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StatistFallacies/MightMakesRight

Fallacy:

There are variants of this one, but it comes down to "The state is right to tax you (etc.) because it can."

Response:

Understand the difference between power and right. The state may have the power to infringe on individual rights; but it does not have the right to do it. Rights do not physically protect themselves. A chained slave has the right to liberty, but it is presently infringed by the one who claims to own him. If able, he has the right to attempt escape; if freed, he is not rightly property of his claimed owner, and has a perfect right to run away, or, if necessary to free himself, use force to defend his infringed rights so that he may again exercise his right to liberty.

Similarly, if a man's wallet is stolen, it is still his rightful property; but he does not have the power to control it (it is not in his possession). Since it is his property, he has the right to use necessary force to take it back from the thief.

Another expression of this error is something like:

  • "But by all means, feel free to go tell parents about your stance on kiddy porn and tell me in wrong." (Mitchel Lewis)

(I expressed no stance at all, but he was assuming that I was for legalizing it, perhaps because I posted this article.) Then the fallacy is, basically, "If people beat you up for your opinion, then your opinion is wrong." For example, if I could travel back in time to slave owners in the south and told them, "Slavery is wrong", and they beat me up for it, then slavery would be right. (DBR)

Justifying violence with numbers is just ganging up on the weak and has been a pathetic justification for one atrocity after another—slavery, apartheid, genocide, misogyny. It’s a horribly flawed philosophy of might-makes-right.

It is duress when we are told our rights are privileges and those rights then taken away under threat of punishment if we do not comply. For example, when you sign a government contract to obtain permission to travel, under threat of punishment if you do not sign, then the contract was signed under duress. That’s just one example. Truly free people need no permission to engage in activity that harms no one. —Dale Everett, Anarchy in your Head

Related: ../Wouldn'tWarlordsTakeOver.