That’s not helpful, because whatever way one chooses to define to these rights, whether invoking God or nature or universality, the definitions are subjective and arbitrary. There’s no objective guidance here.
“No one can decide to write a bill that … enslaves one group to benefit another”, you say. Yet America had no problem with slavery for many generations, and exploitation of the most vulnerable low-income workers continues to this day. “The other thing about rights is that they can not be granted at the expense of others”, you say. Yet much-celebrated “gun rights” are a direct affront to the majority of Americans who just want to live in a peaceful society and not worry about their children being shot dead in their schools. And what about the right to health care? Is that a natural birthright or not, and if not, why should it be OK to let someone suffer agonizing health problems and die just because they have little money?
Your simplistic assessment here of what “inalienable rights” are falls way short of being in any way persuasive.
AIUI, Canada would basically go backwards on a lot of rights, freedoms, in return for some economic gain, if there were some merger?
Also, the size disparity would essentially amount to absorption or subjugation. I can’t imagine the 35 million Canadians would like the idea of a merger with a neighbor 9 times larger because they’d have very little say, they’d basically be assimilated into the Borg.
“Inalienable rights” are whatever your local government’s founding documents say they are. Until those documents are changed or ignored. At which point those “inalienable” rights are suddenly fully alienable, or flat-out gone.
Inalienable rights supersede governmental laws and cultural norms. These natural rights include the right to think for oneself, the right to life, and the right to self-defense, and they remain through every human’s lifetime. Legal rights, on the other hand, are those created, acknowledged, and protected by a government. (LegalDictionary .com)
I thought @Sam_Stone said it reasonably well. I do not think the rebuttals are as correct, even if laws or definitions have often not been historically honoured with inclusion, or in spirit, or in practice.
Life? Liberty? Those aren’t inalienable, natural, or however you want to describe them. History is littered with counter-examples.
Sure, you’re free to pursue happiness but that’s about it for the three explicitly mentioned in the Declaration of Independence.
But even there, pursuing happiness is fairly worthless if the only happiness you can achieve is perhaps having a modicum of personal security for yourself or your family granted by the fellow over there with the large army who would like you to swear loyalty in return.
Whatever else is true, the Declaration was part propaganda and part aspiration and was recognized as such even by the ones who wrote it (primarily Jefferson, who had his own foibles, but others as well).
Quite frankly, for Canadians it’d be a question of “Do you want to take on American citizenship, abolish Canadianism, and finally give up all ability to effect national policy?”
The question for Americans would be “Do you want to increase your size/land by absorbing the Canadians… who will vote overwhelmingly Democrat, throwing of whatever political balance the currently exists for a new homeostasis?”
The Americans have yet to swallow Porto Rico, imagine if they were offered Canada, in earnest.
The main winners of this deal would be liberal Americans who want a sizable injection of liberal Canadian voters into the new union, a blue-ish United America. Everyone else loses something.
Same with racism problems. Our race difficulties take on many different layers (new immigrants, African-Canadians, native Canadians, too many to name/list) but horrible polices were put in place which affect people to this day (including segregation too).
As for fighting wars in self-defence… you could group us with the British Empire during their most violent colonialist times. Its all up to how one would define Canadian vs British (IMHO).
And Canada has never committed war crimes… c’mon. During all wars, such crime is done. I can look up some of the bullshit our troops have done but surely if we soberly look at this we can find some horrible stuff.
Of course it is likely that Americans have engaged in these actions to a greater degree then Canadians. For certain in the realm of slavery.
On the contrary, the distinction was refuted by showing that it’s completely arbitrary, and giving specific examples refuting Sam’s claims. All you’re doing here is listing yet another class of rights, and claiming that certain rights are inalienable because they’re in a nation’s constitution or equivalent, while others are granted or revoked by the passage of laws. That is of course a trivially valid post facto description, but it doesn’t address the question at hand, which is exactly which rights should be considered “inalienable”. Constitutions are, after all, just documents drafted by fallible human beings, just like laws, and are subject to re-thinking and revision.
Examples have already been given of this arbitrariness. The US constitution, for instance, considers as a God-given inalienable right the right to own guns, which is probably the most counterproductive bullshit that has ever been enumerated in a constitution. The Founders had many debates and reservations about these supposedly sacred inalienable rights. While Canada’s constitution enumerates basic rights while noting (reasonably enough, IMO) that rights are not absolute and must be limited when there is a compelling public interest to do so. The US Constitution doesn’t explicitly note such limitations and thus tends to have a more absolutist interpretation, but they exist nonetheless; free speech is disallowed where it may incite violence or public disorder or is defamatory.
Not just an injection of liberal voters. Assuming we convert each province to a state (we’ll figure out what to do with the Canadian territories later) that should be enough to break the republican stranglehold on the senate. Sounds like a major win to me!
I will suggest that @Dr_Paprika has given a proper cite to a proper legal text.
Which gives us these definitions in the context of Western civilization and Western philosophy running from Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan down to today.
