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I think this gets at what I'm suggesting from a bit clearer angle: Conscription is a tool of the state: it can be used legitimately or illegitimately, and to good or bad ends. Prison is a good example: imprisoning people is a tool the state can use. The tool I think is neutral: me telling you...

Hm, I'm not really seeing that argument. What I've argued, and what most others seem to, is "conscription is another form of taxation". The legitimacy to conscript flows from whatever source the legitimacy to tax comes from. The legitimacy of government determines how legitimate their taking...

1) Yes, basic communist dogma. I know. 2) This is an example of libertarian redefinition, which you use inconsistently. Of course States have rights. To suggest otherwise is to say either states have no authority to do anything, or are unconstrained it what they can do. 3) Yes, Libertarians...

The absurdity of Libertarians: arguing above that either a government has no right to do anything, and thus shouldn't exist, or that there is no limiting principle, and thus the State's power is unlimited. Are you going now redefine rights so the clear meaning doesn't mean what it seems your...

Well, this comes down mostly to what we mean by "intrinsic part of reality". Its a bit of a definitional question, but since words are a big part of how we think of things, that does matter too. See things like Racism. I would say there being better or worse cultures implicitly argues that...

I'm not sure defining every human society that has ever existed as communist is particularly useful to an anti communist argument. Its like the self own of accepting "Socialism is just when governments do stuff", which, well, defines all human civilization as socialist. Duty as a good is only...

Ah, an anti realist perspective. The NAP being insufficient I don't think disproves it. Moral Realism I think still have a strong claim though. Fairness or justice being human concepts doesn't logically I believe suggest they are not real. 1,2 and 3 could be said to be human concepts in the...

No, I disagree. It generally morphs into a tautology because of how Libertarians use it. It also requires smuggling other ideas in, like asserting its the only moral axiom. If duty is part of morality, then the conscription is not so clear. What is a spacecraft? There's a lot of parts to it...

I increasingly don't see positive vs negative rights as a particularly useful distinction: the positive vs negative right issue is the sophistry and nitpick, though a slightly lighter term may be more correct: there may be a bit of a difference, but not as large as often assumed, and not as...

Nitpicks and sophistry. An ability to request with no duty to respond is meaningless. But, sure, if you need it spelled out, there you go. The value of a right is a positive duty on society and individuals to respect and defend that right. Your right to property means very little if it doesn't...

This I think is one of the reasons things are so muddled: there is limited acceptance culturally over what the State is, but we have a bunch of conflicting, often mutually exclusive definitions, and since the different parts are less explicit, we can't really clearly divide them either. For...

Where do these human rights come from? Where does the legitimacy of the state come from? From a natural law perspective, positive rights are perfectly logical. As Bintananth says, they are often two parts of the same coin. I would say conscription by itself falls into the same category as...