Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts here, and while I certainly believe that Mike is more than capable of taking care of himself, I’m finding it hard to understand who it is you are addressing here. I don’t think Mike has ever expressed the view that,

“that rights only exist if they are enshrined in the latest iteration of the collective opinion of the tax-eating class.”

If anything he has said otherwise.

On the other hand, you could potentially be addressing me and the purpose of my post was not to suggest the American opinion that rights only exist where they are written down, but to point out how utterly insignificant rights are inside the Australian legal framework. The entire piece was intended to highlight the stupidity of the argument, ‘we’re a free country and just be glad you are given the right to free speech etc.’

I’m no longer 100% certain that ‘rights’ exist as such.

Royce

You’re falling nito the American trap of thinking that rights only exist if they are enshrined in the latest iteration of the collective opinion of the tax-eating class. Americans are taught to believe that their rights exist by dint of the Constitution and amendments thereto, as if it was the State that brought them into existence.

Every man, everywhere on the planet (and outside it) has the right to freedom of speech, association and the right to live life unmolested: the fact that the tax-eating classes have not promulgated a rule that concords with natural rights, and/or have promulgated rules that explicitly violate those rights, is simply more evidence that ‘government’ has nothing to do with rights-protection and everything to do with gang rape.

As someone who has spent two stints (only two weeks each) in French concentration camps (I flouted the ‘all livestock must have ear-tags’ rule) I can seriously say that Christmas Island is superior to the Centre de Retention Administrative at Lyon – but that is irrelevant. ANY infringement of the human rights of ANY member of our species, by the tax-parasite class, should be met with (defensive) violence.

Kevin Rudd has already indicated that he is entirely supportive of extrajudicial assassination – his barely-concealed glee when the Indos killed some poor religious nutjob (without trial or any other pretence at due process) is the proof. Let him and his parasitic henchmen live their values, I say.

And lastly – do NOT support a ‘Bill of Rights’: as with the US version, the tax-eating classes will, over time, convert a specifically non-exhaustive, non-exclusive list to a list of the only rights that are deeemed to exist.

Again, to paraphrase Diderot: man will be free when the last politician is bludgened to death with the severed arm of the last police sniper.

Cheerio

GT.

I found this interesting:

The political motivations behind this rejection vary considerably between anarchists: broadly speaking, some are libertarians or anarcho-capitalists who see the state as an obstacle to radical individualism or a completely free market; others hold communitarian ideals, and regard the state as a violent institution which creates inequalities between people (through institutions such as private property), which prevents people from taking responsibility for ordering their own communities, which obstructs human potential and mutual co-operation, and which perpetrates more violence and war than it prevents.

In particular, since I subscribe to both of the viewpoints described.