Goodie, Another gun debate...

Great Debates
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Example: You have a right to build a house. You can build it yourself with your own hands and materials, or you can hire it out. As long as you’re not bothering anyone else, or asking for anyone else for a favor, knock yourself out and build any house you want - you have the freedom and right to perform that activity/action. But you do not have a natural right to a material house - only the activity/action of building one. At the end, the house is yours, of course. You own it, and you have a right to own it. But the house was only the outcome of your inalienable right to perform the building activity/action.

You have rights to actions, not material stuff. The stuff is only a byproduct of your actions. Again, there are some notable exceptions, such as the right to have a flesh-and-blood lawyer appointed for you. But for the most part, you don’t have a right to have anything material.

But some people think we do. Some people think I have a right to food, for example. Let’s pretend I do. Then why in the hell am I paying for it??? I mean, I have a right to it, don’t I??? Since I have a right to food, I should be able to sue the government and FORCE it to give me food at no cost, correct? After all, the government is securing my rights…

See how absurd it is to declare that we have rights to material things? If you think we have a right to something material, then we should get it at no cost - after all, you say we have a right to it, correct?? I have a right to clothing, you say? Well then who should I sue to force me to give me clothing??

The bottom line is this: Practicing a natural right should not bother, disturb, or inconvenience anyone else. Declaring that you have a natural right to material things WILL bother, disturb, or inconvenience other people because you’ll be forcing them to give it to you against their will.

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CM: Practicing a natural right should not bother, disturb, or inconvenience anyone else.

Whoa!! How about, for example, people who say that there is no “natural right” to same-sex sexual relations because the practice of it bothers and disturbs them? Are you going to say “oh well, as long as you don’t have to watch it you’re not really bothered or disturbed by it”? What gives you, or anyone else, the right to decide what counts as being bothered, disturbed, or inconvenienced?

See what I mean? All this stuff sounds superficially simple and consistent, but look a little deeper and it’s absolutely chock-full of logical fallacies and particular assumptions. The idea of rights as being merely the product of social consensus may seem awfully contingent and uninspiring, but at least it shows some respect for the subtlety and complexity of these issues in real life.

(And thank you, xeno—it’s so rare to find somebody who doesn’t trample on my rights! :slight_smile: And congratulations on the occasion of your brief absence from the SDMB, btw!)

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I think you hit the nail on the head there, Kimstu. We’re not arguing about facts; we’re arguing about philosophy. It goes without saying that some people believe humans have (inalienable) rights that do not depend on government for their existence, and some people believe rights come from government. Some people believe the government is our master, while some people believe the government is our servant. It’s as simple as that.

“The Second Amendment is not a right granted by the constitution. Neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence.” - U.S. Supreme Court, in United States v. Cruikshank, 1876

“Nothing is unchangeable but the inherent and unalienable rights of man.” - Thomas Jefferson

“A free people [claim] their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate.” - Thomas Jefferson

“The idea is quite unfounded that on entering into society we give up any natural rights.” - Thomas Jefferson

“Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.” -Frederic Bastiat

“The defence of one’s self, justly called the primary law of nature, is not, nor can it be abrogated by any regulation of municipal law.” — James Wilson, Wilson, Of the Natural Rights of Individuals, in 2 The Works of James Wilson 335 (J.D. Andrews ed. 1896).

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Crafter_Man, I remain confused by your comments regarding natural rights to actions vs materials. You seem to have no objection to the American right to court-appointed counsel, yet this seems to be an unnatural right that is granted by the government. Please either distinguish the desirability of this right from the undesirability of a right to a minimum standard of living or show how the right to an attorney is included in the “natural” rights.

Your remarks also lead me to wonder why, if these various rights are natural, I should be prohibited from interfering with others’ pursuit of their rights if that’s within my ability. Is it not natural that the strongest/fittest should restrict the actions of the weaker/less fit? And if “natural” in the context of human rights means something different than it does in the context of Nature, then what does it mean?

(BTW, just to show an accepted opposing viewpoint, here’s what the UN thinks are basic human rights. -Be warned, they’ve included quite a few material entitlements in their declaration; check out Article 25.)

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CM: *We’re not arguing about facts; we’re arguing about philosophy. It goes without saying that some people believe humans have (inalienable) rights that do not depend on government for their existence, and some people believe rights come from government. Some people believe the government is our master, while some people believe the government is our servant. It’s as simple as that. *

Er, but it isn’t. (While Mr. Z. is quietly LHAO at the idea of my ever letting pass a statement like “it’s as simple as that”… :)) This isn’t really a simple duality between the “slaves of government” and the “masters of government.” I, for example, don’t believe that rights “come from government,” but I also don’t believe that humans have “natural, inherent” rights. What I believe is that rights are established by social consensus (or near-consensus, or majority opinion, or however your society validates its common actions), and then the society uses government to specify and defend the rights it has decided to support. That doesn’t mean at all that I believe government is our master: I don’t. Your easy dichotomy hasn’t solved my problem with your statements about “natural rights.”

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I think Kim made a very good point about the non-discoverability of natural rights. If we have a priori rights, how do you distinguish them. How do they interplay with our kantian morals that also exist separate from us?

