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The most damaging effect of persons becoming "private property" is then you can pledge yourself and you children as collateral on a loan. The logical result is the bank can sell you or your children after the inevitable default. This horror is the cause of most of the world's poverty and the key to the child sex trade. Debt slavery is still slavery and abhorrent to all civilized people.
OP-1 - Rape is a violent crime. It must be treated as such.
OP-2 - Taxes are not theft or rape, they are dues for playing in the clubhouse. If you don’t like them work politically to change them or go somewhere else but leave your citizenship behind.
In which case he could reference laws about theft. Conceptually, it is a sound argument.
We could reference any laws and say the government is taking away rights because it jails people, or charges them fines, or imposes something, so therefore every law is immoral. Is that a sound argument?
Rape and murder is illegal because it is an act of sexual or fatal violence against another, perpetrated against their will and without their consent.
When we start viewing our bodies in terms of "property rights," and suggest that autonomy over our bodies is on the same level as an acre of land or a store bought toaster, we're in for a lot of trouble.
What if the government determined that rape for the collective good was OK? Say in some form of dystopian society we had only a limited number of men who were able to fight in our battles and to keep those men satisfied and happy, the government gives them women to rape or have their way with? After all, it is for the collective good of society to keep these men happy and in turn, we stay protected.
I think that Dr. Williams is proposing a rational analogy here. And I think it boils down to too much control by the government in determining what is morally right and wrong.
We could reference any laws and say the government is taking away rights because it jails people, or charges them fines, or imposes something, so therefore every law is immoral. Is that a sound argument?
No, that's not a sound argument. All you've done is taken a couple of key words out of the OP's argument and re-arranged them. A law is punishment for a specific action, usually in which you've directly violated someone else's rights.
The only rebuttal I can think of to the OP's argument is that they can leave the country if they don't like it. Although that's not a very good one because it could be made for any law that was deemed unfair.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Cavaturaccioli
Williams' point here is that something immoral does not become moral by mere act of Congress.
Taxes are NOT theft. They are dues for using the playpen.
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