Rights and rights.
At the basis of human rights, Locke said, were the rights to Life and liberty, or as he said, free life. If I recall correctly there was also “property”.
If these are the “Natural human rights”, and it’s easily arguable that they are, then other human rights must all derive from them. The natural derivatives, it can be argued, are those rights that follow from the “Free life” idea. A classic example is “Self defense”. The right to self defense is not just natural, it’s damned near impossible to stop- someone smacks you, you’re going to smack back. The right to use firearms for self defense is not a “Natural” right because firearms are merely tools. Nobody unless they dismember you can take away your right to self defense, but they can remove from you your ability to defend yourself from someone stronger or from more people or bigger animals. The firearm is a tool that allows you the freedom to defend yourself.
There are a number of people- a minority, but a vocal one- that feel that they can only be safe if they remove the tools of self defense from others, and are anxious to use the power of the Federal Government to do so. There is no reason behind what they do, only fear and rancor at people who dare to be free.
From conversation with Pascal:
Pascal: but their numbers are so small, and their concerns so trivial, that it would not be even considered were those who pretend to represent us were not up to no good
Once again:If these are the “Natural human rights”, and it’s easily arguable that they are, then other human rights must all derive from them. The natural derivatives, it can be argued, are those rights that follow from the “Free life” idea. A classic example is ‘Freedom of worship” The right to worship as you please- or not, for that matter- like self defense, doesnt’ require any tools, though the Church allows an amplification of what a single individual can do. Nobody, unless they kill you, can take away your right to worship, but they can remove from you your ability to gather with like minded people to worship together. The church is a tool that allows you increased ability to defend your world against the evil that exists in it.
There are a number of people- a minority, but a vocal one- that feel that they can only be safe if they remove the freedom of worship from others, and are anxious to use the power of the Federal Government to do so. There is no reason behind what they do, only fear and rancor at people who dare to be free.
From conversation with Pascal:
Pascal: but their numbers are so small, and their concerns so trivial, that it would not be even considered were those who pretend to represent us were not up to no good
And I’m constantly crazy to think that any of this is happening, though the evidence of it is everywhere. And I am alone in my suspicions, which further indicates my krazy! The media won’t report the ugliness but there is a lot of it.
If any of this were happening in re- guns, for instance, the Freedom crowd sits up and takes notice. Let a praying archbishop be attacked, though, and it’s a non issue. ‘Those Catholics. Theyre all pedophiles anyway. They deserve to be taken down a notch. All those links, are churchy people, and they are judgemental. Fuck them. Who are they to judge? Who are they to tell those nice gay couples what to do?
We’re not. We’re fighting for our freedom. We do not care what gays do, at all. If the gays can find a church that will marry them, thats awesome. If they need the rights of survivorship, or any other legal right, they should get them
They break my leg, to coin a phrase, because they damage my ability to worship as I please, by allowing the law to dictate what MY church considers moral. THey pick my pocket when they seek legal action against the churches who will not cave to their desires.
You can stick your fingers in your ears and yell “LALALALALAL!” as loud as you want, but those links just don’t go away. And there are more every day. As if even one wasn’t sufficient to stir freedom minded people to say “You will not pass here!”
yeah, I’m crazy. I think I deserve as much freedom as anyone else.
13 comments Og | Uncategorized
Right there with you brother.
I’ve got a lot of stuff buzzing in my head right now, lets see if it comes out coherent at some point.
The arguments about rights miss the central point. (Perhaps deliberately?) Government doesn’t get to define words.
What? France? My point.
A concept, a tradition, a practice which predates ANY state (and, for that matter, most religions) may be considered to be a phenomenon of nature. Similar to pi, or 32 feet per second squared. You may legislate against them, but it WILL come around to bite you in the ass. And, your being hubristic in so doing, it will bite you in exact places, from precise directions, and with particular after effects so you never expected. Or anticipated. Or let your relentless ideological drive blind you to.
As it stands … or the status quo ante … any person in this country is free to marry any person OF THE OPPOSITE SEX who will have him/her. That’s the right.
An analog: The “right to choose” misses the point (perhaps deliberately?) that a right cannot be such if it intrudes on the life, liberty, or property of another person, the “right to choose” to kill a baby in the womb is doubly reprehensible for its abdication of responsibility FOR that life in addition to the murderous nature of it. The point is that the “choice” needs to be taken FAR, FAR in the advance of the getting pregnant part. And, yet, the so-called proponents of “choice” assert, aver, and avow that no woman or man can exert the force of will to NOT FUCK! It’s just impossible.
