From The Catholic Encyclopedia:
Every perfect right, i.e. every right involving in others an obligation in justice a deference thereto, to be efficacious, and consequently a real and not an illusory power, carries with it at the last appeal the subsidiary right of coercion. A perfect right, then, implies the right of physical force…
…And consequently of violence. The multiplication of rights is therefore a multiplication of possible acts of violence. There is something frightening about the expansion of rights.
The move in modern times has been to increase the individual’s sense that his rights are his own, while at the same time centralizing the use of the violence which backs them. Even if we allow that violence should be exercised only by a group, I wonder if any right and the violence it authorizes are separable to the extent that the one can belong to the individual while the other belongs to a Leviathan with whom no given individual has a human relationship.
4my2k said,
March 21, 2012 at 6:24 pm
Didn’t you sort of jump suddenly from physical force to violence? They aren’t the same.
4my2k said,
March 21, 2012 at 6:38 pm
Could you please make your blog easier to comment on? I don’t have facebook and I am getting rid of my wordpress account, so could we maybe comment using a google account? Thanks.
Sue
swedenblogian.blogspot.com
James Chastek said,
March 21, 2012 at 7:09 pm
You’ll have to say more. To guess at what you mean – I’m not taking “violence” as meaning an evil or unjust use of physical force. Force with at least the possibility of severe damage to life or property would count as violent, as it does even in everyday speech e.g. “a violent collision” or “a violent explosion” etc.
Can’t help with the tech-stuff. Not competent.
E.R. Bourne said,
March 21, 2012 at 10:44 pm
Since the French Revolution rights have been really nothing more than a convenient fiction used to aggrandize centralized state power at the expense of every type of lower authority. The American experience, at least up until the Civil War, was an exception to this rule, the assertion of rights in this case enabling local authority to govern itself without the interference of a centralizing power. The final move is the assertion of international human rights, which is nothing less than the theoretical justification for world government and, according to the logic of your post, the creation of a body with the power to do violence to all people.
The rights of children are a good example of your point. How can children enforce their “rights” against their own parents without the power of violence of some external body?
4my2k said,
March 22, 2012 at 10:30 am
I think you have your comment settings set so that a person must be registered and logged in. Here is a quote from WordPress instructions page:
Other comment settings ■Comment author must fill out name and e-mail – Check this box as a way to force spammers to do a bit of extra work. In reality, the name and e-mail address are not verified in any way prior to the comment being submitted. Most legitimate commenters are more than willing to fill out a name and e-mail address.
■Users must be registered and logged in to comment – If this checkbox is checked, only logged in registered users will be able to write comments on your site.
If you would uncheck the checkbox for what they are talking about in point 2, then people like me could comment.
Just a suggestion.
It’s very hard to leave comments on your blog as it is. You could easily change that.