There is certainly a long-standing tradition in Western moral philosophy of a thing called a “natural right”
I’d venture to say that most of us here would find the idea of natural rights congenial, even if we might quibble about which exactly they are. The “natural law” flowing from natural rights goes back to the time of the Ancient Greeks. It’s well-trodden ground.
But at base they are a set of philosophical precepts that give aspirational guidance towards one way of organizing society. They are not divine ordination; they’re a moral / intellectual aspiration. They may seem self-evident to us here now but that’s simply because we’ve been steeped in them and their consequences since before we could talk.
Natural rights / law also generally doesn’t exist in human cultures not derived from the Ancient Greeks. And if we assume arguendo there are sentient aliens out in the galaxy, there’s no reason to think they might have come to the same set of conclusions e.g. Aristotle did.
Sure, but I stand by every word I said. Philosophers, Greek or otherwise, are often much like stoned college students having a late-night argument in the dorm insofar as the practical application of their arguments is concerned when the rubber hits the road and actual documents have to be drafted.
A quick look through the US Bill of Rights and some of the subsequent interpretations sheds some light on this. The Second Amendment is complete bullshit to begin with, invoking a putative “right” embraced by very few other countries, and recently re-interpreted to be a right to free-wheeling gun nuttery never even remotely envisaged by the Founders (this concept is illustrated below ) and demonstrably stands in direct opposition to the actual natural right to public safety. The Third Amendment is something about running a hotel for Revolutionary soldiers and their horses, neither of which exist, and neither of which were envisioned by Greek philosophers. So the concepts of “natural” and :“universal” are far from unambiguously clear.
I don’t know who argues these things, but most Canadians agree there remain problems with both conscious and institutional racism, and similar issues. It is true this opinion has taken some time to develop, exacerbated in part by publicity with regard to the residential school system. But it is now the stated opinion of much of government, police services, law and medical societies, universities and other institutions that make decisions.
Unfortunately, some Canadians make unwise and unwelcome comments online, at a greater volume than many countries. But things have indeed improved in a multitude of visible ways, with some ways to still go.
Nevertheless, Canada has often served honourably during war and compared to most countries has a generally good record of peacekeeping and fair treatment. It is a country of immigrants. Although there are certainly pockets of intolerance and some regrettable past decisions, on the whole its laws are just.
I was just trying to bridge the gap between the idea that “inalienable rights” are a clearly articulated philosophical concept as correctly propounded by e.g. @Dr_Paprika and them being an actual tangible thing in the world which you and I agree they are not.
These “rights” are not features of the Universe like iron or x-rays or gravity are features. They’re not even as real as dolphins or elephants or E. coli bacteria. They are artifacts of culture. As much as we might want to elevate them to essential features of humanity itself, they aren’t really.
Perhaps some future more enlightened human culture will treasure more “rights” for a greater percentage of their populace. But not here and not now.
I would disagree. I think inalienable rights are those that have proven to be necessary to the functioning of human society and social systems. Countries that trade away your right to life or liberty for some ‘higher goal’ are shitty countries to live in and get outperformed by ones that maintain a more civil society where people are free.
Are you okay with the idea that the right to life itself is just a ‘political’ right that can be taken away by some majority? Do you think you should be able to vote to enslave others? The ‘pursuit of happiness’ means being allowed to live for your own goals, and not be forced to work for the goals of others. Do you think that should be up for a vote?
We can argue about the specifics of the bill of rights, but the basic idea of core inalienable rights has been fundamental to western thinking and government for centuries. It’s a core foundation of our moral and legal system.
The very concept of rights is complex, differs from time to time and place to place, have often been ignored when convenient, may be honoured in the breach and often remain problematic and controversial. In general, they represent a slow advance from clans which were often quite democratic, ancient codified legal codes, extension of privilege under the Magna Carta, development of legal systems using case law instead of civil codes in some countries, gradual extension of the vote to more people, increasing awareness of injustices, development of print and media, more widespread education, changing roles of religion, and many other complex factors.
But the definition is the definition in spite of all this. I think people have a right to work, to privacy, to personal dignity, to healthcare and many other positive rights (including more commonly articulated freedoms of assembly, speech, press, thought, movement, self determination, equal treatment in some domains, religion, etc.) and negative rights (freedom from hunger, violence, discrimination, etc.) and think the European Union has in recent times often led the way with regard to these newer rights. Constitutional case law in Canada is imperfect but in general represents considerable progress.
Historical rights like gun laws seem counterproductive, but are written into the very history of the United States. Hopefully these can be updated given present consequences. The will to do this has often been lacking, as you know, just as the weakening of gun control legislation in Canada to placate lawful users will reduce the efficacy and impact in terms of safety. The United States legal systems are complicated by philosophies like originalism where people try to guess how previous generations might view current problems. Since this cannot easily be done, and problems centuries from now can not be easily foreseen, I am not at all a fan of this school of judicial thought.
) and demonstrably stands in direct opposition to the actual natural right to public safety. The Third Amendment is something about running a hotel for Revolutionary soldiers and their horses, neither of which exist, and neither of which were envisioned by Greek philosophers. So the concepts of “natural” and :“universal” are far from unambiguously clear.