A right to marry — marriage being defined in terms that predate the state, this state, ANY state as the joining together of a man and a woman for the benefit of society (and, incidentally, the greater glory of God, but that may be a point made by patriarchs to keep the people in line, so we’ll let it slide) — is freely available to all humans, all citizens of this nation. People outside that realm assert that they’re in love and should therefore have the partnership rights which traditionally inhere to married couples.
I love my cats. I don’t want to marry them. (And, yes, Rachel, they ARE assholes. I love them anyway.)
So what’s the brouhaha all about? Well, a coherent argument not having been advanced by the proponents of this move… and given that massive changes to the dialectic it necessitates (to whit, the alteration of the definition of a societal practice that, as I say, predates the state and is taken to be a core principle of society) are never undertaken for good motives — ever (show me a countervailing example, and no, slavery doesn’t count)… I think we in the defense are right to be suspicious.
We may not have our arguments well-organized just yet, but there hasn’t been ANY coherent argument FOR the change, only AGAINST the status quo. Which arguments amount to “You’re a poopy-head hater who doesn’t want us to marry just because we’re gay.” (Which also seems to be the substance of the majority opinion in the recent SCOTUS ruling.)
Given that this movement appears to originate largely from the Left, I think I’m right to be doubly suspicious. I can only wish that gay folk themselves could be as suspicious. The people backing you are like Sauron, when he betrayed Men with the One Ring. Watch your six.
M
Exactly, Mark. Not one person can go through this blog or through contact with me in private and point to anything I want to do to harm any gay person. There are a lot of gay people in my life, and I would not wish them harm in any way. I desire that same courtesy of them. And I’m crazy and bigoted and evil and make people puke because I feel I deserve to be free. That bile rising in the throat is belief not reconciling with facts.
In the end, Doma was bad law, and we all knew it when the democrats passed it and Clinton signed it. For my part, I knew then it would be overturned because it was designed to be overturned in order to cement gay support for Democrats. But again, I’m crazy.
This is a most excellent effort at exposing a dichotomy in our ranks. We have fighters against similar threats in separate camps where there should be an united effort against the common enemy.
Tangentially, provoked by your methods, I wonder if we could ever identify where a sad tipping point was reached? The one where sarcasm ceased to functionally pierce through the thick walls that opponents build so reason cannot penetrate? It’s a more primitive looking thing that the silly plugged-ear LALAer. It’s the 3 monkeys.
mark: The arguments about rights are specifically designed to compare one basic right to another. Your point is not the one I was trying to make- you make that one better than I- I was specifically talking about the intended damage that is already being caused.
Pascal latches onto the nub of the discussion.
I wonder.
I am a nut too, so please indulge me and then I will go quietly back to my rubber room.
I think the gays are the useful fools for the liberals and progressives. Consider: the church is the biggest problem the progressive left has (Probably for the far right too…). The church takes issue with things it shouldn’t such as women’s roles in the home, marriage, abortion, genetics/cloning/stem cell research etc. They bring up these uncomfortable questions and sometimes have the gall to answer them – and that sticks in the craw of their self proclaimed intellectual and moral superiors in the liberal element.
Also: their classic tactic in dealing with political opposition is to either destroy it in a frontal assault or revolution…or the infiltrate their enemies as they have done with the gov’t, the media, the schools and universities, the armed forces etc. That is what I believe they are setting up for. Everyone wants to see the gays get a fair shake, everyone wants to compromise to atone for past injustices…and in the space of a couple years, if things go right for them – the church will be pushing homosexuality from the pulpit. This will infuriate flock and divide the church.
Nor do I think caving in to the gays will save the church; there are so many other aspects of the church that trouble the new modern liberals with most of them involving those icky morals and ethics of theirs.
I don’t think this is about rights, or gays or fairness Og. It’s about you. And people like you. You’re a problem and you and your community need to ‘go away’.
Gays divide people and when people are divided – they’re weak and easier to take advantage of. I have no dog in this fight, but I really, really don’t like the scenarios that are setting up, it bothers me that the gays themselves aren’t speaking out against the attacks on the church and liberty, and I would advise anyone that has skin in this game to proceed very, very carefully as you are. Civil wars start over stuff like this, and if the gays want to get stupid about it…I will not be siding with them as it stands right now.
