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IPFS News Link • Tea Party

Natural Law vs Positive Law

• Uncommon Sense
When the founders of America set out to form a better type of government they had a clear historical perspective of the type of government they did not want. They knew that monarchies and arbitrary power were the enemies of freedom. Using this knowledge they created a republican form of government that by design was based on “natural law” rather than positive law. So what is natural law? Natural law begins with the premise that all of our rights come from God or nature and are inherent to our being.

2 Comments in Response to

Comment by Die Daily
Entered on:

Why does there have to be a conflict between Common property and individual property? I just don't see it. Some crap is common property, like our sewers. Who would want to personally own the sewers? And if they did, would you be cool with pay-per-flush? On the other hand, my farm or house should be mine, mine, mine. Period, hands off. Now, if I choose to start up a "plastic burning" business on my front yard...someone should stop me. The air on my land is mine. But I can't be allowed put crap in it that will go elsewhere than on my land, any more than I can be allowed to toss grenades from my yard into other people's yards. But if the shrapnel stays on my land, I should be allowed to huck grenades around all day long. I don't see the conflict. Where is it hiding? I also don't see how we can have ANY personal rights without having personal property rights first. But I'm all ears, Oyote.

Comment by foundZero
Entered on:

Oops, flawed. The concept of "natural law" I believe was advanced by John Locke who, if you can read into the language of the day, was not only a philanderer but an ethusiastic teller of ribbald tales.

Locke's unmistakable bar-room humour stated one immutable fact: men, I either have or will sleep with your wives and daughters, and this would be an actionable offense, and such do we have laws to enforce mutual property rights.

That's why I love Locke above the paranoiac Hobbes who was truly afraid of the "brutality of men". Locke was more like "be the man" and admit that our liberty really should be subject to certain restraints because hells boys, we know what we're made of!

So in a way, as Hobbesian law might be that of "somebody come help me if the big man comes", Lockiean law suggests that "we really shouldn't beat up on little men but rather protect them of our own self-interest" comes into play.

Natural Law is fully manifest in either scenario: it is the right of all beings under God to ask for help. Otherwise prayer would be illegal. It is also the right of all beings to render help and to nurture and to grow, for each of us is given a talent. Therefore under Natural Law does abundance exist.

You are within one half-mile of the truth if you are with me so far. Abundance exists from where? From nature. What is "natural law"? Abundance. An Earth that grows whether we tend it or not and it produces "wealth" for lack of a better word.

Given our epistomology of ownership, where did "common law" derive from?

The commons.

What were the commons in "common law"?

The center of commerce. The vast supermarket we used to know as "the land" where we got all the stuff we needed or in time, all the stuff we needed but could not grow.

The "common law" was mostly about how we equitably share what we owned in common. Positivistic action was a method of redress.

Taken to the extreme, I would say that without common property, there is little case for positivistic action in society whatsoever. And therefore does BP substitute water for oil in a formerly very lucrative and valuable resource.



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