Rights and Libertards

[Lenin McCarthy]

A lot of libertarians, Randites and the likes use arguments about Rights. That they have the Rights of self-determination and self-ownership that trumps all other considerations.  And that therefore, it is their Right to avoid paying taxes, to run brothels and shoot heroin. Of course, this is stupid. No man is a friggin' island. But, where do those Rights come from? A lot of libertarians are atheists, but seem to have no problems with the idea that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.

The Rights they are speaking of didn't magically appear to John Locke in huge golden letters written in the sky a summer's day in 1687. They are purely social constructs, introduced by those in power so that they could stay in power even after the people got tired of feudalism. That doesn't mean that rights are bad. Becuase of them, in many countries we now have something resembling education, health care, gender equality and other very nice things. But they didn't just appear. Some people, somewhere, fought for them.

Anyway, please stop invoking Rights in political arguments. If you think the War on Drugs is infringing on your Unalienable Right to Smoke Crack Cocaine in Your Mother's Basement, then I have a hard time finding any sympathy to offer ya. Same if you think the Norway's criminalization of buying sexual services is infringing on your Unalienable Right to Take Advantage of Vulnerable Men and Women. Both are harmful, but you're not the one who is suffering in the long term. The people who are suffering are the people who die in the Mexican drug wars. And the Nigerian women who go to Norway in the hopes of a better life, only to get forced into prostitution, where they have to do demeaning work for little pay, with little to no access to health care and other public services.

So fuck you, deontological libertarians. And fuck you consequentialist libertarians as well.

Or Kill Me.

(I think I will expand on this later, when I'm not dead tired, it's not 1:26 am and I don't have a French exam the next day)

[Nephew Twiddleton]

Do get some rest, but, I would like you to clarify what Libertarians in Norway are like. Libertarian is one of those words that has essentially become meaningless because it means a lot of different things, some of which conflict. And Libertarian here in the US has taken on a completely different meaning than what I was originally told was the definition. (I was told that I was probably a Libertarian. That is laughable in the current US political climate.)

[Lenin McCarthy]

The libertarians in Norway are divided into two camps, basically:

The Liberal People's Party. They got 0.013% of the votes in the last elections, but are growing. They're hardline objectivists and free-market libertarians and want to dismantle the entire welfare state, and thinks that the government should only run the police forces, the army and the courts.

A large faction within the right-wing populist Progress Party, especially their youth wing. The Progress Party got 22.9% of the votes in the last elections, but they have dropped significantly in the polls after a lot of sex scandals and of course the fact that one of their former members shot and killed 69 people on July 22nd this year, even though he has distanced himself from the pary and vice versa. These libertarians also want to dismantle the welfare state, but most of them want to maintain some sort of public school and health system. A lot of them also throw some socially conservative positions into the mix, like being opposed to gay marriage, abortion and immigration. This is not the U.S. though, so they're not very vocal about that.

There are very few pro-peace libertarians here. They're pretty much all AMUHRICA FUCK YEAH! and supported the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and everywhere you can find Muslims.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

That's really odd. I thought that Norway's "welfare state" was proof that some models not only worked, but helped to create some of the happiest and longest lived people in the world.

[Lenin McCarthy]

Well, the "Scandinavian model" seems to work, and it has massive support from the population (including the entire parliament excluding a few Progress Party MPs). The Progress Party's success in 2009 stemmed more from a mix of xenophobia and disillusionment with the two major parties (the dull and moderate Conservative Party and the dull and moderate Labour Party) than from a widespread opposition to the welfare state.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

Well, the "Scandinavian model" seems to work, and it has massive support from the population (including the entire parliament excluding a few Progress Party MPs). The Progress Party's success in 2009 stemmed more from a mix of xenophobia and disillusionment with the two major parties (the dull and moderate Conservative Party and the dull and moderate Labour Party) than from a widespread opposition to the welfare state.

So it's really more opportunism than anything else. Ok, I'll bear that in mind and revisit the OP.

[navkat]

Rights are not constructs. There are certain rights which are natural rights which means the understanding of them and human tendancy toward them pre-existed any government structure.

The right to decide which berries to eat off a tree, for instance...or to refuse that funny mushroom your buddy is offering you...or to eat tonnes of that fungus that grows on the rye and spend the rest of the day marveling at the caterpillars.

The right, when your neighbour tries to smash your skull into a tree and jank your pelts, to pick up a big rock and bean him upside the melon and send him on his way.

Natural rights means a bunch of old fuckers can't just set up shop, say "We're the government now and we tell you what you can eat and whether or not Oog from next door can jack yo shit without you braining him one."

In my athiest case, "divinely granted" is a tongue-in-cheek term.