From: Richard Ridge (richard_ridge@tao-group.com)
Date: Tue Feb 26 2002 - 06:30:25 MST
Jane made the mistake of posting a message while suffering a fever induced
by the terrible ravages of swine fever. She also added insult to injury by
posting it in html.
>Meat is good over flames and on its own or with a bit of salad or 'dead
horse'.
During my younger days, I made the mistake of passing up the opportunity to
eat horse on a visit to France - illogical squeamishness on my part, since
eating horse (or, for the matter, dog) can hardly be any morally better or
worse than cow or chicken (avoiding terms like beef, which are essentially
euphemisms).
>However rights exist circumstantially, is all. If you're human, maybe. If
you're healthy, wealthy and wise enough, a bit more maybe. If you're from
white developed nation >states, quite a lot maybe. But even then you're
liable to fall between the cracks of the floorboards and end up living with
the rats and eating out of tins or drinking >contaminated
water.
Oh joy, Marxism, or, as I prefer to call it, antediluvian claptrap (doesn't
anyone here want to propound some other antiquated ideology for a change?
How about Calvinism?). You are essentially articulating the Marxist critique
that rights only apply within the egoistic capitalist concept of
individualism; as with all things Marxist, it assumed the foundation of
society to be essentially an economic one and proceeded onwards from that
dubious concept, i.e. that "the laws and interests of the family and civil
society must give way in case of collision with the laws and interests of
the state." (Marx, Critique of Hegel) The Marxist notion of rights was that
they are bequeathed by the state (c.f. animal rights) and ensure economic
and social equality; "the relationship of family and civil society to the
state is that of external necessity, a necessity which relates by opposition
to the inner being of the thing. The very fact that the laws concerning the
private rights of persons depend on the specific character of the state and
are modified according to it is thereby subsumed under the relationship of
external necessity’" (Marx, Critique of Hegel). The problem is that when the
rights of society have been established as more important than those of
individuals, individuals become disposable; for an illustration of what I
mean by that I suggest you try reading Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler.
I would strongly advocate that anyone prepared to waste neural space on
Marxist ideology should read this document:
http://www.adamsmith.org.uk/hayek/home.htm
>The trick is to become a corporation. They enjoy the rights of individuals
but none of the liability!!!
And a good deal more scrutiny and legislation than would apply to
individuals. Which is quite proper. As I presume this comment to be Enron
inspired, I have a question - why are people always concerned about business
contaminating politics rather than vice versa? The main reason the Labour
party here sought donations from businesses like Enron was to seek to
mollify any criticism of their economic policies from that sector. Ministers
can even go around openly admitting this, secure in the knowledge that the
left will always see the business as the corrupting influence.
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