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From: ellis@chips.sri.com (Michael Ellis)
Newsgroups: alt.individualism
Subject: Re: Phil Ronzone's stereo
Message-ID: <8148@unix.SRI.COM>
Date: 18 Jan 90 14:19:42 GMT
References: <48176d79.20b6d@apollo.HP.COM>
Sender: news@unix.SRI.COM
Reply-To: ellis@chips.sri.com.UUCP (Michael Ellis)
Distribution: usa
Organization: Berkeley Private Language Institute
Lines: 55

>> Phil Ronzone > Peter Nelson

>>I ASSERT that my property is my property and that no one has
>>the right to take it without my permission.

>  In other words, Phil doesn't care WHO has property 
>  rights as long as HE has property rights.

    Really Peter, Phil didn't say that, and from his past articles,
    I don't think he meant anything of the sort. From what I can make
    out from past articles, my guess is he'd support anyone whose
    rights had been violated.

    Sometimes your articles are well thought out and clearly
    presented, even if I disagree with them. But other times your
    articles contain what sound like cheap and dirty misparaphrasings
    of other people's ideas that are actually counterproductive to the
    position you are arguing for. You have done this to me several
    times. Maybe this isn't intentional on your part, maybe you throw
    your articles together so quickly you don't have the time to think
    about what you are responding to. Either way, I am seriously
    beginning to wonder whether your articles are even worth responding to. 

    Please don't take this criticism as a personal attack. You can
    clean up your act, Peter. I know you can.

>  Nevertheless, when that consensus goes away so do the 
>  rights.   If Phil was a Jew in NAZI Germany, or a
>  Panamanian under Noriega, or a Panamanian in the line
>  of U.S. fire in the recent invasion, he could "ASSERT"
>  his rights until he was blue in the face and it wouldn't
>  have done him any good.  The world has seen lots of common
>  graves filled with people who have asserted their rights
>  in such a manner.

    You really must have contempt for the readers of this group if you
    think you're arguing against a position anyone here holds. Of
    course speech acts don't in themselves have kinds of powers you are
    pretending Phil attributes to them.

>  Of course, Phil would say that this is wrong.   Wrong by 
>  his standards or Peter Nelson's?   No, absolutely wrong;
>  wrong by universal standards; dead wrong.  How does he 
>  know this?   He won't tell us -- I guess that's just
>  Phil's little secret.

    The horror of the Jewish holocaust is hardly any kind of
    demonstration that rights don't exist. It is a demonstration of
    what happens when rights are not protected. Nazism is the best
    real world example you could have chosen to show what happens
    when people do not take direct and practical action to fight
    against violations of universal human rights, rights which
    transcend the consensus of any particular government.

-michael