Ballista has responded to one of my more recent posts:
Related to this matter is the blog post here. While men need their gardens to tend and need them to bear fruit, the problem with Free Northerner’s premise is that it is couched in terms of responsibilities and not rights. Any responsibility undertaken without the complete freedom of choice (a right) amounts to slavery. This is the usual mistake of frame that the feminist man-hating traditionalist “Christians” make to justify their warped and twisted profane view of marriage. It is these same people who are producing the man-up rants when their man-slaves run off the plantation and deprive a woman of her rightful divorce and fabulous cash and prizes. As Antz writes (the first comment):
Ballista’s mistake here is simple, there is no discussion of rights without responsibilities.
Contrary to popular mythology, there is no such thing as a natural right. God does not grant anyone a right to freedom, a right to life, a right to happiness, or any other such silly thing. The existence of natural rights is simply the delusion of the liberal. On the other hand, the legal fiction of natural rights is a useful political tool, as it establishes a basis for a free society, the most effective form of social organization man has yet attained, but it is still extra-biblical.
True rights come from responsibilities. A right to something comes from man’s earning it. He who works not, eats not.
The delinking of the rights and responsibilities is one of the largest causes of societal dysfunction. From it flows the entitlement society.
True freedom is responsibility is simply the absolute responsibility for self. Man is only truly free when given the absolute responsibility to act for himself and bear the consequences and reap the rewards of said actions.
That being said, Ballista is right in this:
The lack of the freedom to choose (i.e. “you MUST marry, and I don’t care if it’s a land whale, slut, womyn, boy claiming to be a woman or otherwise, you WILL man-up and marry it you piece of scum”) – and yes it’s Scriptural, is the essence of the definition of slavery.
The ultimate end of the issue is that men need to be freed to undertake what is good, beneficial and right before them and before God.
Marriage is not a command, it is a gift from God. Men should be wise in choosing a wife and anyone who tries to pressure a man to marry, especially to a women in rebellion of the natural order, is to be condemned.
Also, men do need to be freed, but not because they have some natural right to it, but because only in their freedom can they find true responsibility. Only a man free to find his own way will find what he truly should be responsible for.
Ballista, if you reply to this, I’m busy and won’t be able to reply for a few days at least.
Tweeted this!
This is exactly correct.
Here’s a layman’s example. Ask yourself, in this day and age when the reach of political structures is so pervasive, who on Earth remains truly free?
The answer is simple, it is those who live outside of political and cultural barriers. They’re the gypsies, the nomads, the lifetime ocean sailors/cruisers, pick your flavor. Anyone who spends most of their time outside of even the reach of law enforcement and public services is free.
Anyone who must by necessity independently look after their own survival is truly free. In this day and age, the reach of political meddling has reached 99.9% of all the easily inhabitable land, but there are still people who EARN their freedom by ACCEPTING RESPONSIBILITY FOR THEIR OWN SURVIVAL. True freedom follows accepted responsibility, you cannot expect to simply have rights because you say it is so. The declaration of independence PRECEDED the bill of rights for a reason, that reason is that you first accept responsibility for your own lives and fate, THEN you get freedoms.
When the new-world frontier died, so did ultimate freedom. If we can ever open up space travel and independent colonization on various space bodies (possible), we can reclaim the freedom we used to have.
Rights are ideals, they don’t exist in reality. For a right to be meaningful, not just empty rhetoric like “natural right” or “constitutional right,” it must be absolutely immune to revocation. If something physically cannot be revoked, then it is called a “power,” not a “right,” for only a sovereign entity can defend itself from challenge. Thus, it is demonstrated that power is the only meaningful term. What is being discussed here is the wish for individual sovereignty. Unfortunately for would-be-sovereign individuals, the State is an insurmountable barrier, reserving power for itself alone.
tl;dr The only “rights” are those for which one is willing to fight and/or die, most likely the former followed almost immediately by the latter. Everything else is State-sanctioned privilege, subject to revocation at the whim of State power.
Feminists love rights without responsibilities. Solid example that I’m not exactly shocked wasn’t brought up by anybody during the debate on women in combat roles is why no women have asked to be included in Selective Service. At its core, feminism IS rights without responsibilities. They want the right to an abortion, not the responsibility of providing for a family. They want the right to equal pay, not the responsibility of equal work. They want the RIGHT to go to war, not the RESPONSIBILITY of the draft. The decoupling of the rights and responsibilities is central to almost all of the social madness in America. Feminists are just a loud example.
I actually like this post, because it made me think. But I must disagree with the basic premise, while agreeing with some of your applications.
First, natural rights theory can hardly be deemed “popular mythology” or simply the “delusion of the liberal,” when it is the cornerstone of the Constitution and most other freedom-inspired societal philosophies.
Second, rights are defined as “legal, social, or ethical principles of freedom or entitlement,” so by definition they CANNOT be earned. Our right to life, for instance, must have been given to us by God–because, well, we didn’t somehow earn our spot on this earth, did we?
Now, while I disagree with the technical I do agree with where you’re going with this. I too believe in the importance of responsibility. But responsibility is comes into play for MAINTAINING our rights, not in CREATING them. They are inalienable. In other words, if it wasn’t for our fellow man taking them from us, we would all be free and we would all have life (still subject to death of course). Lunch only has a price because we demand it from each other, not because God deems it so. Liberty only has a price because despots and kings are so predisposed to taking it away. So in other words, we have the responsibility, because of the imperfect world we live in, to maintain the rights that are given from God. But I believe that no matter what, they’re there, no matter who tries to take them away.
I think that goes in the spirit with Jefferson’s use of the phrase “the pursuit of happiness,” not “the right to happiness” as you say. Nobody should claim we have a right to that, but we do have the right to pursue it. That is where personal responsibility fits in.