Do they exist? If they do, where do they come from? Who decides what a right is and what isn’t?
Inalienable rights are simply rights that the people have decided are beyond negotiation. Other rights are ‘political rights’ - to be granted or revokes as needed to ensure the smooth functioning of society, the security of the people, etc. So you can repeal the 2nd Amendment and take away the right to bear arms, but you can’t pass an amendment that says the creators of ‘South Park’ should be executed.
I likes Hobbes’ description of rights:
First, you have ‘natural rights’ a natural right is simply the ability to do something. I have a ‘natural right’ to swing my first into your face, because I can. Of course, you then have the natural right to hit me with a big stick.
In such a world, where there are no restrictions on natural rights, we would see a state of constant war between individuals, and no one would benefit.
So… We establish rules. I agree to not swing my fist into your face, and you agree not to hit me with a big stick. To enforce this compact, we create a sovereign that sits above the affairs of men and makes sure we stick to the rules we have created. Thus are political rights born - a set of rules for living in society, with the recognition that adherence to the rules benefits all.
Inalienable rights, then, are those natural rights which we agree will not be part of the give-and-take of politics - the right to life itself, freedom, the right to live for yourself and not as a slave to others. Life, Liberty, the Pursuit of Happiness.
The only thing I would add to Sam’s explanation is that “pursuit of happiness” is a non-specific kind of thing. The rights we are actually treating as “inalienable” are life, liberty, and ownership of property (and the ability to enforce ownership claims).
These rights exist and are inalienable only to the extent that we stand by our agreement to keep them so.
-VM
“Pursuit of happiness” just says we have a right to try for it. It does not guarantee or promise that we will be happy.
Jefferson’s flowery rhetoric aside, the short answer is no. I can point to any number of countries and regimes that have alienated the hell out of the rights of their people.
Sorry, I should have made clear. I’ve seen libertarians state that rights somehow exist independently of government. If that’s the case, where do these rights come from?
Loathe as I am to broach disagreement with the estimable DCU, I am compelled by inherent smart-assery. Mr. Jefferson’s use of the word “inalienable” is entirely appropriate to his end, not that those rights cannot be suppressed or even denied, but that even in such a state, they remain a fundamental condition of humanity. That the State does not recognize such rights as they should is a failure of the State, a State which the people have every right, nay, the duty to amend or abolish.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident” means precisely that: we will not argue or quibble, nor will we seek to support these truths with some other foundation, they are the foundation itself. Everything else, to echo the Reb Hillel, is commentary.
While I would agree with you on this, from my perspective, I’m not sure the Founders had exactly that in mind. After all, the text of the DoI says (my bolding):
The source of the rights is the “Creator”. I suppose you could take a modern, Darwinist view that the “Creator” is just nature itself and the process of natural selection, but I can’t see how that view could have been held in pre-Darwin times.
I say they don’t. First, obviously, no right is inalienable since they are alienated all the time. Just read any paper for evidences of it.
So, the question would rather be : “can we determine objectively some particular set of rights that should not be alienated?”. I say no. All our rights have been determined by consensus and are only good as long as this consensus exists along with the will to enforce the respect of said rights. And this consensus isn’t based on objective elements, but on subjective ones ranging from “human decency” to “trendy”.
I’m going to make some hypotheticals to make my point. I could pick the right to private property, ot to free speech, for instance, but I’m going to pick the right to live which seems to be the most fundamental one. Inspired by a post I just wrote in a thread where ** Smartass ** defended the opinion that paying for a police force is fundamentally different from paying for healthcare.
Hypothetical 1 : I’m a rogue living in the woods. I particularily enjoys killing and eating little kids. I just noticed one, who happens to be defenseless (say, an orphan).
Does this orphan right to live include the right to be protected from me? Does the taxpayer have a duty to pay a police officer to patrol the area? If not, he just lost his “right to life”.
Hypothetical 2 : I’ m a nasty germ. I enjoy the lungs of little kids where I can live a happy life and reproduce. Problem is : as a result, kids die.
Does our orphan right to live include the right to be protected from me? Does the taxpayer have a duty to pay a doctor to innoculate him with a vaccine? If not, he just lost his “right to life”
Hypothetical 3, mixing the two previous ones : I’m again a baby-eater. I jump on the defenceless orphan and begin to gut him. Unfortunately, I’m disturbed by a passer-by, and I flee, living him half-dead. Or maybe I just contaminated him with the nasty lung-eating germ mentionned above. In any case, he’s in dire need of medical care.
