The obsession with "rights".

A post over at Cogitans Iuvenis got me thinking:

The last assertion is a very serious claim to make, but unfortunately, I have concluded that it is undeniably true; or it appears that way to me on my morose days. Sure people care about having freedom for themselves, and maybe their close associates, but they couldn't care less about the freedom of the other person two towns over, much less a thousand miles a way. How else can you explain anti-smoking laws, the FDA using paramilitary to storm raw milk vendors, or the call for individuals to have greater government involvement in our lives? 

I have literally meet individuals that have stated they don't care that government restricts x, the right to bear arms, as long as they grant y, for example free health care. Never mind the demonstrably atrocious job the government has done with education or even managing their own check books. These individuals cannot, or will not, discern that social services are not rights. Free health care, education and a guaranteed standard of living is nice, of course ignoring the dire economic ramifications of robbing Peter to pay Paul, but they aren't innate rights.

Both Aurini and Fringelements have done numerous videos attacking the core assumption of modern-day society that democracy with a universal franchise (and sometimes without) is the bestest thing since bread that's been sliced on all three cartesian planes. Of course, no form of government is free from problems (unless you want to cede power to a completely neutral, all-knowing, all-seeing AI like Helios from Deus Ex is), but democracy does indeed seem to be the pits, especially once people figure out that they can just vote in more government cheese for themselves. You can go watch their videos if you'd like to learn more about their arguments.

And so you enter a debate with someone on the problems of democracy, you get them to admit that it isn't the best form of governance, you get them to admit the attendant problems such as power clustering in a few nodes and catering to the lowest common denominator, you get them to admit rampant voter fraud and "low-information" voters, you corner them into conceding every point and admitting that unrestricted democracy on a governmental level is a failure while brushing aside their histrionics ("Racist!" "Sexist!" "Classist!") and finally, finally they admit that everyone automatically having the vote is a bad idea...

...And when you suggest that the franchise be restricted by any measure, they say "I don't wanna, it would be against their rights."

Never mind that said voting "rights" are actually privileges only made possible by an affluent, technologically advanced society, horribly destructive, arguably infringe upon the "rights" of others by robbing Peter to pay Paul, and and by all accounts appear to be dysgenic and degenerate when it comes to society, they must be protected at all costs.

Yes, I would give up my "right" to vote. Not just because I realise that voting accomplishes absolutely nothing, what with executive power always trumping voting rights, but that I will admit that so long as things are running smoothly and I'm allowed to live my life the way I want without trespassing on the rights of others, I couldn't care if I were living in a theocracy. As Aurini says, government should be boring, and I agree with him. The best rulers are those who don't want to rule and all that.

Edit: as of this point, Mrs. JB has also made another post examining the other side of the argument. I will fully admit when I am wrong about someone. However, the folks I spoke to about democracy are still very real.

Second case in point: Mrs. Judgybitch has made a post attacking the proposed limits on abortion in Arkansas, reiterating her stance that one should be allowed to murder their children at any time in the womb.

Yes, I will fully admit that I do have major beef with this issue, considering that my mother came under heavy pressure by medical professionals (I use the term loosely) to abort me due to the psychological effect I apparently was having on her. This was just three to four years out of the stop at two policy, I was the third child, and thankfully she refused to cave in. Yes, it's hard to find a faster way to wipe a smile off my face than to bring up this issue.

The crux of the issue is that Mrs. JB thinks it's a necessary evil, but I think it's an unacceptable one. That's the beauty of alt-right red-pill thinking - we can disagree on topics near to our hearts and not devolve into a shouting match of personal attacks like leftists do (although I will admit to becoming a little more aggressive than usual on certain topics like this one). Anyways, Mrs. JB is using two arguments as the lynchpin of her stance: variants of the violinist argument, which argues that it is immoral to force someone to loan someone else the use of their body/resources, and the quality of life argument, where she argues that it would be better to kill a child than let them be raised by a mother who hates them.

I counter with the following points:

*The standard refutation to the violinist argument. (Not that there aren't others.)
*That our all-holy "bodily soverignity" is being violated massively on a daily basis without much outcry. See: conscription, banning of sodas, pre-flight searches, etc, etc.
*That society and civilisation arises from our action or inaction and hence if our actions are restricted as a course of society, our rights and bodies are too. (You don't talk politics at a family gathering, do you? Freedom of speech gone.)
*That if it is morally acceptable to kill a child to avoid the misery of growing up under a mother who hates them (assuming that the false dichotomy is true), we should round up all the poor, disaffected, orphaned, disabled, widowed, and otherwise down on their luck and euthanise them to reduce the amount of suffering in the world. Hey, that was the argument the ancient Carthagians used, I'm sure it's good enough for us.

