More "Politics as Philosphy " (less math)

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

Mrsilence raised an interesting question in the comments on the Gun Control Post last week and I feel that in light of recent discussions about "Getting People To Eat Right" and "The Government Controlling Your Life" it deserves a post of it's own.

The Libertarians, Tea-Partiers, and Threepers, often say that the constitution does not "grant" rights it "secures" them. The idea being, that such our rights are inherent and thus exist independantly of the government.

So the question is... Do you believe in the existence of inherent human rights that exist independently of any political or legal construction?

Why, or why not?

I think that this is one of those issues that tends to get lost in the traditional Left/Right political divide, but is important to adress because it directly influences someone's understaning of, or assumptions regarding more specific political issues.

Personally I agree with policraticus' assesment. I believe in the existence of "inherent human rights" but lack any objective base for this belief, thus making it a matter of faith. Something that tend to get one in trouble on political forums.

Personally I find the alternative's implications frightning. If what rights we do have can be freely taken away it almost becomes preferable to have a system that subjugates individual desires to the will of society as a whole. As someone who believes in free will, such a position seems practically alien to me but I'm interested to hear where the rest of you stand.




PS: I wish a Happy Easter to all those observing it.

Comments

[christinablue.livejournal.com]

Do you believe in the existence of inherent human rights that exist independently of any political or legal construction?

I do. It may be a bit hard to explain why, but I will try as best I can. Humans should have the right to equal consideration of their interests. For example, we should have the right to vote because it is in our interest and whoever ends up running said government will directly impact us and our life. We should have the right of free speech because again, if we our not allowed to voice our expressions, concerns, disagreements, agreements, it directly effects our quality of life. For the same reason, all humans should have equal rights. This brings up the topic of another human infringing on the rights of others - and in this case I believe that once you are infringing on the rights of others, you are subject to have your own forfeited, in certain cases. Such as, if someone murders another, because you have taken a life, you have also forfeited your own.

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

"Do you believe in the existence of inherent human rights that exist independently of any political or legal construction?"

Yes. e.g. it is wrong and always wrong to kill a person because and only because they are left (or right) handed thus it is an inherent human right not to be killed because and only because of your handedness

Why?

Because handedness is not a moral category and diversity of handedness is acceptable.

Can I give you a full list of such inherent human rights? No. But on the topic I recommend:

this book (http://www.amazon.com/Idea-Human-Rights-Four-Inquiries/dp/0195138287) which I read in a philo class on human rights.

I think the author is incorrect in stating that to have a foundation of human rights one must invoke religion; albiet I admit that I have a problem establishing a foundation that is not religious--I have an even greater problem invoking religion as I find religion [by and large] to be untenable.

Where does the right to not be killed for being left handed come from?
I'll be writing a book when I get a good answer for that one.

[a-new-machine.livejournal.com]

I have heard a non-religious basis for rights as "those qualities whose possession is a necessary prerequisite to peaceful coexistence between individuals in society." Now that limits it *a lot*, but it's a possible basis that does not invoke religion. It also means that rights exist only in the context of interaction with others, which could have some interest implications depending on how far you take "interaction," temporally.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

There's a cold-blooded Machiavellian logic that provides a basis for inherent rights to be recognized by the state: the more people who have an investment in securing a specific culture/society the longer it will last and the more powerful it will be. Societies built on crude force alone like the Soviet Union fall apart at the seams the moment the strongman is removed.

[jonathankorman.livejournal.com]

I hold it to be self-evident that all people are equal, and endowed with certain inalienable rights (among them life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness) ... that to secure these rights governments are instituted among people, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed ... that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that people are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

this works too

[primroseburrows.livejournal.com]

See, now, I've always disagreed with Mr. Jefferson, et. al., about the pursuit of happiness being an "inalienable right", mostly because happiness is such an intangible, diversely defined concept. What if in my pursuit of happiness I violate someone else's inalienable right to life or liberty?

For some, happiness is home, hearth, and family, for others it might be organizing a Nazi militia or launching a Cruise missile at the Pentagon. If we stretch a little we could say that someone like Jihad Jane or even the 9-11 terrorists are exercising their right to the pursuit of happiness by their activities. I think the definition of "happiness" is just too nebulous to be able to say the pursuit of it is a human right.

[penguin42.livejournal.com]

We're just bags of chemicals and electrical impulses unlucky enough to be aware of ourselves. So, we make the most of it.

Should we defer to the will of society as a whole? No -- society isn't conscious. We are. The purpose of society should be to help maximize every individual's potential.

Can you derive "inherent rights" from this point of view? Maybe, but I haven't figured out how yet.

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

Nor have I wich is why I have classified it as a matter of faith than an objective truth.

That said the alternative would be to accept that African Americans weren't People till the Federal government said otherwise. Likewise we that shouldn't "give a shit" about the people in Darfur, Isreal/Palestine, or anywhere else because "Hey that's just the way the world is".

