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

Devil's Advocacy, Ahoy!:

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

I counter your counter by asking what the precise difference between Generalplan Ost and Manifest Destiny was. The USA itself softened over time to become something vastly different than the society which waged wars of aggression, had slavery as an integral part of the economy and then found ways to ensure blacks remained de facto unfree workers and where things like siccing Pinkerton goons on workers, Sand Creek, and the Rosewood Massacre remained facts of life. Nowadays the USA is quite different than that (for one thing it shifts most of the violence overseas). There's nothing saying that Nazi Germany, if victorious, wouldn't have degenerated in the same way the Soviet Union did.

And as noted, this is the Devil's Advocate position.

Re: Devil's Advocacy, Ahoy!:

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

I counter your counter to my counter by saying:

uhm, so what exactly does the [possible] evils of the US in the past have to do with what I am saying?

Obviously slavery was wrong and those in the US who held it as moral were wrong; I don't care if Law and God were on their side; they were wrong, simple as that.

Same thing might be true of Manifest Destiny; I'll have to admit here that I'm not familiar with Generalplan Ost, but I'm guessing it's a Nazi plan to conquer some land--as we did with Manifest Destiny; well, they both were bad for one reason or another.

Bottom line: opinion does not make morality

Re: Devil's Advocacy, Ahoy!:

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

My point is that the only difference between the 19th Century USA and Nazi Germany is that the guys responsible for repeated land grabs, genocide, segregation and slavery both, and wars of imperialism in the Philippines and across a huge swath of Hispano-America and Franco-America wrote the history books. Effectively the American Empire of the present day is the result of one group of bad guys winning and then going soft.

Generalplan Ost was the idea wherein Hitler was going to eradicate most of the Western and Eastern Slavs (I'm not sure if he planned to eliminate the Sorbs or the Slovaks or the Croatians) and replace them with German colonizers.

The relevance of these actions lies first in the psychological legacy, namely that the US government has a long track record of scumminess as regards the Indians, the Filipinos, and the Hawaiians. This scumminess has had no real consequence analogous to what the Germans went through after WWII and is rationalized by US Conservatives, all of it.

Second, you note that the Nazis felt killing Jews was bad. Well, the Western Allies had no compunctions about allying with the USSR, which began the war an ally of the Nazis in the Axis Powers and only switched when Hitler brought his genocidal wars past the border the two had set in Poland. And that war was in a nutshell Communism and Chinese authoritarianism bailing out the liberal democracies. While the West would have indisputably have lost the war without the USSR, calling either the Soviet Union or the Nazi Empire a greater or lesser evil is in the end impossible.

Third, the actions of the United States today still resonate at home in the still-unfinished reparation of the legacy of slavery and segregation, and in the squalid conditions and still-continuing land grabs by whites of Indian land. Also in the stereotypes Asians go through, things like people advocating that the WWII Interments were not only not racist but desirable and attacks on Sikhs because they "look like Arabs." And due to the legacy of scumminess, the USA also felt it could remove guys like Mossadeqh and Saddam Al-Majid without losing a wink of sleep and then paid and continues to pay bitter prices for those actions.