The dichotomy identified is based on analogies that have far too many relevant dissimilarities to make them a useful tool for drawing conclusions. What a government does/may do legitimately within its own borders is very different from what it does/may do legitimately elsewhere, if for no other reason than the differences in sovereign power in the two arenas.
In an earlier post, Bob's World identified a correlation between rights and duties, noting that the having of a right spawns a correlative duty. One of the things that I think he got wrong was that the correlation does not exist within a single holder. That is, my rights to, e.g., life, liberty, and property (from Locke) do not produce duties for me to protect my life, not to enslave myself, and to seek to acquire property. Instead, my right to life (if I have one) engenders a correspondiong duty in others not to deprive me of my life without good reason.
I add the " without good reason" because I doubt rights are absolute. As Justice Holmes noted in Schnenk v. US (249 U.S. 47, 1919)
I also submit that Bob's World has the primacy of rights over duties just backwards, Rather than saying that my possession of a right spawns a correlative duty in others, I would suggest that a more correct view of the relation between rights and duties looks like the following: because each of us has duties, others may make rights claims against us in light of those duties.The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic.
Finally, I am unclear from whence Bill and Bob derive this "right" of self defence for governments. The right of self defence for a nation is derived, in an a argument found in St Augustine's writings, from the right of individual self defense. But that is an argument from analogy, not a deduction, and the analogy may be as suspect as Bob's two analogies quoted above. Additionally, a nation is much more than just its government.
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