You are putting the cart before the horse

People have a right to self defense because we hold the right to life so highly that when somebody threatens it, their right to life becomes less important. The right to self defense isn't more important than the right to life, it is a safeguard of it.

Property rights extend to implicit threats to a persons life from a home intruder. If we didn't value the right to life to a great degree, people would be allowed to booby trap their own living spaces against home intruders. However, this is illegal. Even in the case of a home invasion we take the right to life of the aggressor with some seriousness.

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@VulcanMan6 from Kansas commented…6mos6MO

If you can violate someone's right to life via the use of another right, then that right has fundamentally taken a higher priority than the right to life. That's the entire point: the right to life is NOT absolute, as other rights can supersede it under certain circumstances. If the right to life was always the most important to uphold under any circumstances, then killing someone would ALWAYS be illegal, but it is not. That is the conclusion I am getting at. It feels like we are agreeing on the same point but miscommunicating in between somehow..?

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@Patriot-#1776Constitution from Washington commented…5mos5MO

That's unbelievably stupid of you – inferring that any right would EVER UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCE outweigh a right to LIFE? Hate to burst your bubble, but if you're DEAD you can't enjoy ANY RIGHT AT ALL. And let me tell you this, you so-called ANARCHO-Marxist – in your spirit of anarchism, why would you EVER support taking away the firearms of people while allowed the government (THE ENEMY OF ANARCHISM) to use nuclear bombs, napalm, AK-47s, &c? That's not anarchist at all that is statism if I ever saw it.

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@VulcanMan6 from Kansas disagreed…5mos5MO

Simple: your right to bodily autonomy and consent already does come before other people's right to life, that is why you cannot be forced donate blood or organs against your consent, even if someone else will die without it, because your right to consent over who can or cannot use your body is not conditional on the right to life of others. You have no obligation to give someone your bodily consent, even if their life is at stake, because your right to bodily autonomy comes above other people's right to life, including a fetus's.

Secondly, government is not the enemy of anarchis… Read morem, hierarchy is. A "government" is merely whatever means of decision-making a society uses to make their group decisions, which can be incredibly hierarchical (like an autocracy), or non-hierarchical (like a direct democracy), or anywhere in-between. Anarchism, as an umbrella term that encompasses a wide range of ideologies, is not "anti-government", it is simply "anti-hierarchy". And, as such, my belief against guns are actually predicated on my belief in a non-hierarchical system. I do not think guns should exist in the first place, nor do i think police or militaries should exist either, but since they do right now, I believe in both public safety AND abolishing hierarchy. Hopefully that cleared those up for you...

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@Patriot-#1776Constitution from Washington commented…5mos5MO

Your donating blood illustration does not work. When you refuse to donate blood, someone dies because of your inaction. When you murder your own child, someone dies directly as the result of your action. These are two completely different scenarios. I believe in natural, God-given rights, not human rights. Sometimes they are called "negative rights". A right to life means no one can murder you, a right to liberty means no one can enslave you, and a right to property means no one can steal from you, etc. You, however, seem to believe in "positive rights" were instead of hav… Read moreing a right to be protected from the harm others may inflict upon you, you have a right to DEMAND FROM OTHERS CERTAIN THINGS. The example of donating blood is an example of someone demanding something else FROM someone else (which defies the right to liberty as it is involuntary servitude) whereas abortion deals only with the negative right of the baby not to be HARMED BY someone else. Negative rights protect you from harm, positive rights allow you to harm others. That's why I only believe in negative natural rights and why your blood illustration makes no sense. The same can be applied to your argument over donating organs – both are VERY different from murder.

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@VulcanMan6 from Kansas commented…5mos5MO

Firstly, my blood donation example was not meant to be a comparison to abortion, it was simply another real-world example of a right that you have (consent and bodily autonomy) that is held above other people's right to life, which was the sole point I was making. There is no perfect analogy to abortion anyway, so I ultimately find it easier to just argue in support of abortion directly. As such, if you agree that 1) you have the sole right to decide who can or cannot use your body, at any time, for any or no reason, and you also agree that 2) no one has the right to use your body against your consent, then there is no logical reason why you should be opposed to "pro-choice" without blatantly omitting one of these premises. That is literally all this comes down to: can another person use your body against your consent? If not (which should be the only correct response), then a fetus does notRead more have the right to use its mother's body without her constant consent. It is that simple.

Secondly, you seem to be either maliciously and/or ignorantly misrepresenting positive vs negative rights due to your personal biases. Your claim that "negative rights protect you from harm, positive rights allow you to harm others" is blatantly biased and untrue. The idea categorizing positive vs negative rights, even according to its original Kantonian analysis, is not of "harm", but of duty. Negative rights don't "protect you from harm", they just grant a "negative" duty upon others (hence the name), whereas positive rights don't "allow you to harm others", they just grant a "positive" duty upon others (again, hence the name). More importantly, you need both for either of them to be worth anything. Having the negative right to something, without also having the positive right to access that thing, means that you don't actually have a right to that thing at all. Having the "right to life" is worthless if you can't actually access the things necessary to live, having the "right to freedom" is worthless if you can be denied access to the things necessary to hold and maintain it, etc. Without a combination of both positive AND negative rights, you end up not genuinely having either. Additionally, I am pretty sure your own god even said "For there will never cease to be poor in the land. Therefore I command you, 'You shall open wide your hand to your brother, to the needy and to the poor, in your land.'", which is a clear and explicit call for the positive right of welfare for anyone in need. So, ultimately, your insistence on exclusively negative rights was either a simple mistake, or is blatantly against both reason and your own religion.

Lastly, your "definition" of a government is also blatantly biased and untrue, in nearly the exact same fashion as your previous claim. A government is not "an organization with the legal privilege of using force on persons who have not harmed anyone", nor is that even a dictionary definition (if that's what you care about), which is simply: "the governing body of a nation, state, or community". However, I do absolutely agree with your next points:

"it creates a hierarchy, because the government has political power, and the non-government people don't. So if you truly believed in abolishing hierarchies you certainly would not support the expansion of the political elite ruling class of Washington DC for ANY reason"

Correct, I do NOT support the political ruling class of Washington DC, nor do I support the mere structure of our current political system to begin with, largely for this exact reason. As I know I have repeatedly expressed in other discussions of ours, I am fundamentally against the idea of a hierarchical government structure (or any structure, for that matter). Again, I believe the government should BE the public, meaning that I do not believe that a government should consist of two distinct classes, but instead should be comprised of a single democratic class. The only justified government is one in which ALL people share equal decision-making power, with no distinction between "the government" and "the people", hence no hierarchy. It is BECAUSE I am anti-hierarchy that I am against our current political and economic systems.

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You are putting the cart before the horse

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