by exploited » Fri Jan 04, 2013 10:05 am
Once rights become contextual, they fail to be rights, and become privileges. You have the privilege of speaking freely - largely because you live in a collective that values those things, and for no other reason. The whole idea of a "contextual absolute" makes literally no sense at all.
Rights are not "inherent." They are not "natural." They do not exist regardless of what the government does. They are social constructs, and as social constructs, they need to be able to account for social actions, including extreme ones. And so they categorically fail.