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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Father Terrence who wrote (37936)	5/11/1999 1:39:00 AM
From: Dayuhan	Respond to of 108807

If you take any issue and pare it down to individual rights, most issues are not as complex as many think. Of course not, because you have pared away all the complexities. You might as well say that peeled oranges have no skin. I am thinking in particular of an indirect conversation with the absent Galt, not ye his prophet; I do not know if you wish to argue his case. In this conversation we discussed environmental legislation; Galt seemed to regard the individual rights of the pollutor as more significant than the individual rights of those who suffered the consequences of the pollution. This inconsistency was concealed beneath a welter of self-important pomposities and the assumption of a superiority that was never objectively demonstrated. I was not impressed. In this, as in so many cases, it is easy to "objectively" define a list of individual rights. The complexities enter into the equation when the rights of one individual collide with those of another. At this point we emerge from polemics and deal with the real world, in which we often have little choice but to use subjective judgement to the best of our ability. When we refuse to acknowledge that we are on subjective ground, and proclaim ourselves infallible, we slip into very dangerous territory. All absolutism - even absolutism which begins with the purpose of defending individual rights - ends up crushing individual rights.