The Absurd GOP

[Angrboda]

Implicit in your reply here is that rights exist as objective things. I'd argue instead that 1) "rights" are based upon shared cultural values, instead, and that 2) the equivocation of "violation" with taken away is a distinction without a difference, because if you can't exercise your rights, you don't have them.

I don't personally believe that rights are merely cultural conventions, such that, if everyone around you decided you didn't have the right to free speech, that would mean you didn't have such a right.  Or that, were a thief were to steal your property, it means it was never yours.  Just means you're surrounded by assholes.  

In translation, everyone on earth has rights, but not every government recognizes or protects them.  Insomuch as a government refuses to acknowledge them, or takes steps to violate them, they're not just doing culture.  They're wrong.  I'm more of an explicit objectivist than an implicit one, lol.  I feel like I have to point out that even from the standpoint of conceiving of rights as cultural and/or legal fiction...and in the us legal system.... it's not believed that a person does not have rights when those rights are being violated.  That's the theory of litigation underlying the idea of suing for rights violations in the first place.  You did have them the whole time they were being violated.

In context, and narratively.  If they made it illegal to say the king was mad, I'd still say it.  If they fined me for saying it I'd say it from under the bridge.  If they sent me to prison for saying it I'd say it in prison.  If they cut out my tongue I'd write it on the walls.  If they cut off my hands I'd pantomime it.  If they cut off my arms and legs I'd furiously think it.  If they killed me their actions would speak for me from beyond the grave.  At no point will they have been able to rob me of this, we're just talking about the increasingly desperate acts of incompetent people.  Coincidentally, proving that this thing they can't take from me was absolutely right the entire time.  The king is mad.

At the same time, a slave is bound exactly because there are undesirable consequences for doing what he wishes. Yes he can leave, on pain of punishment, but he is still bound by that threat.