Long on the most common arguments against rights theories. The demolition of Rollins is the best part. Punk pseudo-philosopher kids, smug with repeat readings of Schmidt/Stirner and the pamphlet Long demolishes have been getting some response on a practical level, which is really more than any of them have ever deserved. It's precisely the opposite of what's happened here. Serious questions have been asked about a perhaps abstruse and obscure segment of libertarian philosophy. Serious answers were hoped for, and I hope the advocates of rights theory have been providing them.

This, by Long, is the crux of whole argument;

"[...]But this is the wrong way to think about natural rights. A natural right isn't a legal right, it's a normative right. To claim that natural rights don't protect anything is to miss the point; natural rights are supposed to receive protection, not to provide it. Likewise, the function of Natural Law is not to protect any claims, but rather to tell us which claims deserve protection. As normative concepts, natural rights provide guidance for people's conduct." --Roderick Long, The Nature of Law Part IV: The Basis of Natural Law

The natural law advocate is often in a less advanced position than the natural law critic; working much closer to the metaphysical, epistemological and ontological roots of ethics. To hear a concept like rights trashed outright, then, is to hear an attack on the foundations of ethical judgment itself. Some, such as Rollins, are perfectly fine with this. Their ultimate objections to the state are purely emotive. I'm sure he would have made an excellent Blue Cap, in the right time and place.