Yes, roachboy, and for that reason, the idea of natural law seems, to me, rather archaic.

I think that all laws governing society are, well, social.

Again, you're mistaking the difference between the government not allowing you the freedom of speech versus a natural citizen. You are purposefully being obtuse to troll the point. Legal consequences from an individual is not protected by the US Constitution.

I always assumed naturalistic law was a consequence of holding a monotheistic belief—one god, one set of universal rules—but now that I think of it I know plenty of atheistic libertarians that seem to, to one degree or another, share this idea of universal rights. I may have been wrong to necessarily attribute such a belief system to religion. This would make for an interesting discussion in philosophy, but we might be getting a bit off topic right now.



So the Supreme Court overturned a long-standing ban on corporate spending on elections. My admittedly hasty reaction was that this is probably very bad. We're already in dire need of campaign finance reform, something many of our politicians have been fighting back against for a long time, but this is is something more obvious and more direct.

Let's say you're a Chinese corporation that owns factories that create solar panels. Like many large Chinese corporations, you have very strong ties to the Chinese government, meaning that often your interests align. You're concerned about the US government subsidizing their solar industry, so you make an investment by purchasing US airtime to prop up conservative candidates that are either fuzzy on climate change or are down-right anti-science so that those subsidies end. The advertisements on average contribute to wins and the subsidies end, meaning that you are now free to undercut American solar companies and are exporting to the US.

Is this free speech?

---------- Post added at 09:01 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:41 PM ----------

So I'm trolling or I'm stupid? That's called a false choice, Cynth, and it's an intellectually dishonest way of debating. Debate the facts and the conclusions, please.

When I refer to defamation as a limit on free speech, I'm essentially citing John Stuart Mill's "harm principle", an idea I've run into debating over on the Mises website. The crux of the principle is power should only be asserted over any member of a society by the government to prevent or punish the harm of others. Being an individualist, I figured this would be something you would appreciate.

If a woman were to accuse you of rape despite the fact you did not rape her, she is attempting to inflect harm on you via her words. It's in this case where, assuming she's found guilty, it is the responsibility of the government to bring punitive measures against her for her speech. She is not free to say anything she wants without fear of prosecution because some of her speech is inherently harmful to others. That's a necessary limitation on free speech.
Can you word this differently, please? I'm not following.

If you have to get your own place to shout what you want, isn't that in and of itself a limit on free speech? A limit that is placed and enforced by the government?

I think this is the point people have been trying to make. And lest I also be accused of "trolling," the fact is that no right is ever absolute. And to move this discussion away from the more extreme examples to more practical day to day things, we already know about, and almost all of us seem to accept, differences in communications from corporations and individuals.

We all seem to be ok with the notion that any one of us, individually, can say whatever crap we want about treatments and drugs, but we all seem to be ok with the notion that Bayer should not be able to run an ad claiming that aspirins cure cancer. We all seem to be ok with the notion that, as long as we don't do any tax evasion, we can lie, individually, to anyone about how much we make. But we all are OK with the idea that corporations should not be able to lie to potential investors.

I was waiting for this to come up. The same view that the framers and founders had, that of the 'quaint' notion of natural law, must be deconstructed in order to implement the statist view. If natural law can be deconstructed, then you can claim that your rights come from the government and can be modified at the will of the electorate. This is the plan that liberals and socialists have implemented.

Where do rights come from if not granted by the govn't?

If I got on a tirade here at TFP and I get banned for what I say, can I sue HalX for impinging my free speech? If not, why?

that is a question you need to find the answer to for yourself, because nothing I tell you is going to have you believe it.

You think the government grants you your rights? how did the government come to be? what created the government?

If free speech were absolute you could do the following without going to jail:

1) Say you have a bomb at an airport
2) Tell a bank teller that you have a gun
3) Yell fire in a crowded theater
4) Openly commit slander
5) Openly commit libel
6) Say you are going to kill the president on national TV
7) etc

Freedom of speech is not and never has been absolute. Anyone who says it is absolute is completely ignorant on that point.

wasn't created by me nor you, so our rights came from someone else. That someone else was the govn't that was established over 200 years ago. And we have added rights numerous times since then. None of which are absolute. They can and have been changed multiple times.

uh...the constitution? you could say that the language of the constitution itself is what defines natural law by the way in which it posits rights which precede it. you don't need a substantive notion of "natural law" for the game to work.

it's better that way i think, that natural law be understood as created by the constitution itself as the space which precedes and conditions it.

i was gonna start a thread about this and still might, but yesterday the pope, that fine progressive fellow, used a notion of natural law as part of his lovely arguments against equal protection legislation that extends stuff like access to housing or adoption or marriage to people to happen to be gay. the pope called all that stuff a violation of freedom of religion.

think i'm joking?

