the argument is religious freedom vs tyranny of the majority.
The answer is the morally correct people should retain their rights.
Since those people are virtually impossible to identify, you get stuck with a lesser of two evils.
In other words, Libyans are largely Muslim and want a religious government. That's fine. Whatever. But what about the religious minority?
Well they get screwed.
Should we destroy the lives of millions to preserve the rights of a few?
Well the thing is we shouldn't be destroying any lives for the sake of others, but we should be willing to defend the rights of others, even a few, if the lives of others, even the many, should choose to try to infringe on their rights.
The problem of this occurs when the moral rights of a person or group assume dominion over another - such as human sacrifice or something more simple like sanctioned theft or vandalism.
If I'm wearing a $15,000 suit and I get a pile of rainbow color thrown at it while visiting India, do I have the right to sue for my damaged property? Some would say yes, but a billion or more might say no.
Just because a billion people say something, it doesn't make it true. The majority of the western world once thought the Earth was flat. Does scientific consensus make something right?
Scientists once believed exceeding the sound barrier was impossible, and claimed a nuclear bomb if ever created would ignite the atmosphere.
What about Global Warming?
I direct your attention to this 1977 issue of Time magazine:
web link to imageWhat is the point I'm making?
We should defend those who are good, and those who are Right. But we don't know either as a collective - rather, as a collective, we have a terrible tendency to be not only wrong, but evil. Witch hunts like the Inquisition were by consensus. Slavery of Africans was accepted by the majority of local tribes in Africa - the same tribes that sold their African brothers to the white man. Jews were hunted under the rule of several Popes, and Hitler hunted Gypsies - a people hated by the vast majority of Europe.
Well what does this all mean?
People need a right to privacy, a right to person, and a right to exist unmolested. They need a right to speak and to publish, to buy, to sell, to persuade, and to have the opportunity to gather, to breed, to love, and to hate whom they will. They have a right to own property, and to invest, to build and invent, to create and destroy their property or if sanctioned by the owners, the property of others. People have a right to pray to who or what they wish including nothing at all. They have a right to preach, and to reject attempts to convert them.
People should not be bound by laws governing their mobility, or their person hood or commerce. People should not have to pay toll fees or taxes for goods and serves they do not want nor desire to have or need.
What I just stated are a large number of rights people should have but don't. Localizing it to places like Libya is the same as being distracted by Porn while rights get flushed down the toilet.
Reply
