Comments Elsewhere

“But rights,even natural rights, are not packed into one’s suitcase and transported from country to country, especially while breaking the law. Distasteful as it may be, and to the extent they’re honored, natural rights are protected, recognized, and practiced under the laws and mores of the State, they are not free floating, trans border entities, …”

Pardon? Of course they are. Part of the concept of a natural right is that it INHERES IN THE INDIVIDUAL wherever she may be, and under whatever conditions; they do NOT derive from the constitution of this or that state to which she may be subject at any particular time. It is precisely for this reason that they are described as “natural,” not conventional, civil, or political, rights. If you want to devise a theory of something else that you call “rights,” which governments other than the one that claims a particular subject’s allegiance are not bound to respect, then you can do so, but you certainly have no basis for confusing the concept of natural rights with whatever it is you’re on about.

“It lends itself to the dilution of adherence, gratitude, and loyalty to the land they have, [temporarily?] chosen, …”

You say that like it’s a bad thing.

I happen think that the revolutionary implications of the natural rights doctrine is one of its chief virtues, not one of its vices. Loyalty and gratitude must be earned; they don’t just spring up out of the soil. And neither any actually existing State nor any self-appointed representatives of a blood-and-soil ambiguous-collective DESERVE one bit of adherance or loyalty, let alone of gratitude, if they go around invading the natural rights of people who have done no violence to person or property.