Pope condemns gay equality laws ahead of first UK visit | World news | guardian.co.uk

so that mean the pope sees religious beliefs as being legitimately expressed through the exclusion of people. and debate about those exclusions? well, that just comes from hotheads and "radicals". how do you know they're just hotheads and "radicals"? because of what they're arguing against. and what are they arguing against? why natural law of course.

I think you need to take history and constitution classes again. maybe you've actually never read the constitution, because your entire statement is false.

---------- Post added at 09:54 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:52 AM ----------

all that has done is show the rational thinking world that organized religion should probably stay out of legal matters. Natural law isn't something handed down by the church, or the supposed deity of a church.

Please show me where I'm mistaken.

The 'government' didn't just spring up out of the ground and it wasn't here when we became a free nation. 'we the people' created the federal government. It belongs to us, it serves us, we are it's master. It would be an incredible leap of logic to then surmise that an entity we the people created could grant us our rights, don't you think?

to do otherwise, think that the government created itself, then created our states, and us as a whole, is to have not a single understanding about the founding of the USA.

That's a romantic notion, but the truth is that the Constitution was ACTUALLY created by a small group of men who took it upon themselves to speak on the behalf of everyone.

Yes the constitution was written by people. But it is a legal contract, that is and has been subject to changes. As times change, it has to be both interprited and changed to fit the time/situation at hand. The founders couldn't invision a tube full of people flying through the air, so the restriction was put in place in modern times to limit the scope of the freedom of speech.

One last example of limits/restrictions placed on rights. I'll use the 2nd amendment.
Shall not be infringed is the language it uses. Yet in my state of Ohio, my right is infringed from bearing arms in certain places, govn't buildings, schools, banks and anywhere a business owner places a sign on the entryway stating that no weappons are allowed on premises. That puts a restriction on my right to bear arms.

unless the definition of absolute is changed in the dictionary, this discussion is over. Numerous examples have been placed before you showing you that your rights aren't absolute. I will no longer discuss this topic with someone who will not accept reality.

you also need to read the history of ratification then. That 'small group of men' were selected by representatives of each state, who were selected by the people of that state. Every written and crafted paragraph went through a vetting process, then was disseminated among those representatives. Those representatives and the media at that time explained to the people what it was they were creating and what each article meant as far as the power being given to the federal government. Then each state citizen got to vote as to how their representatives were going to vote on ratification.

You do know all this, right? Or are you under the impression that that small group of men wrote up the constitution and ratified it without any approval or disapproval from the citizens of each state?

---------- Post added at 10:39 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:37 AM ----------

so you approve of and endorse the current practice of having 545 people who are elected to serve you, interpret and define what your rights, liberties, and restriction are? then there is no hope for you to be free. dont' discuss it anymore, just bow down and accept your fate in reality.

dksuddeth isn't arguing reality, he's arguing what he thinks SHOULD be reality (per his perception of the framers' intentions). To him, you SHOULD be able to carry a gun into all of those places.

You're arguing two different things

One would benefit from reading Foucault's "Governmentality," I would think. Of course there are a number of other critical theories produced in the 20th century that would also give one an interesting perspective on these things.

...as there is a difference between established intent and actual outcome/functionality.

It's the exact same process as the ratification of the Constitution THAT YOU JUST POSTED.

How is a group of elected representatives passing laws that interpret and define my rights ANY DIFFERENT than a group of selected representatives vetting the Constitution and ratifying it?

Here's the real tragedy. This statement is THE key to the whole thing, and it's going to make a great WHOOOOOOSHING noise as it goes over the heads of natural law believers, on this thread and elsewhere.

