[HDThoreaun]

Natural rights do not exist. There is nothing natural about freedom. Every right we have we fought tirelessly for. If we forget the struggle we went through to obtain freedom we can easily abandon the cause and lose that freedom.

[mmooss]

While I mostly agree, freedom as a universal right does exist; not everyone can exercise it, but that doesn't make it less of a right.

And it is 'natural' in the sense that it is valued ~~ universally. I can't establish objectively that it is valued everywhere, of course; I can establish that people en masse have valued it and fought for it all over the world, from Europe to South Asia to SE Asia to East Asia; in Africa, to all of the Americas.

[HDThoreaun]

Well the issue here is that value is a spectrum. Having rights involves trade offs, take a look at singapore. I do not think it is in any way self evident that all people value each of their rights the way that you do. In el salvador the people gladly gave up their rights to obtain order, and now they have one of the most popular governments in the world even though they do not have very much freedom at all. For you to carte blanche say the el salvandorans are wrong to be happy with that trade off is naive and incredibly paternalistic. The same is true of the situation in Haiti.

[mmooss]

These are the same old argument that the dictators have made for generations. 'People here don't value freedom'; 'it's just your opinion'. They are called universal rights for a reason, and finding one popular dictator (in a world of fascist propaganda) while democracy and freedom have swept the world is not significant.

And if you say, who are you or am I to tell them what they value? Who are the dictators? If we can't morally, then you agree they have a right to self-determination, or freedom.

[HDThoreaun]

> you agree they have a right to self-determination, or freedom.

Certainly I think all people should have say over how they are governed. Whether they use that say to give themselves freedom is another question.

> 'People here don't value freedom'

No one is saying this. The claim is that some people are willing to sacrifice one thing they value a little (freedom) for something they value more (safety).

I havent spent much time looking into the popular opinion about that trade off in Haiti, but to claim that they should never make it as you claim takes away their self determination. If your claim was that Haitans are by and large unhappy with the drone program that would be a different story, but to just say handling criminals extrajudicially is unacceptable no matter what strikes me as naive

[mmooss]

> The claim is that some people are willing to sacrifice one thing they value a little (freedom) for something they value more (safety).

You're assuming what they value more. Also, without freedom there is little safety. Without freedom of speech, etc., you can't have a free election where people can have self-determination.

And without universal rights, if some voters can take rights from other voters, nobody is safe or has self-determination.

> handling criminals extrajudicially is unacceptable no matter what strikes me as naive

You are naive to the age-old excuses of state murder and oppression. It's not only criminals (how do you even know who is a criminal?) and it's not going to stop. Do you think the mercenaries and others running the drones care? Do you think they won't murder people for their own benefit or through sheer recklessness and contempt for human life? There's a reason we have limited government and courts. That's why Haiti is in this current state - prior murderers who did the same. Murder is how they seized power and murder is how they kept it.

You'll notice that stable governments are not founded on extrajudicial state murder. That's not what Washington, Jefferson, etc. did.

In warfare, combatants are killed without trial but within the laws of warfare. Even there, extralegal killing is murder.