Christian: n,

A person who believes in Jesus Christ, God incarnate who came to Earth and became flesh to die on the cross, sinless for our redemption.

libertarian: n,

"A person who believes that no one has the right, under any circumstances, to initiate force against another human being, or to advocate or delegate its initiation. Those who act consistently with this principle are libertarians, whether they realize it or not. Those who fail to act consistently with it are not libertarians, regardless of what they may claim."

-- L. Neil Smith

Sunday, November 4, 2007

Rights have as much to do with what you may not do as what you may.

You may not violate my negative rights, (life, liberty and property), because I may not violate yours. Notice that rights really have nothing to do with what one can do and everything to do with what one may do. The ability to do or obtain something is not synonymous with the right to it, nor does having the right automatically guarantee or entitle you to it. You have the ability to steal, murder, enslave and defraud others, but this does not mean you have that right. You have the right to life but that does not guarantee you protection from drowning or shark attack if you fall into the ocean, nor does it obligate anyone else to jump in or throw you a life preserver. You have the right to liberty but that doesn't mean someone else has to provide you the means of expressing yourself or a rope should you loose your liberty by falling down a well, nor does it mean you may trespass or do whatever you feel like while exercising the privilege of being on someone else's property. You have the right to property. In fact, your life and your liberty are yours and therefor fall under the umbrella of property. Your right to property, like the others, is not a guarantee. Your right to obtain property only extends to that property which you obtained without anyone else's rights being violated in the process. To illustrate that, I'll choose a popular fallacy. Here in the United Socialist States of America you have, "the right to an attorney." Somewhere along the road that mutated into, "you have the right to have the state use coercive force to violate someone else's property rights in order to supply you with an attorney." If we were honest, we'd call a spade a spade and change that to, "The state has granted you the privilege of an attorney by stealing the necessary funds from others." And where did the state get the right to appropriate those funds? They didn't. They granted themselves that privilege through the only means the state has; the fraudulently legalized monopoly on the use of force. Their toolkit for sustaining that monopoly includes only four tools; murder, theft, slavery, and fraud. Without these, the state would literally cease to exist.

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