It's pretty hard to fathom that a condition can be brought into existence as having preceded that which brought it into existence. It's counter-intuitive and paradoxical. It's a lot easier to have the shallow level of interaction with it by believing as Fact the assertion that it has always been the case.

i've constantly made the distinction between what the constitution was written to be and what it is currently being tortured as. I'm fully aware that current reality has the government and courts restricting rights as THEY feel they should be. I'm also intelligent enough to be able to read plain text of documents as they are written and know that todays practices are not what the founders created for us. I'm also cognizant of the sheeples (yes, that's all of you who accept reasonable restrictions on your rights) willingness to surrender everyones freedoms for their own perception of safety in society. What I can't understand is the inability of that same group of sheeple to see that the government is going to look out for itself first, then maybe think of protecting you. But I guess there's no making a horse drink if you lead it to water.

---------- Post added at 10:48 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:46 AM ----------

no, its not. your ignorance is showing.

when congress passes laws, they do not take the proposed law to the people of their districts and ask how they should vote, they just say aye or nay. The constitution was much different. If you're not going to learn what I teach you about the history of it, at least go take a class on it.

---------- Post added at 10:49 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:48 AM ----------

the real tragedy is that you actually believe that bullshit. it's putting the cart before the horse. keep on believing that the government created your freedom, I could care less, especially if you're unwilling to believe the truth. That's what statism is about though.

do you honestly believe that the Constitution would not have been ratified if the unwashed masses had seen problems with it?

Yes. Look at what is going on now where they are allowed to vote on the adoption of new articles. This goes for the EU Constitution, and the emerging democracies.

As with where rights are derived, you can believe that they are given and taken away by the government. If you read teh first two paragraphs of the Declaration of Independence, you'll find that it's not the government that gives them to you, "they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights".

Was there such a thing as "natural law" in the middle ages? What would have happened to a serf who claimed he had the right to free speech and self-determination? Was the inalienable rights of man somewhere lurking in the wings waiting to get discovered by some enlightened eighteenth-century wig-wearers?

They declared independence from England. They also declared into existence inalienable rights. They weren't a government yet when they did that. They founded a government upon their declaration of intrinsic, inalienable rights. That was, in large part, the whole breakthrough in government that the founding of the United States represented.

To say "no, those rights were always there and really ARE inherent to humanity" actually does injustice to what the founders created.

The Declaration of Independence is not a legal document.

Also, the Creator? How is that better?

It is better because as I was taught in Civics class that King George believed his was by birthright and that gave him the right to rule over people. It was important that the declarers made sure that sure that they elevated themselves (or lowered King George) to their level so that the discussion following would make sense to discuss as opposed to King George saying, "But God gave me the right to rule over you.

It doesn't state God, Allah, Yahweh, or any specific god, but one whom the reader identifies with as the power that created them, even if that means the spark of life at conception.

Well, but it wasn't just that George had this crazy thought about divine right of kings. That was REALLY HOW IT WAS. For CENTURIES. Everyone agreed to that. That was the deal--if God had you be King (and you could tell because... you were the king), then you had the God-given right to rule, and everyone else had the God-given duty to be ruled. That was just the deal.

Along came the framers of the US constitution who said, "Nope. All men created equal? Check! All people endowed (by their creator, ha ha!) with inalienable rights? Check!" That was a RADICAL notion for its day. Radical and NEW. And they posited it in a way that had it be a truth for all time, but it didn't actually exist until they said it.

That it didn't exist until they said it doesn't take away the "for all time"ness of it, any more than a marriage starting on a particular date doesn't take away the "for the rest of our lives"ness of that.

It is clear that a good portion of the people, plus a good portion of the judges in the judiciary, plus a good portion of those in the legislative, don't consider law to be natural. Let's say there really was something like "natural law." The moment that a good portion of humanity disagrees with what is natural, wouldn't that make the whole concept of natural law irrelevant (if not outright false)?

I mean, we know historically that all those rights considered part of "natural law" are actually quite recent, and the result of quite recent events. But even setting that aside, the moment we recognize that even us, here, have different views of the same things, doesn't that lead to the conclusion that certain things are not self evident? Or do we really believe that anyone who publicly disagrees with the notion of natural law actually knows, intimately, that natural law is right, but just choose to go against it for nefarious reasons?

