"Joe E. Dees" wrote:
> You are fallaciously mixing hard science and soft (human) science,
> as well as throwing history in (which is no kind of science
> whatsoever), and being defensive about it because even you know
> that you are doing it. I am a believer in private property rights;
> however I am intellectually honest enough with myself and others
> to admit that it is a belief of mine rather than an item of scientific
> knowledge. Please strive to be this honest yourself. You believe
> in the abolition of government, but by your own historical argument
> (which you use to justify property rights), government is an
> evolution of Natural Law, having been with us for countless
> millennia. Consistency counts; please try to demonstrate some of
> it.
On the contrary, my anti-government stance is also supported by my argument, since it is demonstrated that "that government governs best which governs least". The least possible government is none at all. I cannot get any more consistent than that.
Failure to insist upon the Natural source of individual human rights is the loophole through which all totalitarians are able to cloud the minds and hearts of humanity so that the people conduct the evils crimes of history for their opressors. If we do not insist upon our rights' Natural origins, then they are in fact merely fictions which rely purely upon the unjustified force we wish to bring to bear to force others to accept our version of reality. I need force no one when I stand upon my own two feet and insist upon my natural rights. They may kill me, but they will not enslave me. You must love your freedom more than your life. Evil prospers upon the acquiescent surrender of the courage of the individual.
Moreover, your separation of hard and soft sciences is another rhetorical wedge used to divide the houses of knowledge to serve the purposes of the ignorant. The difference between hard and soft sciences is far more a matter of a spectrum of increasing abstraction from the root laws of the universe. This view of science is the sort of benefit that the trend toward consilience aids in. My own distain for many in the soft sciences has to do with how easily many of their practitioners are swayed to the 'dark side', and not with the sciences themselves.
Mike Lorrey