the government from Jan 1 to May 15 (roughly), whether you want to or not.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Bob,

You apparently did not understand my position yet.

You believe that freedom CAN exist and be identified. GS does not.

Michael