Divemedic wrote:
No matter how the words were chosen, there would still be an argument. That is what governments do, in fact that is the only thing ANY government can do- pass laws that infringe upon rights.
A voluntarily-funded government can do many legitimate things by legitimate means. A coercively-funded government? Not so much. Thomas Jefferson himself said that "the favorite purposes" of government were to strengthen itself and increase the public debt. A government can effectively accomplish these ends only if it acquires funding by violence or the threat of violence.
Divemedic wrote:
Governments infringe upon rights by passing laws.
True.
Divemedic wrote:
EVERY law infringes upon the rights of someone. It is up to the governed to decide if that infringement is appropriate.
Entirely false. No one has a right to murder anyone else, rape anyone else, steal from anyone else, or initiate any form of violence upon anyone else. A law against any such acts is not a violation of anyone's rights. A law prohibiting me from falsely yelling "fire" in a crowded theater is
not a restriction upon any of my rights, because I have no right to fraudulently and recklessly subject others to unnecessary risk.
The "governed" are ostensibly (and laughably) they who "govern." They have no right or basis in reality to enact a law that says, "It is now a violation of other people's rights to perform this action that in and of itself is not a violation of other people's rights." The most they can do is
recognize (not create) the actual rights of individual men. Nobody "created" or "granted" equal rights to blacks. Their rights always existed. People finally woke up to this fact, and finally
recognized these rights. There is a gigantic difference between the two ideas. One says that we can, through a majority vote,
create an objective reality, and the other says that we merely
recognize a universal and pre-existent objective reality that is inherent in our human nature.
When people attempt to go beyond protecting the individual rights of individual men, they leave the realm of practicality, and start trying to directly protect ideals, beliefs, and morals. You cannot force anyone to believe anything with violence (violence being the tool and nature of a government) and you cannot directly force people to be moral with violence. You can
only remove from society those who have proven themselves to be threats to the life, liberty and property of others, or at least force them to remunerate their victims.
I believe in God, and I am not a libertine or approve of any immoral actions, but no government has
any place legislating morality outside of what immoral acts happen to also coincide with the violation of the rights of
individual men. It may not attempt to protect God's rights, and force everyone to go to church on Sunday. It may not attempt to protect its own power, through forcing people to subsidize its actions. It may only protect the individual life, liberty and property of individuals!
-Sans Authoritas