No, the point of government is to protect your rights from violation by others.

Those unalienable rights you are born with as outlined in the bill of rights.

It's not to overcome the failings of humanity (an impossible task if ever there was one).

Your inalienable rights are a construct, enforced solely by "governments". Your rates in the state of nature are nothing like the rights your countrymen have agreed to provide you.

So slavery is okay as long as the government determines it is. Great moral framework you have there.

It's morally wrong to use threats of government violence to dictate how an individual uses their private property.

You know those "threats of government violence" are the only thing stopping the practice of slavery?

I'm okay with threats of government violence against would-be violators of human rights, like slavers and murderers. I'm not okay with using such threats to deter private discrimination in who people interact and do business with.

Violence is only an acceptable response in cases when a person initiates a violation of another's person or property.

Why is it only acceptable in those cases? Why not treat 'right to live free of racial discrimination' as a human right?

>Why not treat 'right to live free of racial discrimination' as a human right?

Because I don't have a right to dictate how other people use their person and property, except to prevent them from violating my person or property.

It seems you are simply asserting the truth of your position, as though it is axiomatic that property rights trump all other rights.

Person A says, "I don't have a right to dictate how other people use their person and property, except to prevent them from violating my person or property"

Person B says, "I don't have a right to dictate how other people use their person and property, except to prevent them from violating my person or property or my right to be treated equally".

How do I know who is correct?

One is the basis of a stable social order, and one is not. Once you abandon the principle of private property and self-ownership, then human rights just become a popularity contest, about which values and attitudes are acceptable (not polygamy, but yes homosexuality! Not white racial awareness, but yes other groups' ethnic/racial awareness!).

It's not a viable principle to base a justice system on. It will inevitably lead to politics being turned into a venue through which groups fight to expand their power at the expense of others. This is hugely wasteful.

The evidence for your system isn't very good. Without government protections from discrimination, large portions of the population were oppressed, lynched, falsely imprisoned, denied jobs, education, rights, healthcare (and much more), and consigned to poverty.

An important question is, why would anyone desire to see others oppressed and abused, that they would defend the power to do it?

You're conflating violations of human rights, like lynching, with private discrimination, which violates no rights.

You do not have a right to a product or service (like healthcare), or a job, that someone else provides. You're only entitled to your life, liberty and property. As soon as you assume a right to things others produce, you support the violation of their life, liberty and/or property.

>An important question is, why would anyone desire to see others oppressed and abused, that they would defend the power to do it?

Private discrimination is not oppression. Using government violence to prevent someone from discriminating is oppression.

Private discrimination is something we all engage in, every day. What you're arguing for is prohibiting certain types of discrimination, in certain areas of private life. For instance, prohibiting racial discrimination but not ideological discrimination, and in one's business interactions, and not sexual interactions.

The whole concept of prohibiting private discrimination is wrong, as it presumes we do not have a total right to determine who we associate and do business with.

Marginalizing large groups of people is the basis for revolutions, not a stable social order.

A group is going to revolt because racists don't want to associate with them? Seems unlikely.

I haven't seen evidence that private discrimination leads to revolution.

History is filled with examples of laws being passed to mandate segregation, and to discriminate against minorities, because the authorities were concerned about the fact that in the absence of such intervention, the majority demographic was mixing with a minority group through marriage and commerce.

My inalienable rights were actually endowed by my Creator.

Who gave your parents permission to bestow these rights?

It's parents all the way down.

St. Chrysostom: "God made all mankind of one man, that he might teach the world to be governed by a king, and not by a multitude."

Please show me an inalienable right that has not actually been alienated.

I wouldn't mind some governments trying harder to overcome the failings of humanity. More clearly approving certain kinds of behaviour may not change the minds of adults but at least sets a good example for children. The problem is of course that you have one culture deciding what constitutes a failing of humanity.

And that is one of the fundamental problems.

Another being(assuming we all agree on what a failing is) the rights you need to violate to attempt(and fail, because it will fail) to address that failing.

Better to leave people to themselves than inflict certain misery in a misguided attempt to remould mankind in your own image.

Even accepting the premise that rights are "endowed by the creator"--how does living a life free of discrimination not rank higher on the scale of fundamental rights than private property?

The argument is never about freedom from discrimination, but on what you are allowed to discriminate on.

Currently race and sex are nono's but religion and politics is ok.

Why should I face discrimination for my appearance when trying to get laid?

Surely the government should ban women and men from turning me down for sex because I'm not attractive.

Have you read _Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America_ yet? I think Rayiner would find it interesting as well.

So you're saying that people are really bad, so let's have a few people in positions of power to address that problem?

"I'll put a sharper point on it: People must be governed"

Then maybe the government should tell you who you can have sex with an who not to?

It thought you people wanted the government out of your bedroom?

Telling people who people can have in their homes and not is fascist. These are not commercial businesses.

If you want to make a law stating that any flat rented out on an going basis constitutes a 'business' - and subject to regular rules - that's fine. But if they are homes - no way.