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

[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.

[jonathankorman.livejournal.com]

I think of the open-endedness of “pursuit of happines” as Jefferson's greatest rhetorical innovation in the Declaration. You don't have a right to happiness—the world doesn't work that way, no institution could promise it—but you have a right to try. It makes a space for both the universal conception of rights and the particularity of different people's needs and goals. Combine pursuit of happiness with liberty and many of the great Bill of Rights protections pop right out: speech, religion, association ....

Yeah, there are opportunities for rights in conflict, but that's inherent in the rights-based conception of political claims whether or not you include “the pursuit of happiness.&rdqou; My liberty to, say, do target practice with my revolver in my apartment is in conflict with my neighbor's life, so we constrain my liberty.

no less true of life and liberty

Freedom of speech, of religion,

It admits that different people care about different things.

[primroseburrows.livejournal.com]

You don't have a right to happiness—the world doesn't work that way, no institution could promise it—but you have a right to try.

And I guess the trying must be within legal means, which makes sense. My argument is still that even in the pursuit of happiness one person could theoretically throw a monkeywrench into another's pursuit, and get into millions of stalemates, both philosophical and literal/legal.

[ryder-p-moses.livejournal.com]

Someone preventing your achievement of happiness doesn't stop the pursuit.

[jonathankorman.livejournal.com]

Whoa, sorry that comment was full of cut-and-paste garbage.

Again, I don't think the problem you're pointing to is rooted in “pursuit of happiness,” it's deeper, in rights as the basis of political claims. If your political order is framed in terms of rights, you're going to inevitably be negotiating numerous tricky conflicts between rights.

[a-new-machine.livejournal.com]

Well, all rights have limits in the boundaries of others' rights. Your right to pursue happiness ends where it interferes on my pursuit of happiness.

Of course, I'm fairly sure that could be argued to abolish things like private property, but it's at least there and intelligible, if not realistic.

[primroseburrows.livejournal.com]

Of course, I'm fairly sure that could be argued to abolish things like private property, but it's at least there and intelligible, if not realistic.

And that's the thing. If taken literally, the whole argument could result in gridlock because one person's pursuit of happiness might infringe on another's, and so on, and so on, spiraling down into minutiae so that in the end all we are able to do is stand stock-still and look at each other. Yes, it's an exaggerated example, but theoretically, it could happen. The whole idea could backfire on itself so that nobody is able to pursue anything.

[ryder-p-moses.livejournal.com]

"Pursuit" doesn't imply a lack of competition. You can pursue something all you like without ever having a chance to get it, through any number of obstacles. You're still treating it as a right to ever achieve fundamental happiness, which it's not, and which in a philosophical sense the framers would probably have regarded as impossible. True happiness is what happens when you die and go to Heaven, at best, and lots of them didn't even believe that.

Really the whole concept of a 'pursuit of happiness' as something to be protected on a broad social level is so vague as to be nearly meaningless, which is I think where these wierd interpretations come from. While it's sort of a stance against pure oppression for the sake of oppression, and kinda-sorta-maybe a protection of religion, the primary significance of the term is in what it omits - in the normal expression 'property' was the third article. The context is everything. There's a reason this airy-fairy language stayed in the Declaration didn't get into the Constitution, where it'd be a right the government was actually compelled to uphold. It's mostly a 'screw you' to the ownership claims the crown held over the colonies.

[primroseburrows.livejournal.com]

Really the whole concept of a 'pursuit of happiness' as something to be protected on a broad social level is so vague as to be nearly meaningless

This. Which, I agree, is why it's in the Declaration and not in the constitution.

[a-new-machine.livejournal.com]

You looking at me makes me uncomfortable. It's infringing.

[primroseburrows.livejournal.com]

Well, I could close my eyes, but the guy next to me hates it when that happens.

[a-new-machine.livejournal.com]

I'd suggest that he lighten up, but, well, y'know...

[primroseburrows.livejournal.com]

Maybe he's only happy when he's as miserable as possible, and he's pursuing that goal. Of course, this threatens the pursuit of my own happiness, which will happen when everyone is deliriously perky.

Oh, bother.

[ryder-p-moses.livejournal.com]

What's hilarious is that a man locked in a 3x3 concrete cell with nails-on-chalkboard screeching being piped in at regular intervals through a loudspeaker is totally capable of trying to be happy, so his right isn't really infringed either. It's a totally worthless concept in and of itself, without the historical context.

[ryder-p-moses.livejournal.com]

Is it absurd because you think that just doesn't happen to people, because you think Western normative human rights do not apply to those it happens to, or because you don't find it likely to happen to you personally and so find the concept of caring about those in such a condition absurd?

And you're back to acting like people have to get out of the way of your maximal happiness in order to allow for a pursuit of happiness, which is the original totally wrong interpretation of that line that's already been disposed of. There's few so shallowly secular as to claim that denial of material comforts or broad personal freedoms is an impassable barrier to happiness, anyway, that's a pretty shockingly radical claim!

[primroseburrows.livejournal.com]

But what if the only way to pursue a goal is to violate someone else's pursuit? Or violate a nation's laws? If there is a "right" to pursue happiness, what happens to someone like this?

[ryder-p-moses.livejournal.com]

How would you propose to violate someone else's pursuit?

Again, the actual achievability of a goal has no bearing on one's ability to try for it. In no context or meaning does "pursuit" imply an assurance of winning. And pursuing an intangible is not even inherently a physical action or one that must follow a single specific course. I could shoot up some heroin right now and become ecstatically happy, more happy than I've ever been or ever will be, any other accomplishment or act I could ever do would not even compare. You could too. Why don't we all consider getting high a fundamental right? Because happiness is a spiritual accomplishment, not something you do or own. Becoming an astronaut or doing coke off a hooker's tits while speeding in the wrong lane and firing an AK in the air are a kind of fulfillment, they are things that can make you happy for a time, but they are not happiness.

The idea of happiness Jefferson would have regarded as fundamental, to the extent he would have recognized a fundamental happiness, would have been a private spiritual fulfillment you can get any time at home with a good book - or the kind that comes only after you're dead following a life of virtue, depending. This inherently cannot intrude on another's fundamental happiness, and it can't really be taken away from you at all - all you need to be happy is you.

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

Replace happiness with eudaimonia

[policraticus.livejournal.com]

Beat me to it.

[primroseburrows.livejournal.com]

This is true, but does this invalidate his words? I guess that's another whole discussion.