Yeah. That's only like the 100th time that claim has been made on this thread. Heard that. Dealt with that. Got the T-shirt.
You're making a bald assertion that is actually contingent upon a relativistic-materialistic, metaphysical presupposition.
What none of you on this thread have ever done is provide a rational justification for that claim. There it is again suspended in midair.
What is the argument which actually demonstrates that the realities of human conduct and interaction are not governed by any absolute, universal imperatives at some level of being or another?
Here's an easier one for you: how does one distinguish the formal difference between civil liberties and civil rights? Note: the question is not what they are, respectively, though one must begin with the what, but how one distinguishes the former from the latter.
There's no argument really.
You got that right, in the sense that you didn't provide any argument, really, let alone answer the only question that would demonstrate that
all rights are nothing more than social constructs, assuming your answer is coherently rational and backed by some discernible empirical data--either historical or biological.
Once again: What is the argument which actually demonstrates that the realities of human conduct and interaction are not governed by any absolute, universal imperatives at some level of being or another?
Further Proof Regarding the Facts of Natural Law
False. That's you guys and you guys alone all day long. You just think that's true because you've never gotten beyond the red herrings of relativism, and you think the strawmen arguments proffered by others on this thread are the actual stuff of natural law.
We're
not talking about the social constructs of political science: civil rights or civil liberties. The latter, by the way,
are those readily and universally recognized innate rights as translated from nature into the political conventions of civil government.
How does one discern the difference between the civil liberties predicated on innate rights and the civil rights or privileges of the collective under the rule of law in the state of civil government?
Gee wiz. If what you claim were true that would be a monumental task of the inscrutable kind. But fortunately for you and me, your claim is bunk, so it's a relatively simple matter.
We are talking about innate rights, hence, those that pertain life, to the fundamentals of human action and to property, not the theoretical delegations or arrangements of the institutional powers of political science relative to the state of civil government.
Stop it. You know better. The inherent, universal traits of humanity are self-evident: thought, volition and the related material exigencies and aspirations of self-preservation. We're not vegetables. We're sentient beings. Once again, with regard to these elemental facts of human physiology and consciousness, the elementary innate rights of man pertain to life, to the fundamentals of human action and to property. They are concrete, not esoteric. Your claim is risible. Absurd. Ridiculous. Once again, see above.
You're walking down the street, and someone jumps you out of nowhere and beats on your ass. . . .
Every human being on this planet knows that you have but three alternative courses of action: fight, flee or submit.
Every human being on this planet knows that what is being threatened/violated is (1) life, (2) the fundamentals of human action and/or (3) property.
Every human being on this planet knows that the violation of these things is wrong,
because every human being on this planet knows that the violation of these things constitutes existential transgressions they would not have perpetrated on them.
Every regime that exists or has ever existed, including authoritarian and totalitarian regimes, recognize three categories of criminality and punish those who engage in them: murder, the various forms of criminal subjugation, and theft, which correlate with the innate rights of life, liberty and property, which pertain to life, to the fundamentals of human action and to property.
These three things and their respective aspects are universally apprehended.
Say it isn't so again
now, and know that you're talking like a fool.
RABBI, G.T., ARE YOU PAYING ATTENTION?
Even despotic psychopaths like Hitler, Stalin, Mao and others apprehend this truth as such always justify their atrocities by
first declaring some group or another to be something less than human, renegade citizens or non-citizens (the timeless caveats), who may, therefore, be murdered, enslaved or reeducated. There's
always a pretext relative to these three things.
Totalitarian or authoritarian regimes, or institutions akin to such regimes within societies that are otherwise generally freer have always existed. All persons under the sway of the former are decidedly less free, but these three categories of rights and their respective aspects obviously persist and strain against the chains that bind the overtly "subversive" expressions of them therein.
These basic, innate functions of sentient beings have always been known to man, and have been referred to, variously, as the prerogatives of man, the dignities of man or the rights of man, not to be confused with any of the politically abstract accommodations made for them by government, at whatever level, or with any of the additional political privileges afforded by government. They are centuries old, predating the modern expression of them from the Enlightenment in terms of natural law proper,
and their historical actuality sure as hell predates the retarded, post-modern, relativistic construct that there exists no universally absolute moral principles or innate rights.
Tell that to the man with the business end of loaded gun pointed at your head should you be caught with your hand in the cookie jar, and see how far your talk about his right to stop you is not real prior to the abstractions of social constructs. Bang, bang.
Your sloganeering is not a material or ontological assertion, let alone an argument, against
the fact of these things; you're quibbling over semantics!
Call them prerogatives, dignities, rights, inherent inclinations, the fundamental exigencies and expressions of sentient beings: they clearly are not and have never been the stuff of mere social constructs, niceties, accommodations, or the civil rights afforded directly by government.
You can't even coherently state (1) what you're implying and you're utterly oblivious to (2) the inherent contradiction of your claim.
First, you're implying the same goofy idea as that asserted by
gnarlylove: that no rights can be inalienable
because all rights, whether they be innate or not, can be infringed. The term inalienable as it pertains to rights doesn't carry any such connotation and never has.
They are inalienable
because, as opposed to abstract political rights, they inherently and benignly adhere to the nature of the creature as incontrovertibly demonstrated in the above and, therefore, the violation of them constitutes a transgression that is subject to being put down by deadly force, legitimately and justly so. In the state of nature their violation is an act of war, and in the state of civil government their violation is a crime.
Hence, enslavement and torture in the absence of due provocation are existential transgressions of inalienable rights: acts of war or crimes.
And the Founders knew from the beginning that slavery was a peculiar and destabilizing institution, as it has always been throughout history in the face of the imperatives of human nature, and hoped it could be peacefully and incrementally abolished before tensions escalated to an armed civil war.
Oops.
Second, if, according to you, there are no absolutes of any kind, except the absolute that there are no absolutes, and, therefore, according you, the absolute that there are no absolutes is necessarily false, inherently contradictory and self-negating. . . . Oh, never mind.
*crickets chirping*
But let's pretend for a moment that your contention does not
absolutely violate the laws of logic--the law of identity, the law of contradiction and the law of excluded middle--and note the absurdity of a relativist talking about slavery and torture as if these things weren't merely the allocation of human resources and sport.
*crickets chirping*
The point will fly over the heads of some.
Governments are human constructs set up to protect human rights.
That's right. You can't maintain a rationally consistent argument in defense of an absurdity, as you cannot evade the innate and universal imperatives of the rational forms and logical categories of human consciousness and moral decision, can you?
They're natural, innate, absolute . . . inescapable.
Congratulations. You've finally awoken from your fantasy, for whether you realize or not, you just conceded that the materially innate exigencies and aspirations of humanity, including rights, precede the abstract constructs of civil government.
But wait a minute!
But even that construct doesn't work out all the time. If right were "natural"? That simply wouldn't be the case.
Back to fantasyland. You just contradicted yourself in the space of four short sentences.
HEY, RABBI, G.T., ARE YOU PAYING ATTENTION? DO YOU GET THE RELEVANCE OF MY PREVIOUS DECONSTRUCTION OF RELATIVISM, WHICH YOU POOH-POOHED, NOW?
The only ones dabbling in abstractions and esoteric claptrap are those going on about social constructs in the face of real-world scenarios and consequences.
BTW, as a matter of preempting any more nonsense about my posts being paragraphs of empty rhetoric, let's get something straight: any braying jackass can write slogans parading as arguments. Thoroughly deconstructing such crap from first principles and examples routinely takes more space. While the basic facts of the matter before us are self-evident, the reasons they are self-evident in the face of the convoluted machinations of the falsehoods that would obscure them are more complex.
