"You didn't build that" - Obama

[Mr Khan]

haxxiy said:

Aielyn said:

1. To be blunt, anarchists and libertarians are remarkably similar in most of their beliefs. But I won't delve into that too much. I dismiss "natural rights" because it implies that there is some sort of inherent right that comes with being a human... no, there isn't. There isn't a single right that humans have innately. You have no innate right to life, or to liberty, or to justice, or to security, or to profit, or anything else. Not counting what you might call a religious right (and thus, dependent on religion), rights are a human construct, developed by society to improve society. And yes, if a country doesn't provide a right to something, then that right doesn't exist there. That said, there is the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which is supposed to apply to all member states of the UN.

There is actually a country in the world that follows Libertarian ideals. Do you know which country that is?

Most of the things you posted are false or at least passible of being discussed further but I'll attain to this since it's a topic I've extensively estuded in the previous months. Should you study a bit of evolutionary psychology, you can easily see many of the trinckets we take as granted to come from intelligence or rationality are actually the workings of a very animalistic brain. Our very first notions of law didn't came from something silly as people finally deciding to stop killing themselves like Hobbes or Golding believed. These first laws were based on notions of cooperation, empathy and self-defense that were deeply encoded within our brains during the course of evolution.

Even canonical law, which influenced the evolution of judiciary systems towards rational ideals of human rights etc. can't be exempt of our animal inheritance - it evolved from it, though it's more complex than your average atheist claiming God is the alpha male who protects the pack. Think for instance our concept of heaven. Please! Did anyone ever notice how it has always been depicted as a place with trees, surrounded by green grass, and under clear skies? Just like a nice day on central park? This isn't an ideal construced by the ideals of a few!  See, any place wet enough for green grass all year round will become a closed forest. Our parks, and our concept of heaven, mimmick a savanna landscape after the rains. 

The thing the likes of Harold Berman and most leftists fail to understand when they throw the word construct around like some sort of joker on the deck is that we are animals just like other living creatures. We are not superior and we are not alone on sentience, language and a lot of other things. No point on throwing around an idealistic concept that is as hollow as an inflatable ball. It's as stupid as going to a horse race and saying "you know, no need to differ them based on race or individual characteristics, these horses would run the same if they had the same upbringing".

Individual and group genetics would have more of a case in horse-racing, since they are selectively bred for varying purposes. But yes, ultimately race/religion/ethnicity are constructs. Powerful, pervasive constructs, but constructs nonetheles