-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- A million monkeys operating under the pseudonuym "Hallam-Baker " typed:

Of course John was right to give Vilus the boot. Cypherpunks is a club and like many private clubs occasionaly finds it necessary to give some oik the boot.

Yeah! That was GREAT! Now let's ban Dr. Hallam-Baker! He's always pissing off the libertarianpunks and causing flamewars...

And of course this is not an action that can be strictly justified in terms of absolute rights which many are fond of prating on about. Rights are limited, as Mills observes they are a product of law. Society finds it necessary to enact laws to protect rights. Dmitri's posts were affecting other people's right to speak. There is thus the traditional liberal conflict, that of having to infringe rights to protect them.

Dear Sir: I humbly put it to you that the above reflects a misunderstanding about the libertarian conception of "absolute rights". I personally do _not_ subscribe to said theory, but I try to understand a thing correctly before criticizing it in public.

If libertarians would read "on Liberty" rather than using it like a magic charm they would know that the main theory it advances is of the *balance* between the rights of communities and the rights of individuals.

I have read (parts of) _On_Liberty_, and as I recall it was adamant in an ("unbalanced") defense of absolute rights of individuals. The only exception I remember is an unexplored comment on rights-violations of ommission counting as well as rights-violations of commission. (E.g. if you see a drowning man and you fail to save him you are violating his rights.) Perhaps that is what you see as "balance between the rights of communities and the rights of individuals"? Or perhaps the book goes into detail on that subject in a part that I didn't read. Again I ask not because I have a particular ideological axe to grind here, but because I seek accuracy in public dialogue. Regards, Bryce  -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2i Comment: Auto-signed under Unix with 'BAP' Easy-PGP v1.1b2 iQB1AwUBMn8EXkjbHy8sKZitAQGWJQL+JzzPf0NOovQ3hZpEsim6wzz9OIWetfX4 ZQM7SYZkvNMQOX7QkShj0PXE+xtD+Vw513ENJwrzw5Y9hqRYr2P53dk10h7ovWth egHhGYGB5YhZ4H2BQrA0FB+7y1F/9RDG =wjM8 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

...

...as Mills observes [rights] are a product of law. Society finds it necessary to enact laws to protect rights...

Logically, you can't have it both ways. Which is it?

Both sentences say the same thing. Society enacts laws which provide protections to the individual. As a result of these protections the individual has rights. The decision to enact laws may be affected by a consensus in society concerning which rights are desirable. But this does not affect the fact that the realisation of rights is a through society and law. If you like you could replace the word "protect" with "create" but most laws enacted don't create rights, rather they continue to preserve previously granted rights which are under threat. And then you get the type of laws which Bod Dole so ardently fought for such as special favours to Archer Daniel Midlands, the Kansas Argi-business which recently paid a $100 million corruption fine. Of course power can be exercised in a corrupt fashion. If you admit that rights are simply abstract conclusions from a wider arguement based in more fundamental principles then there is some purpose to the discussion. Otherwise the argument is simply a stale restatement of the axioms as the conclusion. If we return to the original basis on which Mill opposed censorship its not hard to find out why Dimitri is denied his support. The argument is based on the need to keep alive debate. Dimitri wants to prevent debate, he does not wish to meet with the argument, he merely wishes to indulge in character assasinations and insults. Phill

...

Both sentences say the same thing. Society enacts laws which provide protections to the individual. As a result of these protections the individual has rights.

Unfortunately, both sentences, as originally written, DO NOT say the same thing. They are recursive in the extreme.

They are mutually recursive but the types of the relations are different. Laws create rights - argument in "is" => Should create good laws to protect valid rights. - argument in "ought" Of course the two sentences don't say exactly the same thing, otherwise I would have written one. If law did not have the potential to create rights there would not be the same duty of care for law creators.

Maybe Phill should just say he misspoke himself rather then go through his elaborate back-and-fill charade.

I'll tell you what, ill admit that my original statement was not of the clarity that I would ideally wish to achieve. But I don't think that we need apply the criteria of a journal article here. :-) I don't think we have a problem with the statements conflicting, there is an interaction. What a Hegelian would call dilectic. I prefer to use a different term for much the same reasons as Sorros, the misuse of the term has created garbage that one does not want to associate with (eg Historical materialism). Phill

Bryce wrote:

" typed:

...

Of course John was right to give Vilus the boot. Cypherpunks is a club and like many private clubs occasionaly finds it necessary to give some oik the boot.

Yeah! That was GREAT! Now let's ban Dr. Hallam-Baker! He's always pissing off the libertarianpunks and causing flamewars...

[snip]

I have read (parts of) _On_Liberty_, and as I recall it was adamant in an ("unbalanced") defense of absolute rights of individuals. The only exception I remember is an unexplored comment on rights-violations of ommission counting as well as rights-violations of commission. (E.g. if you see a drowning man and you fail to save him you are violating his rights.) Perhaps that is what you see as "balance between the rights of communities and the rights of individuals"? Or perhaps the book goes into detail on that subject in a part that I didn't read. Again I ask not because I have a particular ideological axe to grind here, but because I seek accuracy in public dialogue.

Since we all start out as children, learning by imitation, and reasoning by comparison, a valid argument can be made that our minds work best that way. Certainly the wide variety of opinion here shows that theory doesn't produce nearly the consensus that real experience does. Therefore I suggest that we look more at analogies, but try hard to make the analogies more accurate.

...

Laws create rights - argument in "is"

This is way too broad. The only "rights" laws can _create_ are the zero-sum rights of entitlement that impose a corresponding responsibility on others. Natural rights can't be created by fiat.

If you look at the original argument you will see that I'm explicitly denying the existence of Natural law. It has been recognised as a bankrupt philosophical position for at least two centuries. Its not even the basis for Libertarian argument which is principaly contractarian. The change in the wording of the declaration of Independence from "God Given" to "Self Evident" reflects the wider philosophical movement of the time. After Rousseau there was no need to depend on superstition as the foundation of ethics. If you argue from "natural law" you are simply parrotting the predjudices of society. It isn't philosophy, its more akin to the religious bigotry popular in the US South and Afghanistan. Phill