I got into a bizarre discussion with some guy recently about whether human rights truly exist or not. I say that they do -- that each human being has an intrinsic worth, regardless of what the law says. This fella, on the other hand, insists that human beings have no rights apart from what the government gives them.
Golly. So I guess if he was stranded on a remote island with some other people, he would not complain about being killed, tortured, or forced into slavery, right? After all, he would have no rights, since there would be no government to declare what those rights are.
And I suppose that he would have sided with the slaveowners rather than the abolitionists. After all, if the government is the sole arbiter of what rights exist, then the abolitionists were wrong to declare that the government was in error.
Talk about twisted.