From: brian@quake.sylmar.ca.us (Brian K. Yoder)
Newsgroups: alt.politics.clinton,alt.politics.bush,soc.rights.human,alt.society.civil-liberty
Subject: Re: Legalizing drugs (was Re: Clinton's Gestapo/Plan for takeover)
Keywords: significant words from a document used as an index to content
Date: 28 Sep 92 01:15:02 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: Quake Public Access

In article <1992Sep25.133336.12077@newshub.ariel.yorku.ca> cs911461@ariel.yorku.ca (CHRISTIAN D. ARMOUR) writes:
>In article <Bv420D.n2s@news.cso.uiuc.edu> StarOwl@uiuc.edu writes:

>(For those who insist on misquoting my statements, my argument is that
>any given State has the final say when it comes to issues of rights.

I completely disagree.  The state has the final (well, at least momentary) say
about how it will relate to the rights of individuals, but it cannot have
any impact whatsoever on what rights people actually have.  My favorite
analogy in this regard is about hte operating principles of engines.
It is a matter of brute fact that spark plugs in IC engines ought to fire
when the cylinder is full of air and fuel and not during the exhaust cycle.
It is the right way of building an engine no matter whether people foolishly
build engines another way.  Of course, people are free to build engines in
which the sparkplug fires during the exhaust cycle, but the engine won't
work properly.  The situation is the same with social organizations.  It is
a brute fact beyond human manipulation that people need to be free to live
successfully.  Governments (and street gangs) are certainly free to create
a situation where this freedom is not present, but such a system will not
work any more than the engine with backward sparkplug firings.

>This isn't my idea of a perfect world, by any stretch.  In some 
>countries at certain times (such as the USA today) it is quite easy to
>argue for justice on the basis of rights.  

I am afraid that so few people have any idea what rights are these days,
that it is becoming more and more difficult to make such arguments successfully.
That aside, the ability to get the government to listen to arguments about
rights or the lack of it does not cause those rights to vanish or to exist.
They are facts beyond changing.

>In others (such as Canada 
>and Iraq), this is more difficult.  Rights are a moral call and such,
>we should expect to find differences among different political 
>entities as well as within each entity at different points in history.
>These rights are therefore relative to:
>	1) moral interpretation
>	2) time
>	3) place

You are confusing matters of fact with maters of opinion.  It is a matter 
of fact that Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, even though you might find
differences of opinion about whether that is actuall true or not.  The world
is either round or flat, and that fact is not changed by the fact that 
certain people over the course of history may have had differing opinions
about it.

>The State "owns" (for want of a better word really) the individual
>because it is the State that dictates the individual's rights.  

Nonsense!  By that standard, everyone is necessarily a slave unless he lives
alone as a hermit.  Can you really not even concieve of a government 
which does not make slaves of it's citizens?  How sad.

>Obviously, this is why we call ourselves "Americans" or "Canadians"
>or "Iraqis" or whatever.  If while travelling, try saying "I'm a
>free Stateless individual" when you're asked for your nationality.
>You could get more than just funny looks.)

To say that one is from a certain country and even bound by that country's
laws is not to say that you are a slave of that country.

--Brian
Newsgroups: alt.politics.clinton