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Originally Posted by wu_trax
what does that have to do with freedom of speech? you can hardly claim that its part of the human nature, if the whole concept is just a few hundert years old and even today does not apply to large parts of humanity.
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The length of time that humanity has lived in tyranny is not really the point here. The issue is the notion that our rights spring from our biological nature. Other species rights are dependent on their biological nature.
For a long period of human existence we have had laws which run contrary to human nature - take slavery for instance. I do not think slavery is a "natural" existence for man - that is a man in chains cannot develop to his full potential while enslaved. I also do not think that all things considered slavery can "last" as a balanced institution without relying on significant external "labour subsidy".
However, that is not relevent either here. What S|k is saying here (and I obviously happen to agree with him) is that there is obviously a system of morality "beyond" (or perhaps "above" or "prior to") the law. If our only criteria for good/bad was legality then it would be impossible to say "this law is wrong" as that would make no sense (we'd have to say "this law is inconsistent with other laws" or perhaps "this law leads to practical consequences which other laws define as bad" or something like that).