tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6557458849091969678.post1794981379882757973..comments2023-06-15T09:13:45.467-04:00Comments on Liberty's Torch: The Collapse And The Crowd Part 2: The LexiconFrancis W. Porrettohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05862584203772592282noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6557458849091969678.post-10838779578259854622015-12-31T12:27:55.932-05:002015-12-31T12:27:55.932-05:00Indeed, Weet. I think that course in "Straini...Indeed, Weet. I think that course in "Straining at Gnats and Swallowing Elephants Whole" that's been mandatory for law students is now signing up the statists and progressives as well.Francis W. Porrettohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05862584203772592282noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6557458849091969678.post-73463179881874164692015-12-31T11:04:12.566-05:002015-12-31T11:04:12.566-05:00I was just reading Nock's essay, Life, Liberty...I was just reading Nock's essay, Life, Liberty, and..., last night, and your post reminded me of this snippet:<br /><br /><i>Again, the absolutist rejection of the idea of natural rights lands one straight in the midst of the logical tangle that so baffled Herbert Spencer. If the individual has no rights but those that the state gives him, and yet if, according to republican theory, sovereignty resides in the people, we see a strange sort of sequence. Here we have a sovereign aggregation of individuals, none of whom has any rights of any kind. They create a government, which creates rights and then confers them on the individuals who created it. The plain man's wits do not hold out through this sequence, nor yet did Spencer's. "Surely," he says, "among metaphysical phantoms the most shadowy is this which supposes a thing to be obtained by creating an agent, which creates the thing, and then confers the thing on its own creator!"</i><br /><br />But then, statists, absolutist, leftists, progressives, etc. are no strangers to mental gymnastics or ignoring logical conflicts, are they?Weetabixhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06106614092497408546noreply@blogger.com