As someone I knew used to say, "a girl has to keep her options open." Mrs. JB concedes the humanity of the fetus. She admits that abortion is wrong, and it makes her sick to even think of it. She admits that it's being rampantly abused. But she wants to keep her options open anyway. My comments haven't gotten through moderation yet, so I don't know her responses to my counterarguments, but there's this Tarzanwannabe guy who writes quite in the style of Texas Arcane but approximately makes the same points I do:

Yeah, you’re really digging a hole now. It’s not 1840. In my neighborhood, wimmins is sex-edukated an has a butt-load of contraceptive options. Yet here comes prego. Wanting ‘rights’. And complaining about an onerous gestation burden on the operation of her blood, organs and what-not. So much for edukashion, huh? But her absolute ‘rights’ require another to die. What an fascist. Actually, a bully too. You’d have thought she would’d know how her pussy works — rather than simply knowing how to work her pussy. It’s purely trope-on-a-rope arguments to counter that the father can’t do gestation so has no choice. Nyah, nyah. Let him, or *anyone* else offer to receive the child. Yes, they may ‘belong’. (Not a bad word.) If gestation was *all* that was required, I’d say fine — here’s a small stipend. (Some women say they enjoyed their pregnancies.) And in return, since you’ve made it abundantly clear you can’t be responsible with your… um, organs (even to the point of requiring another’s death), we will make certain you won’t have your precious ‘right’ impeded for a few months ever again. Hop up on this sterilization table, dear. It’s the least you can do for the life that was sacrificed. You know, because your organs ‘n such. What kind of mother is that? The kind that loses the right to mother/murder again. Fair enough.
Or how about… sometimes it seems fun to get *my* body rip-roaring drunk. Granted, my driving gets erratic somewhat. As a consequence (a word I love) I sometimes run over people. “Even women and children!” But there should be no consequence because that would most likely infringe on my body. And my ‘right’ to it. Whew! Lucky me. And get this! Fortunately, my birth-year lottery kept me out of the draft, otherwise I would have had to go have the same argument with those right-denying military people. “Hell no, my body won’t go!” Damn, why didn’t I remember all these pearls when I filed taxes! My body doesn’t want to work for everyone else’s stinkin’ roads and edukashions and free shit.
This is difficult and you do not have the answer. Stay open.

Her answer?

This is difficult and you do not have the answer. Stay open.
You got that right.

"I concede it's evil and wrong, b-but I don't wanna! It's against my rights!" Mrs. JB doesn't seem like the kind who would exercise her "right" to the power of life and death wantonly (it was never about bodily autonomy, no matter what anyone says. Look at what people do, instead of what they say) , but she still likes having that power despite being a decent human being.

The power of life and death is a serious and heady thing indeed. I'm not sure if I'd be able to make the right, informed choice.

I don't fancy myself in Caesar's position. To thumb up or down?

People, like governments, enjoy power even if it's merely imaginary and will do their damndest to keep it. I suppose this isn't a surprising thing - even the most decent of people will make their brain run mental loops and do all sorts of gymnastics to keep their power and privileges intact no matter what the cost. It's probably an instinctive thing, and that goes doubly so if the costs aren't immediate and in our faces.

Civilisation sometimes requires that we supress our instincts, desires and privil - oh, I mean, "rights". Yes, they are nice to have and some may even be essential to avoid tyranny and such, but they are not the be-all-end-all of existence. Hey, it would be so much easier to dump my parents and go off on my own when SHTF, but I won't and I reserve the right to believe that anyone who does that is scum, and although I have yet to truly raise a hand in violence against anyone in my life, yes, in that situation, if I met such a person, I would take it upon myself to play judge, jury and executioner in absence of the law.

Maddened MT righteous idealogical rage, etc, etc.

Some days, I have an ugly, angry urge that I have to keep suppressed. At the lighter end, it's the desire to grab someone by the neck, shake them vigorously, and yell, "you fool! Don't you see what you're doing with your 'rights' as the be-all-end-all of everything, that it's circling back around and you're bringing the house down on yourself? Can't you make the final connection?" On the heavier end, it's a desire to suit up, wield a sword in one hand and a torch in the other, and go forth and beat and burn the crap out of the world until my arms won't move anymore and then, only then, can I fall on my own sword and die.

Angry squire smash!

No, people won't give up their "rights", and I won't be the one taking them away - I fully realise that no one is going to willingly give up democracy so long as it gives them an illusion of having a say in how the state is run, and even if abortion were to be banned (which has no chance at passing anywhere in the first world), it would not solve the underlying defective dysgenic degeneracy that is causing this societal rot in the first place and would give the state another excuse to do more of that intrusion thing, rendering the entire point of such a ban moot.

No, the consequences of their actions will, unless the grand reset comes first. That's natural law for you, and while it saddens me to have to have so much suffering in the interim, we've got to be the junkie who hits bottom before anything can get better. Go against it, and the world kicks a roundball back into your face with no apologies. They will cling to their "rights" while they drown and the world sinks into darkness, and I may not quite find myself willing to save them from the very things dragging them down.

I would be more supportive of "rights" if a lot more people were capable of using them wisely and with temperance. If people actually looked up something of their candidates' position before voting. If it was determined beyond all doubt that a fetus was terminally deformed or even dead (for an example of the latter, see the Savita case) and deep consideration given before an abortion instead of something that is "just done". If people could take drugs in moderation and not be slaves to the next chemical high instead of turning into full junkies.

The majority of humanity, dare I say the R-selected cro-mag hedonistic degenerate nonthinking manboons - unfortunately, they require the carrot and the stick, and by all appearances of modern society they don't desire freedom and are bent on self-destruction, so why not give them what they want?

So, what do I have to do to get the end of the Holocene and the next ice age to come about sooner?