Much as it pains me to comment on your prolonged period of self-puffery, you got several things wrong.

Well, since I misspent a vast chunk of my youth on Philosophy and Pure and Applied Logic, three things get my hackles up





1) Sophists trying to argue cases by tapping dictionaries



Tapping a dictionary is appropriate when discussing whether a word applies. Any assertion to the contrary is asinine.

2) Dropping Philosophers names in an effort to sound deep, despite the fact that said Philosophers positions are entirely anathema to the case being made

Quickest case of historical revisionism I've ever seen. I cited the philosophers' names, not to sound deep, but to address your ridiculous statement:

Davin: "Its [the Nuremberg Principles] also cited as the intellectual foundation for the modern notion of human rights (Notice VI.B and VI.C).

Odin: "LOL. It is? Who besides you has made such a ludicrous claim? Source, please!"

Davin: "A notion that the US, UN, and EU tend to put a lot of stock in (even if the US bends them from time to time)."

Odin: "Ever hear tell of a lil concept called "natural law?" Hobbes, Mill, Rousseau, Locke -- any of them ring a bell? You DO know America's founders were big believers in natural law, don't you? And that Jefferson borrowed from Locke when he wrote The Declaration of Independence?"

. . .

Odin: "Perhaps you could explain how the Nuremberg Principles "cited as the intellectual foundation for the modern notion of human rights" differs from the intellectual foundation laid by the gentlemen I mentioned. I'd love to hear your learned thoughts on the subject."

Davin: "Easy, it doesn't differ much- which does not service your point that the fondation (Nuremberg Principles) on which the nazis were prosecuted was 'laughable and ex-post-facto', as you put it."

That was neither my point nor the point I cited the philosophers to "service." I don't claim to be knowledgeable about formal Logic, Symbolic or otherwise, but if the intellectual foundation laid by the gentlemen I mentioned "doesn't differ much" from the intellectual foundation you claim the Nuremberg Principles are cited for, citing the NP as laying that foundation is ludicrous, as I said.

Ironic that you took the role of Socrates, who (supposedly) went to his society's wise men and decided he was wiser because at least he knew what he didn't know. If Socrates came to you today and one of the first things out of your mouth was that the Nuremberg Principles laid the intellectual foundation for the modern notion of human rights, I doubt he'd stick around long.

You were right about my being dense, though. I shoulda realized that natural law applies to Saddam and satisfies the dictionary definition. Saddam is a murderer because his killing violates natural law, not societal law.

A competent tutor could've simply made that case clearly and concisely, instead of decrying the introduction of dictionaries and blathering on about "moral truths." Moral truths can be individual truths. The moral truth for some of the people in Germany's virulently anti-Semitic society was that Jews were evil, therefore inflicting suffering on Jews was moral. The moral truth for some of the Hutus was that the Tutsis were evil. The moral truths of a child raised by wolves will be different than the moral truths of a child raised by Catholics.

Your assertion that a global "implied social contract" exists also strikes me as being nonsense, although that may be due to my profound ignorance of social contract theory. It's my understanding that the social contract is, as Blackstone said, the parts giving allegiance to the whole and the whole protecting the interests of the parts (or words to that effect). I see neither happening globally with any consistency.

Locke wrote, "But because no political society can be nor subsist without having in itself the power to preserve property, and, in order thereunto, punish the offenses of all those of that society, there and there only is political society."

I don't recall the other parties to a global social contract punishing the U.S. for its crimes in Vietnam, Cambodia, Nicaragua, etc. The U.N. was so ineffectual in Rwanda that its commander in the field, General Dallaire, went home to Canada and attempted suicide. Where was the whole protecting the interests of the parts? Doesn't the failure to uphold the terms of the social contract void it?

If nations can be considered individual members of a global social compact, Rousseau might be describing the U.S. when he says, "For each individual can have, as a man, a personal will that is contrary or dissimilar to the general will he has as a citizen. His personal interest can speak to him quite differently from the common interest; his mode of existence, absolute and independent, can make him regard what he owes to the common cause as a gratuitous contribution, the loss of which will be less onerous to others than its payment is for him; and envisaging the artificial person, in which the state consists, as an abstract being, on the grounds that it is not a man, he would thus enjoy the rights of a citizen while declining to fulfill the duties of a subject, an example of injustice which, if it were to spread, would bring ruin to the body politic.

"In order therefore that the social pact should not be an empty formula, it contains an implicit obligation which alone can give force to the others, that if anyone refuses to obey the general will he will be compelled to do so by the whole body . . ."

The U.N.'s failures to live up to its obligations are obvious. Given that the U.N. lacks the power to preserve property or punish all non-abiders that Locke asserted was necessary for a political society to exist, and lacks the power to compel that Rousseau says is necessary lest a social pact be an empty formula, I'm curious as to how you see a legitimate global social contract existing.