 However, it could be argued that Simmons’ position is counter-intuitive, because we often do feel that the passage of time matters to the existence of rights. After all, if the interests that grounded the right no longer apply (due to changes wrought by the passage of time), then it seems that this will affect the right (which was designed to protect said interest). It’s hard to avoid this conclusion if we think of rights as protecting human interests, some of which may be relational or contingent. A deeper problem, to which this point gives rise, is that Simmons presents his Lockeanism as “an ideal theory”. However, almost everything that we are interested in—wrongful political incorporation, theft of land and then subsequent transfer—are instances of non-ideal theory, and it is not fully clear how Simmons’ Lockean insights are meant to apply in the real world. It does suggest that we need a process of apology or rectification, but Simmons does not elaborate on the form that rectification in the present should take, and how it might be reconciled with the claims, if any, of descendants of wrongful settlers, or of settler states. 