Stick around, Bob. Pretty soon you will also be accused of hating Jews, believing in masonic conspiracies, (Hi, Nathan!!)stereotyping Asians and generally being called (As Alger puts it) a mean poopy head.
Personal attacks and outright lies are what passes for reason these days, apparently.
There exists a subset of the population that can never be convinced. Everyone thinks they’re brilliant misunderstood people who just know the truth is not the way mean old poopyhead Og puts it, no matter how much evidence exists to the contrary.
Sometimes, though, when everyone disagrees with you, it’s because you’re wrong.
“The church takes issue with things it shouldn’t such as women’s roles in the home, marriage, abortion, genetics/cloning/stem cell research etc. ”
Bob, I think you meant that rhetorically. If not, then this applies to you as well.
the quote does highlight my problem with the left as it is only the Christian church that is not allowed the right to say what is moral. Islam has no such stricture, and until it does I will not believe anything the left says.
Perhaps we should collectively start a blog called “Mean Ol’ Poopyheads”. Sorta a lite version of Fran Porretto’s “Liberty’s Torch”.
Anyhow, looking for a tipping point, or turning point, Pascal wonders about, above? As far as “modern times” go, perhaps an argument could be made for at least three points in time:
1. The Wilson Presidency, specifically his allowing for the modern day income tax, the League of Nations, and letting his wife effectively run the office of the President for the great length of time he was incapacitated due to massive stroke.
2. The FDR Presidency, placing Dewey in charge of education, the ballooning of the federal government and or its alphabet agencies, to list just two items.
3. The LBJ Presidency and rise of the media presence (television news in particular) in (at least in the beginning, for the media) subtly directing the way one should be thinking or feeling about social/political events. CBS’s handling of what we saw and heard about the war in VietNam, being an example of this. (Walter Cronkite, may you rot in Hell…right next to Jane Fonda.)
The point being, if our major institutions, the ones we, at least used to, place our trust in, turn us in directions it is not desirable to go (at least for those with half a brain). This would (or could) be where “x” percent of the population, at first, buy into the propaganda….perhaps doing the “3 monkeys thing” (“Why it’s our elite leaders and ‘The most trusted man in news’ who are telling us this, so it must be true.”). This would be followed by their regurgitation of the talking points provided. But at the end of the day, they are reduced to “LALALA” because the alternative is far too damning. (The truth, I can’t handle the truth…or damn this is going to tear my pride to shreds…you get the idea.)
There may be other points in time (Women’s suffrage??!!! Yeah, I am not only going to hell for that one, but misogynist re-education camp, as well.) Heck, any point in time where feelings were allowed to trump reason.
I await the hating harridans
For you to be right (and believe me, I don’t discount that you are)…for this to be another wedge, or at least the thin edge of one, then there must be a decades (or longer) conspiracy, or at least a plan.
One the one hand, I cannot disagree that there is an agenda. On the other hand, I cannot see those currently trying to change things as being able to hold to such a decades long conspiracy.
But then again, there have been societies around for centuries that seek to direct and change mankind’s values and morals.
Scary.
Decades long conspiracy? as I have mentioned, look at the boy scouts. The US military (Remember: The same democrat that gave us DOMA gave us Don’t ask, don’t tell) the Girl scouts. the educational system. The current judiciary staff.
Not simply decades. And i’m not even discussing what’s going on within churches.
Have to agree with …geeze: who said it? With leftists, you don’t have to have a conspiracy. They have all swallowed the leftist indoctrination, have failed to think about any of it since, and act on their delusions freely and without let. Thus, Obama “jokes” about auditing his enemies, with no hint that he believes it’s wrong, and –viola! — the IRS audits the TEA Party to death. (Well, near death.) No orders needed to be passed anywhere.
M
Best consortium of higher thought in a long while.
Guy, your tipping point is back in pre-history, when the tribal/clan chiefs discovered that they could get far more compliance out of the tribe by setting rules for mating, which natural act had been animalistic up to that point.
Since that time, great spirituality has been introduced to mating, and great bureaucracy as well. Christian religion grew up from Adam & Eve, and the other flavors had similar origins for the start of their religions.
The solution is to acknowledge that governance of Man and the procreation of Man should never have been mixed in the first place. Separate all the rules, process and custom of marriage from the rules, process and custom of governance. Give marriage concepts to the spiritual world and governance to the government. Where the two must intertwine, a council of religion and government will be set up to resolve those issues.
In sum, fix those mistakes that led us to this sorry pass.