After thisdemonstration in sophomoric rhetorical technique, I thought you would be ready to drop this. It seems to almost conform to your intended insult to me that you come back to this. You seem to enjoy the process of being put to bed in the bed you made. So be it. I'm glad you went diving into Locke and Rouseau, but the fact that your still trying to carry on this nonsense and defend (rearrangements of) your original argument tells me you didn't really read much. You are still grossly ignorant of the very same natural law philosophy that you want ot argue with me. Quite frankly, I spent a lot of time studying this stuff, you are not going to validate your ego in this matter by trying to fight with me on this to the bitter end. I'm sorry that it stings you that you puffed yourself up and I deflated you. But I honestly can't be sorry that I deflated you. You simply were wrong. Besides, your rejoinder here is not exactly honest. You are remixing our conversation and placing components of it as responses to bits that they wern't responses to (sequence pasted below). Some other corrections: "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. " Knew THAT he didn't know. not WHAT... THAT. Like I said, put down the cliff notes. "Tapping a dictionary is appropriate when discussing whether a word applies. Any assertion to the contrary is asinine. " No, tapping the dictionary to argue a point is the very essence of Sophism. Go back and read about the sophists of greece. Arguing that Saddam was not a murderer because he did not fit the word-for-word definition is exactly sophism. "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." I assume you are saying that if A lays foundation for B, And B lays the foundation for C, then A lays the foundation for C. By this line of reasoning, the anaerobic single cell bacteria are the foundation of all of modern science and philosophy. You can define it this way, for sure, but it won't say anything useful. The Nuremburg Principles simply are the commonly recognized foundation for the modern notions of human rights. Not only is it the judgement of history and acadmic thought, its intuitive in the charter as it is the first codified expression of crimes against the very essence of human being. "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. " You are raising the rather dull point of relativism. I am not even going to bother with this but to say two things: 1) If you want to argue using the works of the Natural Law school of philosophy to support yourself, you simply can not use relativism to defend yourself. From Hobbes onward, the Natural Law philosophers ascribe moral propositions the same status as Natural Propositions. They are absolutely true or absolutely false, and empirically and/or deductively so- exactly as are propositions concerning nature: hence natural law philosophy. Are you getting this yet? 2) If you want to tap relativism, then you have to give up any notion of justice, Law, right, wrong or any objective criteria laid over those. Again- that nullifies your entire argument. "the parts giving allegiance to the whole and the whole protecting the interests of the parts (or words to that effect)" This more articulates the conducting of a successful social contract, its not really a good definition of one. Good night, and thanks for the trip down memory lane. Davin L. Odins 'remix': 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)." Comment from Davin: My actual response to the "LOL ... " was quote ands source, three of them in fact. 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 philosophers to "service." Comment from Davin: Sorry, Odin, but you did indeed refer to the Nuremburg Prosecution as ex-post-facto and you did ridicule it by proxy as laughable. As you yourself have discovered in your homework, Natural Law is an irrelevant concept here, and in fact would only serve to give a degenerate justification for the Nuremburg Trial(again, which would not help you). and the relevant concept is Socal Contract- which provides a grounding for the Nuremburg prosecution as well as puts its post-facto nature in a grounded philosophical framework. That you are quibbling and tapdancing here only demonstrates to me that you are simply trying to argue to win, and not to get to the truth