Morality is not to be discovered but to be made: we have to decide what moral views to adopt, what moral stands to take. - J. L. Mackie

If there were objective values, then they would be entities or qualities or relations of a very strange sort, utterly different from anything else in the universe.

We want people to see it as not only legitimate but right and proper that they should pursue what they see as their own well-being.

Notoriously, there are disputed territories — for example, border areas and regions occupied by groups which are not independent nations, but many of whose members wish that they were. Again, there are territories like that which used to be called Palestine; here the principles which in the case of Norway point univocally to one national group as that to which the area belongs diverge, some supporting the claims of the Israelis and others the claims of the Palestinian Arabs. Cyprus and Northern Ireland are two other obvious examples of conflicting prima facie rights of distinguishable national groups. In such cases the appeal, by both parties to a dispute, to supposedly absolute rights is disastrous. It reduces the readiness to negotiate and compromise, and it seems to justify any atrocities against the enemy, and any resulting losses and suffering for one's own side, that are needed to vindicate those rights.