Who are these LIBBERS, anyway?

[Raulgr]

The pleadings of libertarians have sincerely touched my heart! However, cynic that I am, I suspect disingenuous intent. I think that they just don't like rules very much. They’re the guys in your eighth grade class (you remember them) who were always getting knuckle-rapped for not following the rules. Looks like they never have learned. Why does that not surprise me?

Let's look at the idea of INHERENT HUMAN RIGHTS, shall we? For most of the ten thousand years of human history, human rights, inalienable or otherwise, were non-existent. That's because the guys who owned you, or the land upon which you managed to eke out a living, didn't give a **** about your rights. No one dared assert their rights before there was law and the societal institutions for backing up that claim. It was only after a group of revolutionaries, former British subjects, codified the recognition of individual rights that such rights could finally be asserted.

So, the historical fact is that the concept of individual rights is a novel idea - and recent! Further, it is evident from that history that the "inalienability" of those rights doesn't mean squat, as, absent law and enforcement, they cannot be asserted.

Now, libertarians rail against law and the societal institutions that give form to it, oblivious all the while to the fact that the rights claimed by them proceed from the very societal constructs that they so vehemently protest.

Nice try, Stan! We’re just not buying it!