[NMLUG] Rights (Human and otherwise)

[starbane at gmail.com (Paul Tietjens)]

I recently read this article
(http://anti-state.com/article.php?article_id=472) and thought that it
bore some relevance to the discussion here regarding animal rights
some time ago.  I think it's worth reading.

I found it highly thoughtful.  My summation of the author's idea:
You don't need to subscribe a theory of inherited rights to believe in
freedom.  Rights are, ultimately unimportant.

I could be wrong (I've been known to miss certain things), but I
believe the author missed a crucial point.

If you discard the need for a theory of rights, and state simply that
to allow people maximum individual freedom is of the most benefit to
the most people, you leave yourself open to this attack from those in
power:

"If what we are doing isn't wrong, just not helpful to you and your
friends, what are you bitching about?  Get over it, you've lost."

If the authot is correct in his logic, we have nothing to lose.  We
should start killing people we don't like now, and get it over with. 
After all, if the only difference between us and them is that they are
in power, we know how to change that situation in a world without
rights.

That's a dark reality I don't care to live in.  I prefer to believe
that the second-handers, the looters and the dictators are 'evil'.  If
the author is right, I'm free to do so with impunity.  I guess that's
why I'm not a nihilist.  I think some things do, and must matter for
sanity's sake.

-- 
http://www.doctrinity.com