Rights, government and iguanas
The same anonymoose came back to play after I slapped him once, and he was a little more reasonable this time, so I'll treat his argument seriously.
Rights and abilities are granted by limiting others; that is the very basis of our government. We protect life by outlawing murder. We protect free speech by preventing violence. We offer equal education by removing religion. We protect health by controlling food quality and contents. We allow drinking by limit the amount to protect life and the right to travel with risking ones life. We protect our economy by controlling trade.
The first mistake here is to confuse protection of rights with creation of rights. We have certain rights just by being born, which stem largely from ownership of our own bodies. That's all we come into the world with, and the last thing we leave behind. All other rights follow from the right of self-ownership, and are cancelled when self-ownership is cancelled. Chief among these is the right to property, to hold what you've created through your own labor, because you have exchanged a portion of your life for that. Government's sole legitimate function is to protect life and the property which flows from it.
Now let's look at particulars. "Rights and abilities are granted by limiting others; that is the very basis of our government." 'Scuse me; my abilities were granted by God and augmented and refined by my own hard work. None of that had to do with limiting others, except in stopping them from limiting ME. Also note that "the very basis of our government"; i.e., the US constitution, goes to great effort to establish how people may NOT be limited.
"We offer equal education by removing religion." Huh? What have education and religion to do with each other? Education is not a right. You have a right to learn; indeed, it's necessary for your survival, so it's more a natural obligation than a right. But nobody is obligated by nature to assist your learning process; if somebody is forced to teach you, he's your slave, and spreading our his paycheck among the general population just spreads his slavery. Nor must education be equal; how can it be, when people's intelligence is not equal? Do people in group homes have a right to courses in calculus?
"We protect health by controlling food quality and contents." Well, there's certainly a right to persue health, to maintain the life which you own, and also to destroy health and life, since it's your body. If government forbids you to do something injurious to your health (say, smoking), then it has taken control of your life. Likewise, if it forbids you something that you think necessary to health (raw milk, nutritional supplements, controversial cancer therapies), it is attempting to kill you, whether it thinks it's saving you or not. Now, it is nice to have nutrition information provided, and certification of cleanliness (to the extent that actually happens), just because I don't want to be bothered with doing manufacturer research every time I go into the store. But government is not necessary for that.
"We allow drinking by limit the amount to protect life and the right to travel with risking ones life." By the mangled syntax of this sentence, I think we've allowed too much drinking, but let me address the point I think you would have made had you been sober. As I indicated above, it's your body; you have a right to pollute it. You don't have a right to beat your spouse in a drunken rage, or to send high-velocity metal careening down a public road (if it's your private road, then be my guest.) But those are different things from consuming alcohol. Drinking doesn't threaten to infringe anyone else's right to live; drinking and driving does.
"We protect our economy by controlling trade." Ha! That's a good one. We protect certain politically-favored industries (and their employees) by controlling trade. Anyway, we were talking about rights here, and abstract nouns ("economy") have no rights. And a worker has no right to a job (which is provided by somebody else); he only has the right (nay, natural necessity) to work. If I spend some of my life to make a widget, and I need wodgets (which I can't make), and I can trade my widget for one wodget from Joe's Wodgets downtown or for two wodgets made by Hu Pay-Mo in Shanghai, who are you to say I can't trade with Hu? If I only get one wodget instead of two, MY economy hasn't been protected.
Now, let's talk about the specific case that got you so exercised. A bunch of immigrants like to eat oddball animals, and some of their countrymen seek to satisfy that desire. If you have a right to eat iguana (and we've established that you do), then there's a corollary right to provide iguanas for others to eat. Now, that right might have ownership-based limitations; if the government owns wild iguanas, it may want to protect them by preventing poaching. But we don't have proof that these were poached iguanas; we just know they didn't come from a "licenced facility". They could have been raised in somebody's basement. Likewise with the chickens. Commecial chicken is notoriously unsanitary, swimming around in fecal soup. I don't have an approved slaughter facility, but even without one, I can guarantee you that my chicken is cleaner than Tyson's. I eat them; I have a vested interest in their cleanliness. Under OH law, I can sell up to 1000 birds a year, as long as I sell to end users. If I sold a bunch of chickens to that Bangladeshi, it would be illegal, even though he would be getting better-quality chicken. So have we infringed the immigrant's right to healthy chicken? Or healthy armadillo and iguana?
Anonymoose, I don't want your protection. Got that straight?
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