The whole idea of natural law emerged as a rhetorical device to counter the notions of divine law and divine rights of kings.

exactly.

given that line of thought......black people were not considered people before the 13th Amendment, they were considered property. If they were considered property before then and not people, why was slavery bad? it didn't enslave humans, did it?

Denying that there is such a thing as natural law doesn't mean that anything goes, or that anything is right. In fact, your entire example shows why there is no such thing as natural law, given how the people who wrote so many "natural laws" seemed to ignore it.

Morality and compassion do not depend on the law being "natural."

that would simply mean that what you are saying is 'white people rule the world, the rest just have to follow'.

Slavery didn't mean that those people didn't have natural rights, just that they were being denied them at the time.

Recognizing that white people ruled the world does not mean that that made it right. And if natural rights are neither self evident nor intrinsically adopted, the whole notion of natural law is irrelevant.

Again, denying that there is such a thing as natural law does not justify an "anything goes" approach, so the idea that anyone who believes that there is no natural law would be ok with slavery is nonsense. In fact, for a very long time the idea that rights are universal went squarely against the idea that rights are natural.

dk, you're looking at history through the lens of common-times belief and morality. For slavers, slavery was entirely moral. It wasn't until it got said to be otherwise that it was looked at any other way. It really actually WAS TRUE that white people ruled the world and the rest just had to follow. And for a while there, the sun never set on the British Empire. And then the world changed and made that NOT TRUE ANYMORE.

Prior to the creation of the United States, the subjugation of lower classes by upper classes, nobles, and kings was moral, proper, and divinely ordained. Looking through the philosophical perspective our founders gave us and that we live in now, that looks exploitative and horrible, but THEN AND THERE, it was just how it was.

To now say, "Our founders were in touch with something that had always been there through tens of thousands of years of human history but nobody somehow noticed until Jefferson sat down in 1776 and started writing" is just silly. Doesn't it make more sense to say that our founders created a new view of the interrelation of government and the public? If you look at history, isn't that more or less what happened there?

EDIT: I just want to add that this is one of the most interesting conversations I've had in TP in recent times, and I sincerely thank everyone engaged in it for the opportunity for real thinking it's giving me.

DK, you also accept these things, otherwise you would be in jail. Do you carry a gun openly everywhere you go? Courthouses, schools, airports? Do you yell bomb on a plane just for fun? If you don't then you are a hypocrit according to your ideology.

You haven't raised up arms and declared war on the tyranical govn't yet have you?
So in some fashion you also have accepted these truths

The bolded part is exactly the point i've been making. For centuries, it was assumed that the rights and freedoms you had were given to you by your king/ruler/whatever and were subject to change. The framers, having been on the seriously shitty end of that deal decided that their rights weren't given to them by the monarchy, but were theirs naturally....maybe even for just being alive. Now, the case could be made that natural law is just a theory, much like rights being granted by governments, but I personally can't agree with the government being the one that grants my rights. They didn't create us, we created the government.

---------- Post added at 02:30 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:26 PM ----------

I do carry a gun wherever I go, but concealed. I've carried in schools, i've carried in unsecure portions of the airport, banks, government buildings, etc. Anywhere that I do not have to go through a metal detector. I do not yell fire in a theater or bomb on a plane, but not because i'm afraid of the law or the consequences of doing it. That doesn't make me a hypocrite either. I don't do those things because I don't want to get people hurt. I wouldn't do it whether it was law or not.

I have not accepted these. I'm simply not at the point where revolution is necessary. While there is still the ability to fight these in the legislature and the courts, the peaceful option must be taken.

Not recognising the law as it applies to you isn't the same thing as having an absolute right. You don't have the "right" to carry a concealed weapon in those places. When you do, you are breaking the law.

So being alive gives us the natural right to own and carry guns? LOLOLOLOLOL

I disagree. I do have that right. my rights are not subject to the fears, whims, demands, or desires of 9 black robed tyrants. any law that violates the constitution is null and void.

The Constitution and Freedom - Bonus Package! | The FOX Nation

---------- Post added at 02:41 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:40 PM ----------

more obtuseness and ignorance? or just plain trolling? being alive gives us the right to be armed with weapons for defense. Whether that weapon is a gun, knife, club, or light saber in the future is irrelevant.