Personally I find such a position untenable.

But then I suppose that's the price we pay for being "bags of chemicals unlucky enough to be self-aware"

[torpidai.livejournal.com]

The purpose of society should be to help maximize every individual's potential.

Sure as hell that's not the way nature works, and by attempting to fight the natural laws we're doomed to fail, try re-routing a river if you don't believe me :)

Can you derive "inherent rights" from this point of view? Maybe, but I haven't figured out how yet.

Rights have to be earned in any hierarchical(sp) group, except it seems societies formed by groups of humans where rights tend to come before responsabilities, No other natural group would put up with this sort of system, yet we, as humans have "evolved" to expect it this way, It's not natural, but hell neither is this artform we've developed of building metal boxes for us to travel even more rapidly to our one real certainty in this life...

[allhatnocattle.livejournal.com]

Rights are not inherent or automatic. They are established, granted, legislated, fought for, etc. But they are not automatic.

In the absence of all law, the order is established through natural means. Survival of the fittest. We are not all equal as some are clearly better (stronger, faster, fitter, etc) at least for brief periods until the next heavyweight comes along.

In international politics we witness disrespect and inequality amongst sovereign nations. If all mankind were equal, this wouldn't happen. It is only through agreement that some effort is made towards such respect, just as it occurs within domestic boundaries.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

In the absence of law codes, there are certain customs that end up prevailing anyway. Leaving aside the existence of lawspeakers, societies that lack the written codes of civilizations learn fairly quickly that if people pursue only self-interest everybody dies. The most egalitarian societies on Earth also eschew the concepts of private property and of individualism, because in their situations the idea of individualism, hierarchies, and ownership of things become threats to the mean of the whole.

They die in greater numbers and practice infanticide of weak and deformed children due to the fragility of their lives meaning such children cannot be afforded and also tend to be much less squeamish about murder in general than civilizations, so there's always a trade-off.

[blorky.livejournal.com]

No. Rights do not have an ontological existence separate from humans willingness to define or grant them.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

That to me is the kind of reasoning that states if a language has no word for oxygen people cannot breathe. Sure, rights are somewhat subjective, but then so is the idea of civilizations or peoples themselves. What do I, in Southwest Louisiana, have in common with someone in the Lower East Side of Manhattan or in rural Montana? To say something has no ontological existence apart from human willingness to define or grant a meaning to it in a world full of humans that both define and defend definitions of things is meaningless.

[ryder-p-moses.livejournal.com]

Anything commonly recognized as "rights" can and will be taken away by any power that does not recognize them. Given that I find it hard to see how they can be claimed to exist independent of those powers. Laws of physics, people, rocks, math, these things have an existence independent of social forces, the fact of their existence remains unchanged whether or not someone believes in them.

It might be scary, but that doesn't change the reality what rights you possess are contingent upon what society you grow up in, and it is not even agreed upon across societies which things are rights. Feudal societies would have laughed at the concept that peasants had an inherent right to arm themselves; modern collectivist societies have mostly rejected individual rights like freedom of speech or freedom of religious choice in favor of stuff like a right to work or to a minimum standard of living that we basically don't give a fuck about in the States. Are those rights not real, do they have less of an objective physical existence than the rights prized by American culture?

Rights are simply an ideal a given society strives for, they can't possibly exist outside of a social/political context any more than laws can. That doesn't mean they're not worth preserving, or they don't exist within our society, mostly it just means we have a responsibility to protect and uphold them, 'cause there ain't gonna be nobody to do it for us.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Feudal societies laughed at the idea that peasants had a right to keep and bear arms because even absent that right peasants could raise holy hell if the nobles got too big for their britches. Arming the peasantry would have led to massive things like the Pugachev Rebellion all over the place. There was more the cold-blooded logic that went into supporting the agrarian system than anything that was actual malice in it.

One thing that differentiates the liberal democratic concept of rights from those granted elsewhere is that in a liberal society the rights come from individuals. In other societies it's blocs or masses which are granted said rights. The idea of rugged individualism in any case leads to plenty of issues of its own, like the insanity and inanity that is Objectivism to use just one example.

[a-new-machine.livejournal.com]

That is pretty much how I feel about the matter. Useful, but not absolute by any means.

[jerseycajun.livejournal.com]

Quick response: Observation.

I can observe an individual who holds a life of his own, not unlike my own, exerting a discernable will of his/her own, much like through self-examination I can examine a clear will of my own. These are things for example which I can observe throughout humanity, regardless of system of government or other observable differences in particular cultures or backgrounds. Human beings have the observable capacity to make decisions affecting themselves directly without intermediaries substituting their will upon them. There is no more irreducable relationship when it comes to the notion of what a right is, and every other notion or approximiation becomes a distant abstraction by comparison even if one still may not be able to physically observe a right the way we observe a rock or tree. It is indirectly observed.

