re: #201 gamark

How you view “rights” really is an abstract philosophical concept. But I could make the argument that “rights” which only exist in codified law are meaningless as well. Using a slavery example again, there existed in the US free states and slave states. In your view, a black person in a free state had the right to freedom, but if he walked across the wrong state boundary, he no longer had his right to freedom. I would say this sort of right is meaningless. It is a permission, not a right.

Governments don’t, and can’t, deal in actual rights. They deal in laws. That’s my point. A black man before emancipation had the same natural rights a black man does now. He had free will. Everything else is enshrined in law. There’s nothing sacred, special, or inalienable about it. As such, it is incredibly easily fucked up. A black man’s right to not be property was effectively just a fantasy prior to emancipation. The LAW is what gave him that legal right, not nature.