Does our orphan right to live include the right to be protected from the adverse medical results of my actions? Does the taxpayer have a duty to pay a doctor to heal him? If not he just lost his “right to live”.
If someone thinks that in some of these hypotheticals the kid’s right to live should be protected, but not in the others, I would like to hear an objective reason why, for instance, he should be protected from serial killers by police patrols, but not from germs by vaccination. Or from the results of my actions when I’m gutting him, but not when I’m merely contaminating him.
If someone thinks that in all of these hypotheticals, the kid’s right to live should be protected, I could come up with a less egrerious example. I picked this one because it illustrated the argument with libertarians about healthcare. Picking less and less egrerious examples, at some point, everybody is going to say : “Err…no, the serial orphan-eater doesn’t have the right to open my belly and leave me in an ice-filled bathtub in order to take my left kidney for his life-saving transplant”.
If someone thinks that in all these hypotheticals, there’s no requirment to protect the kid’s right to live, then it certainly will be, for most other posters, an example of the subjectivity of the definitions of “rights”.
So, my take on the matter is that there’s no such thing as objectively inalienable rights.
I would note also that there isn’t even a general agreement about who should benefit from whatever right. The debate about abortion is a perfect example of it, but so are the statements of PETA, and so was the debate about slavery.
I don’t believe any rights exist at all, but there is something that should be noted here.
When people speak of “inalienable rights”, they invariably mean rights that can never be justifiably infringed upon, not rights that can never actually be infringed upon. The fact that a right has been stomped on throughout history does not have anything to do with whether that right is inalienable in the sense being spoken of here.
Why didn’t the Declaration attempt to prove these rights exist? Maybe because it can’t be done? It seems to me this whole “natural rights” crap is just an excuse to say “I’m allowed to…” instead of “I believe I should be allowed to because…” It’s a shortcut to whatever outcome a person desires. It’s lot easier to just claim to have some imaginary right instead of having to actually demonstrate why something should be allowed.
Quite my point, 2sense. Why bother trying to establish some foundation, why not state it as a foundation in and of itself, that these are truths so obvious, so “self-evident” that they do not require any substantiation, nor would any such be of any real benefit. Granted, such a bold establishment of a fundamental dogma is revolutionary, but that was the whole idea, wasn’t it?
The taxpayer has to fund police as a part of the basic functions of government. But the extent of the police power (and the geographical restrictions of their patrols) is not set in stone. The police of my Libertaria are more of a responsive force than an omnipresent patrolling entity. In this case, the probable response (should evidence be found) would be an investigation of the area and the arrest and punishment of the rogue.
Besides, it is not a very bright decision for the orphan to roam in said woods. He irrationally risks his life by doing so. It’s the same thing as if I, being about as pale as Boo Radley, decided to take a stroll around Compton at night. And if the orphan had known of a cannibalistic rogue and still went through the forest alone, the risk would be more comparable to me shaving my head, writing “White Power” in two-inch letters on my T-shirt, and then heading to Compton in the middle of the night.
The taxpayer does not have a duty to protect the orphan in this case, unless said germ is part of biological warfare from some outside entity. The government’s purpose is to protect people from other people.
No, the taxpayer has no duty to pay for a doctor.
Government’s proper function is protection by humans, for humans, from humans. Anything else (and possibly protection from other humans when taking an illogical risk) can and should be left to the private sector.
The right to live in any way that does not involve harming or defrauding others is an objectively inherent right (I don’t entirely understand the word ‘inalienable,’ even with the help of dictionary.com and have to plead ESLness). It cannot be completely protected in practice, however. The best a government can do is to try to prevent violations, or failing that, to isolate and punish the violators.
There is no such thing as an inalienable right.
Here, you’re explaining where you’re drawing the line, but you’re not explaining why you’re drawing it there.
I asked for an objective reason. So, what is the objective reason for thinking that the governement’s proper function is protection “by humans, for humans, from humans”?. Leaving alone the two first elements (though once again a member of PETA would argue against the “for humans”), can you tell me why, objectively, this “proper function” is limited to protection “from humans”. Why not “from bees” or “from falling rocks”?
Just telling me : THAT is the proper function of the governement is just reciting your gospel. You aren’t backing it by any evidence that it’s actually true. I could equally state “the proper function of the governement is owning the means of production”, or “the proper function of the governement is making sure that the sacrifices to the gods are done in time, and it should not mess up with protection from humans, which is the proper function of family”
Bring your evidences to the table.
