Anarchist Discussion Forums

That's entirely pathetic, I hope you do realize that. You called me out, I threw the truth down, it didn't mesh with your own little spasm of factoids that you save in your righteous rolodex for special occasions, and now you stick your tail in the air and flaunt off. Sadly, this is something I expect from you. I pity anyone who was ever fooled into thinking you possess an iota of rational thought in your cerebrum.

Are you having some kind of internet discussion spasm Mal? It sure looks it it. I'm going to leave you to yourself, I have no intention of conversing with someone who intentionally misquotes me, and then makes character attacks against me based on those misquotes.

You've misunderstood. The human nature argument only works in conjunction with the moral argument. For that, you can respond to the civil rights. Or you can deproblematize by shrinking away in a poof of "I'm bored, taaaah!" <br> <br>To think that I am the only person who believes in human and civil rights is not correct. However, quite sadly, the belief in these rights is not necessarily universal, either, hence their continued infringement.

"The first point is irrelevant, you can protect others from further actions by criminals without punishment" <br> <br>Not irrelevant, considering isolation is seen by most as a punishment.

"Blah blah horrible anarchists who take away our right to determine the content of the internet blah blah resisting the government blah we can also imprison them I'm a dumbass blah blah from being worthy of human right consideration: children, mentally-ill, blah who serves your interests far better than you ever could." <br> <br>For a group that hates McCarthy so much, you sure argue a lot like him. What with your wild accusations based in imagination and all that.

"After all, when those protestors were told to leave they refused, so it was totally justified to take away any right they might have to freedom from violence, after all, they took away our right to tell them to stop protesting. Then, after we attacked them, they had the audacity to defend themselves and even attack back!" <br> <br>Black bloc militancy does not equal passive resistence. Any situations where the police have used excessive force against civil protestors are not condoned by me or any reasonable liberal.

"But we don't always take away the rights of those who violate the rights of others, now do we? No, what would a conception of rights be without gross double standards to apply? For example, we wouldn't dare take away the right to life and liberty for Johnny, who is part of our arms forces and goes to foreign countries to kill people for us. After all, those people don't really have any rights to take away. They are the enemy, and our enemies have all also made a conscious decision to forfeit their rights, the civilians, children, and villagers living out in the middle of nowhere included." <br> <br>PREACH ON TO THE CONVERTED, OH MESSIAH.

"there is the tax protestor who has failed to recognize our "right" to tax him, so it is okay to restrict or eliminate any right he might have to freedom, and eye for an eye and all that. Since the poor resident of a slum house does not allow us to pursue our "right" to charge them rent" <br> <br>The first example depends on the opinion of the liberal and whether or not they support opt-outs. The second example is a strawman, since everyone should have somewhere decent to live.

"Oh! Silly me. So children think they are "above" basic rights, and the mentally ill as well, eh? What about those damned blacks or asians we import for our labor? Or perhaps your assertion wasn’t all that exhaustive, perhaps people quite often have their rights taken away regardless of whether or not they have personally violated any. Mal. makes sense of the fact that these people historically were and often still are denied any rights by assuring us that they must have failed to respect them." <br> <br>Any denial of their rights is the act of an uncivil government. Ask yourself now if their violations are occurring at the level of government or at the social level.

Apparantly you didn't read the first lines of my post, nor do you have an active frontal lobe. There is no difference between the two words when they are in verb form. Legitimation is justification.

So I'll legitimate the rights for you. Fine. Here are rights that I recognize, both human and civil: <br> <br>- Freedom of conscience (ideological liberty) is a right because reason and logic are methods that often arrive at separate but equally valid conclusions. For the sake of peace and benefit of the doubt, and out of recognition of a common humanity, respect and tolerance must be given towards conscientious objectors and those of differing faiths and cultures. Freedom of speech comes as an extension of the above, but also as a general rule, because of the subjectivity related to evaluating moral arguments in the heat of passion. Freedom of publication comes as an extension of freedom of speech. <br> <br>- Freedom of association and freedom of movemen, are rights because the suppression of these aspects leads easily to the loss of political freedom, which is not a favorable situation for anyone. <br> <br>- Freedom from totalitarianism and from reactionism is the central ideal of liberalism. A government must fit certain criteria before it is considered legitimate. The criteria are as follows. <br> <br>- If a government is not democratic, allowing universal sufferage, it is illegitimate. This is because all citizens must be seen as equals, because a heirarchy of rights is necessarily unegalitarian, and wrong. <br> <br>- If members of the citizenry are disallowed from running for office, it is illegitimate. This is to prevent the isolation of representation away from the populace. <br> <br>- Any state that does not recognize the ideal of a civil government will show itself by failing to safeguard the fundamental rights of human personality, personal freedom, the right of free criticism, the recognition by the Government of its responsibility towards its People, and the independence of the administration of Law and Justice. A civil political form must be based on consent which is conscious, rational and free (not coerced). This demands a secret and fair ballot. <br> <br>- People have a right to economic freedom because to remove it (completely) would lead to the ultimate removal of political freedom. (Note that this does not extend to the support of globalization or fiscal libertarianism.) <br> <br>- People have the right to workfare services as the free market is not always easy to navigate. <br> <br>- People have the right to a minimum wage because labor has a base worth. <br> <br>- People have a right to a good education if they so desire it, because education helps quality of life. <br> <br>- People have the right to private property, because it is a natural human instinct to have and "own" a familiar environment. <br> <br>- People have a right to be free from harm (sickness, poverty, disability) because the threat to physical liberty is very close to coercion, and out of a general sense of civil responsibility. <br> <br>- The majority have the right to overrule a minority except in regards to the above interests. The welfare of the community must prevail and must be safeguarded from the abuse of power by sectional interests. <br> <br>- A civil state recognizes that those rights which benefit labor and capital are complementary, and that organized collaboration between the two is what will inevitably lead to betterment of both. This is because of the co-dependent nature of the worker-capital relationship.

[color=green] But before you distract this into a verbal dispute, how about you make up your mind on the main topic, like I suggested? </font color=green> <br> <br>I'm not distracting anything, you brought this up, and apparently you don't even know that there is a difference between the two words. <br> <br>As for your question, I don't know which part of the "main topic" you are referring to.

I knew you were going to go off on this particular tangeant, so I made care to look up the word "legitimate" to make sure how you were using it. I'm noticing a total lack of verbs in your hasty explanation, confusing it with the adjective form. <br> <br>But before you distract this into a verbal dispute, how about you make up your mind on the main topic, like I suggested?

Wait! I've got it, you must think that justifying your beliefs in rights as part of an argument and recognizing rights as legitimate in a society are the same thing. But that makes no sense, certainly you know that these two words are not identical in meaning, right? Similar sure, but that is because they touch on the same subject, not because they mean the same thing. <br> <br>www.m-w.com <br>legitimate: conforming to recognized principles or accepted rules and standards <br>justified: to prove or show to be just, right, or reasonable <br> <br>Notice, for example, how the later is a process by which you can demonstrate the former, but not vice versa. Let me make this a little more simple for you. If you can justify your belief in rights to me, then I would be happy to consider them legitimate. However, without proper justification I don't see how you could go on considering them to be legitimate.

"I don’t expect you or anyone else to waive your rights, I simply advocate that you stop legitimating them" <br> <br>"Must feel nice and smug to be part of the statist majority and feel no need at all to justify your beliefs" <br> <br>First, make up your mind.