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From: nelson_p@apollo.HP.COM (Peter Nelson)
Newsgroups: alt.individualism
Subject: re Phil Ronzone's stereo
Message-ID: <4813a2b3.20b6d@apollo.HP.COM>
Date: 16 Jan 90 22:39:00 GMT
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  ellis@chips.sri.com (Michael Ellis) posts...

>> Jon Allen Boone >> Phil Ronone
>
>>> Of course, this totally justifies what the NAZI's did to the Jews.
>>> After all, they had enough poeple. What happened was part of the "social
>>> contract".
>
>>Aha!  Name calling!  What the Nazi's did to the Jews...
>
>    I certainly didn't think Phil was name calling.

  Of course he was name-calling.  He hasn't shown any ability to 
  to actually counter an idea he disagrees with with an idea of
  his own yet in this discussion.


>                                                He was showing
>    something very wrong with your position: If rights are and
>    ought to be whatever the majority at any given point decides, then
>    there is nothing wrong if a majority votes away all rights and
>    gives total power to a small elite. Something very much like that
>    happened in Nazi Germany. Certain rights must be absolutely
>    unvotable-away. That is the important sense in which rights ought
>    to be more primordial than government itself. 
                                                
 Perhaps so, but this discussion has been about HOW we decide what
 those rights are and WHO gets to make those decisions.  

 Earlier, Mr. Ellis posted that...

#    If it is your point that rightness or wrongness are not
#    scientifically verifiable, I am in full agreement with you. 

 So just how DOES he propose that we determine what rights must
 be unvotable-away?   

 Actually the question is purely academic; in the Real World
 nothing is unvotable-away, which has been my point all along.
 But Mr. Ellis says they "must" be.  Why "must" they be? 

                                               ---Peter