Who Gets to Choose?Follow

A man on a deserted island with a coconut would disagree with you.

If you disagree, then why don't you provide your idea of what freedom is? I've asked this several times now. Funny how you keep harping on me for using terms like "rights" and "freedom" in precisely the way the historical sources of those terms uses them, but you can't be bothered to provide an alternative.

This is going to be another one of those "I don't get my news from anywhere" bits, isn't it?

I would use the term "protected" rather than "maximized". I also agree completely with the need to make sure that the government is protecting our rights to the greatest degree possible. However, I would hope you'd agree that it's impossible to do that if we don't first have a common understanding of what rights are, and at the very least the understanding that the government doesn't "grant" them, but only protects them. Failing to grasp that leads to other misunderstandings like thinking that by giving people "things", we're giving them "rights", which somehow equates to use being more free. Which would seem to be an appropriate issue to raise given this is precisely what was proposed earlier in this thread.


Giving someone things does not give them rights. Ever. Period. It may or may not be a good thing to do for other reasons, but lets assess that on the value of the things themselves and on those other reason, and not out of the false belief that we're protecting people's rights by doing so.