"I want a secure defence for basic rights: but how to find it, when there is no specialness assignable to being human?"
I sympathize but here's the thing: tyrannts, dictators, enslavers have always been with us, and always will be with us. Unless Jehovah (or Crom) takes a direct hand in opposing such folks, the job is ours. And such a job isn't done with diplomacy (or 'voting'
) but in war. Hell, Jehovah incorporated specifically to raise us up and now -- over two millennium later -- man largely still cannibalizes, still squats in the mud. No, the grounding of 'rights' is in the god, but the assertion and defense of 'rights' comes from man in bloody conflict with man.
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"At one time, we just all said, "Human rights were given us by God." Now, when people no longer say that, we are thrown upon the tender mercies of government...and I just don't trust those guys at all."
But that's simply not true, Mannie.
For most of man's time on this Earth there's been no regard for the individual and his 'rights'. Only recently has man begun to pay lip service to 'rights', and this was a local, not global, development. Today: huge sections of the planet are dominated by tyrannts, dictators, and enslavers. Even here, in the U.S. the individual (as sovereign) is under assault, and 'rights' (Crom-derived) are eroded. You're right not to trust the 'governors' (mostly would-be tyrannts, dictators, and enslavers). I think, however, that mistrust should extend to the bulk of men, most kept in check only by circumstance, not ethic. 'Eternal Vigilance' (and, I believe, a loaded shotgun) are the means by which we keep such folks at bay and in their place. It would be wonderful if all men could agree on the sanctity of a human life, the sovereignty of the individual, the minimal social contract (we leave one another be), but most men don't agree on what seems evident, will not agree on what is sublime. There is no Utopia for us. Large-scale human 'peace' is an unnatural thing and it never lasts.