• @rottingleaf@lemmy.zip
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      16 months ago

      I’ve always been reluctant to rely on papers like any constitution as a base for my perceived rights.

      Maybe as an argument, in the sense of “smart people have said that it should be and made some points in its favor”.

      But in general it’s a horrid mistake to rely on a paper. Some people you haven’t given any consent will stamp a few saying that you are a slave and oops.

      The reality is that there’s no way to consistently defend a right suppressed by legal arguments. If you can check the chain of laws giving you some right or taking it, you’ll always come to the point where it’s just “we all decide that’s law” and you were not part of that decision. And if you go the opposite way and just accept what’s made law, then you are dropping the idea of rights in its entirety, making decisions made by someone else a law for you.

      My point is that this is unsolvable and one can’t replace good and evil with legal arguments. Laws will never be sufficiently good for that, even constitutional laws.

      So I’m for right to arm oneself, but I don’t think there’s any magic allowing to universally prove that a thing is legally right or wrong.

      Which is why, again, a journalism which isn’t outrageous is just public relations, a protest that doesn’t harm economy and break laws is just a demonstration, an a principle which can be overridden by a law or a threat of force is just virtue signalling.