Laws which respect these natural rights are aimed at intervening only when one individual's decisions conflict directly with the same rights of others (equal in dignity as they are equal in that all are human).

[a-new-machine.livejournal.com]

Human beings have the observable capacity to make decisions affecting themselves directly without intermediaries substituting their will upon them.

Humans also have the observable capacity to attempt to inflict their opinions on others by force. I'd argue that a universally shared capacity has nothing to do with rights. Moreover, even life is not universally recognized as an inherent right. Different societies have devalued it at different times, with infanticide for unwanted children, human sacrifice, and the death penalty all having different inherent viewpoints on the right to life. I'd hardly say that any observable right is absolutely applicable to every human society.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

I believe in inherent human rights. I also believe that to ensure those rights exist requires people be willing to prevent governments from usurping them. That's why the Proposition 8 vote shows a fallacy of the Left (i.e. that large masses decide things in their own good) and why totalitarianism is an example of to the Right and the Left that both of them absent the squeamishness and restraint of liberal democratic societies are capable of mass brutality.

By the converse, however, there are some rights only a strong government can grant. Like my right not to be paying taxes to some local warlord who owns me and everyone else around as serfs, like my right to decent health care so as not to add to the already overburdened society as it is, and should gay rights achieve equal recognition to other already-recognizes issues, the right of myself as a white man, to say, marry a black man without the government saying I can neither marry non-whites nor other men. To rule against either violates the civil rights of both parties.

The last example is purely hypothetical.

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

This. We have ideals.

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

The Constitution is intended to describe the limitations of the government, and as such, it enumerates certain rights that it is going to explicitly make sure it does not violate. It calls out in the 10th amendment that there are other rights not enumerated which also exist, and it also isn't supposed to violate those, when they are identified. Whether we actually have inherent rights or not is not really an issue; the Constitution assumes that we do and is written from that perspective.

[mrsilence.livejournal.com]

I don't think that point is under debate.

Divine rights and wrongs

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

The idea that people are born with rights derives from the old concept of divine rights. This idea tends to make people haughty and arrogant. Rights are social constructs with their source in the willingness for people to recognize them. Without such recognition, they are not worth the price of the idol who supposedly conferred them in the first place.

Re: Divine rights and wrongs

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

But where does that leave you?

If there is no "right to life" how do you justify defending yourself from agression?

If you do not have the "right to an opinion" why have one?

[kardashev.livejournal.com]

Do you believe in the existence of inherent human rights that exist independently of any political or legal construction?

No, I do not. Much as I'd sometimes like to.

Why, or why not?

Because I'm a moral nihilist. Morals and related concepts such as inalienable rights are variable concepts that are fluid across time and space and have no other grounding. Even within the same culture and same time, moral codes can be quite different among varying segments of the populous. Morality is just a word and like many words, it can have multiple definitions. There is literally nothing in our Western Civilization that was/is not condoned by some other society with a different moral outlook.

The universe isn't ruled by morality. It is ruled by one thing and one thing only: Power. We aren't the dominant animal species on this planet because we're inherently good. We're the dominant animal species because of the power our brains give us. Pretending that we're good won't save us from the next extinction level event anymore than it would've saved the dinosaurs. At that point, it won't make a lick of difference who was supposedly good and who was supposedly evil and whether or not the giant asteroid/bee die-off/depleted ozone layer/ice age/whatever is violating our supposed "inalienable rights".

Science > Morality.

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

If that is in fact your position I have to admire your candor.

Unfortunatly most of my experiance with Nihilists has been of the colledge-age-revolutionary-wannabe variety. They have a tendency to invoke "The Lebowski Fallacy" when pressed thus exposing their intellectual dishonesty.

[root-fu.livejournal.com]

The Constitution grants rights and secures them.

And, the rights mentioned exist both independently and non-independently of political and legal constructs.

[jerseycajun.livejournal.com]

Could you explain further? You're essentially the first person I've seen comment in favor of both modes at once.

[a4honor.livejournal.com]

I simply have to say that since that governing must ultimately rely on the loyalty of the governed, as a lack of loyalty will in one of many ways result in the dissolution of said government. The people logically give the government its power and are masters over it.

As to the moral argument, I am the wrong person to ask if you want it without a leap of faith, as my morality relies on the existence and benevolence with a God I love and have a close relationship with.

[jerseycajun.livejournal.com]

It's the dissolution part that's typically the part that most would wish to avoid for a variety of reasons. Because it cannot simply be uncomfortable or unjust for any particular subset, but for all groups and subsets.

It's one of the reasons I favor an encoded, proscribed path for legal secession. Not one that allows a path that can be trivially used, but one that, much like the pressure release valve on a pressure cooker, allows a building stress to release before the entirety is destroyed.