if it's not by means of your personal "might", you are at risk of having your rights be usurped, at any time. Much as we may hate the idea, a guy with a dead man switch in his hand, hooked to a A bomb in the bowels of NYC, with lead shielding to protect it and complete creditability as to his ability and willingess to blow it and himself to atoms, is the 'rightest" guy who ever lived. Whatever he wants, he's going to get, as fast as Big Bro can get it there! Even if he wants Hilary( god knows why!) the secret service would have her there and would help hold her down.
This is true. This is why people have to control and limit their governments power. People need to remain as independent as possible and freely associate with others. Our constitution was designed to protect individual liberties while minimally protecting our shared interest. This is why at sometime people have to fight/resist their governments.
Very true... In fact this is the reason government works so hard to intimidate, separate, and to make people dependent upon government. The government knows that if the people could find a common goal to unite around, they would represent such an overwhelming force that the government would seem impotent and their powerlessness would be instantly apparent. They therefore must keep the people divided along every conceivable difference. They must sow discord among the different races, religions, political beliefs, economic classes, sexes, and every other difference they can exploit to ensure the public will never assert its rightful place as the masters of this country and of their own lives.
So as far as you're concerned, Stalin and Mao were more righteous than any American President ever thought of being. Got that about right, haven't I?
Perhaps we can define rights then as those liberties which one can extract from society by threat of violence.
All rights exist only by law; and without the law, we have no rights. Without law, there is anarchy; which is antithetical to the very existence of the rights you advocate. Rights can only exist within the structure of organized society subject to the rule of law. In this, it must be admitted that there can be no society without the law; it is the very fabric of social structure. It is, like the air we breathe, pervasive and essential, affecting every aspect of human relationships and endeavors. Beyond this lies only the uncertainty of uncivilized life where there is no society, where every man is a law unto himself; when Macht geht vor Recht (might is right), and life, as Hobbes put it, is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (1651). Such rights are nothing more than a scrambling possession that would be unlikely to last beyond the first to challenge the claim by force. The law is the only means by which real rights may be secured.
This is why it bothers me when people say that the Palestinians or the Native Americans have a right to the land because they were there first. They don't. Land belongs to whomever is strong enough to stick their flag in the ground and defend it. There may come a day when someone else takes America from us because they are stronger and even though that may be horrible, it does not make it wrong.
Bingo. Look at what's been happening the past decade or so especially. The govt keeps telling everyone it's all good for them. In actuality, it's only good for govt. Who has more hand? The person reliant on govt or the person who's more independent? When voting is needed what result will come from those who can't survive day to day without assistance? They will vote however the govt tells them. Scary, eh?
` The statement; "all rights come from or are maintained by "might"" is a bit simplistic. It doesn't take into account "Natural law" (or Natural rights), legal rights, social contracts, consent of the governed, rule of law, etc. However, "rights by might" smacks of totalitarianism, by definition. One can also infer that "rights by might" is the mantra of a pure democracy where 51% means winner take all as opposed to our constitutional republic which can override a majority and makes the U.S. an adherent to the "rule of law." In all cases, rights by might is the least desirable form of all kinds of different governments.
Desirable or not, a realist will tell you that this is ultimately the world ends up working. And it does.
All throughout history we have seen that the more powerful nations have always been able to do what they want until that power fades or someone else even stronger comes along. It is just a reality.
That's not the way we defend our rights in America. Our rights and liberty is maintained by law, not might. It is the duty of the citizenry and the government it elects to uphold the Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land. In this, we do not exercise our constitutional rights as citizens by force; we do so peacefully at the ballot box and in the courts of law. Under the Constitution, the mechanism for effecting change is through our elected representatives by vote, not by violence - by lawful process, not lawlessness.
I would respectfully disagree. That law which you speak of would not exist if not maintained by might. This is why our law enforcement is stronger than the average citizen on a whole. It eventually always comes down to might as being the controlling force in the world.