“The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for, among old parchments, or musty records. They are written, as with a sun beam in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself; and never can be erased or obscured by mortal power.”…Alexander Hamilton, 1775
Says a lot!
The orphan’s right to life includes not being harmed by you. If you harm the orphan, you are violating his right to life and you should be punished. It is not actually possible to perfectly protect the orphan from all such violations without violating everyone’s right to freedom. On the other hand, once you have shown that you don’t respect the orphans rights, we can protect him from you by violating your right to freedom. The logic is that by violating someone else’s, you lose your own.
If you are a germ, then you have no rights. There is no way to subject you to the “agreement” that society basically is. People may kill you even if you are not harming anyone. The orphan’s “right to life” means that he is entitled to not be killed by another member of the society. It does not mean that he is entitled to not be sick or to not die. In fact, he WILL die, whether you invade his lungs or not.
The rights are an agreement to withhold action (not kill) among humans. They are not an agreement to do something (give you my food). Even if you are starving and I am not hungry, you have no right to my food. Saying this does not mean I am unwilling to share; it means that I am not required to. Whether I think I should depends on my own “moral” thoughts. I may decide that someone else is starving more and give my food to them. I may decide that this is the last food I will have for a while and therefore save it for myself. In any case, not giving you my food is not a violation of your right to life.
Your right to life does not require any particular action from me. It requires me not to kill you. See the difference?
Strictly speaking, if you have harmed the orphan, then you have violated his right to life and that you are required to “make it right”. If you have knowingly harmed him–either with knives or germs–you are personally responsible for making him whole, if possible. You personally are responsible; society is not. Society will hold you accountable, and government will force you to make recompense, but you are the only one who “owes” the orphan something.
The key difference is between “actively harming” and “not helping”. You seem to think that they are equivalent, but with regard to fundamental rights, they most certainly are not.
If these hypotheticals are conundrums for you, it is not because the fundamental rights we are talking about are vague, it is because you don’t properly understand what we mean by them. Now, based on my answers, you may not agree that this set of fundamental rights is the correct one to base society on, but you have NOT sucessfully shown instances where they don’t provide guidance.
With regard to abortion, the disagreement is less about rights than about persons. The question is whether a fetus is a person (only persons have rights). If the fetus is a person, then there is a conflict because because exercise of his right to life is requires violation of the mother’s right to liberty (and possibly life). It is a fairly unique situtation. It is clouded by the tendency of Christians to associate “personhood” with the presence of a “soul”, which is something that cannot be verified, and thus is of no help in defining a legal “person” with rights.
PETA is not problematic for a rights discussion. Animals do not have rights in the sense that we are speaking–they cannot agree to respect the rights of others. Ultimately, society is an agreement to abide by a set of principles. Animals are not able to agree or disagree. If you torture an animal, you are cruel and possibly evil, but you are not violating the animal’s rights as he has none.
-VM
It means that you can’t be deprived from this right, and, generally, that you can’t choose to renounce to it, either.
Indeed. If there’s a god, there might (not necessarily) be such a thing as an objective moral code, or objective rights. Though it doesn’t mean that we’re necessarily able to to discernate what these rights might be.
And the question that logically follows : what are the evidences for the existence of this divinity? What divinity is it? What “sacred rights” does it uphold?
Well, it’s “true” because it is the basis of our government. However, I think you want to know what makes us think it is “better” than your Marxist society. Ultimately, there is no absolute right that I can point to that establishes this, but I can explain the logic.
Any other formulation that you come up with will, almost by definition, place a higher value on one person’s life, freedom, etc. than another’s. Since there is no objective way to make this valuation, then I would say that it makes more sense and is more “fair” to value each person equally and to try as hard as possible to ensure that each person has equal rights. This formulation provides that. Marxist formulations do not. One of the ways this is achieved is by not requiring anything from you other than that you not violate my rights. Once you start trying to find ways to actively guarantee rights (as opposed to protecting them from violation), you are playing favorites by purposely making one person’s life, liberty, or happiness more “valuable” to society than another’s (you favor playing favorites based on perceived need). Efforts to guarantee equality of outcomes are unfair in this way.
In the other thread, I have asked several times why universal healthcare is okay and slavery is not. This rights discussion gets to the same thing. It is about not wanting to single out people for more or less fair treatment by the government. (Whether you want to treat them differently yourself is a personal decision that your liberty guarantees you the right to make)
When we declare these rights “inalienable” we are making a commitment. When we create a universal healthcare system, we are renegging on that commitment.
-VM