It is fun to kick this one around, but at the end of the day, rights a created by consensus. Now there may be some rights that we are hard wired to agree on. The right not to be murdered comes to mind. But I would argue that these would be more of a self preservation directive and not a pre-existing right.

And I was LMAO, Kim. YOu never let anything slide.

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And in turn, Mr. Z. agrees with me about something! Good jumping grasshoppers, the Rapture Index must be goin’ through the roof! Was that a trumpet I just heard?..:slight_smile:

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There are lots of questions her regarding the “validity” of natural rights. But I believe it is futile to go on arguing about them. Please understand that pure logic will get us no where in this discussion because logic has no place in a purely subjective argument. It’s like arguing about the existence of God: we could go on forever, but in the end we are merely left with our beliefs.

I believe every person is born with certain inalienable rights. And since they’re born with these rights, it is logical to me that no one actually gave them these rights; after all, they’re born with them.
I seem to be on the defensive here, so allow me to turn the tables: Where is it written that the society has “granted” me these rights? Where is it written that government has “granted” me these writes? Please tell me.

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Xenophon41:

Don’t you think that it’s just a bit disingenuous to try to separate the “inalienable rights” of the DOI from the BOR? One certainly followed the other.

And it specifically stated (and was later incorporated into the structure of the new government) that the government secures these rights for the people, at the people’s sufferance, not the government’s.

A person may own a gun, and do with it as they wish, as long as their actions do not infringe upon another person’s property, life and/or liberty. These are some reasonable restrictions that can be codified into law (murder, assault, kidnapping, rape, etc.,)

The Declaration was a “shot across the bow”, as it were, to King George and the British Parliament. First we had to dispose of the current tyranny before getting on with forming a new permanent government (as opposed to the ad hoc Revolutionary government). Thus the Declaration was a letter of intent, a mission statement, and a broad philosophical treatise.

Not a detailed plan of action for securing or retaining those “inalienable” rights.

Then came the constitution; a form of government meant to insure the continuance of those rights, to defend them with the full weight of the law and with arms, if necessary.

Not to grant them, and certainly not to infringe upon them.

The fact that all concievable possible human rights weren’t and aren’t enumerated in the subsequent Bill of Rights (although an argument can be made that they are, if you broadly interpret the 9th) in no way obviates the fact that the United States was founded as a country where a person’s “natural” rights (and yes, John Locke’s [among others] writings were highly influential in the minds of the FF) were supposed to be supreme, revocable only under extreme duress, restored when the emergency had passed, not to be taken from the people, or incrementally infringed.

The idea that these rights exist only in the minds, and at the sufferance of, the larger society is, to my way of thinking, a call for mere majority rule.

Thus Joe Malik’s whining that “Manny manny people feel that guns are bad, and scare them, and should be regulated some more” is no different than the radical right’s whining that “Manny manny people feel that [insert whatever 1st Amendment freedom that offends them here] is bad, and should be regulated some more”.

Bottom line: The natural rights of people, as expressed in the BORs, is supposed to be the epitome in personal freedom in not only our United States, but in all of humanity.

And that our government is instituted to secure (maintain) these rights, even when the people find freedom dangerously inconvenient to their viewpoints.

Not to rewrite them when it feels it politically expedient to do so, in order to garner more votes, or pander to the fears of the people to make an issue of something fundamental to all human beings, whether they choose to acknowledge or exercise these rights or not.

Xenophon, you said it before: If they can take one, what’s to stop them from taking them all?

It can be done, but it cannot ever be allowed to happen.

All of these rights are inalienable.

*ExTank
“Mostly Harmless :p”

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CrafterMan: *Where is it written that the society has “granted” me these rights? *

Oh, I didn’t say it was “written” anywhere (and by the way, you still seem to have the misconception that I believe that society “grants” rights to individuals, whereas all I’m saying is that individual rights need society’s support. A consensus is not the same thing as a bestowal.) And I agree that this is a question of competing interpretations rather than of absolute authority. All I’m saying is that my interpretation of how rights are established has fewer logical inconsistencies and a priori assumptions, and fits better with the way we see rights operate in the real world, than your interpretation.

ExTank: *The idea that these rights exist only in the minds, and at the sufferance of, the larger society is, to my way of thinking, a call for mere majority rule. […] Bottom line: The natural rights of people, as expressed in the BORs, is supposed to be the epitome in personal freedom in not only our United States, but in all of humanity. *

Unfortunately, you can’t get away from the fact that our definitions of what rights we have and how they should be interpreted really do change with changing social views. For the first couple centuries of our nation’s existence, for example, it was not perceived that there was any “right” that made it unconstitutional to forbid women to have abortions. Nor was there a “right” enabling people to contract legal marriages with persons of the same sex. Well, at this moment the Supreme Court has ruled that the right in the first example does exist, and I would bet that within the next fifty years it will find in favor of the second one too.

You make a good point that rights are a serious matter and we shouldn’t establish or eliminate them lightly or whimsically. That includes taking into consideration the way rights have been interpreted in the past. But the real “bottom line” is that the established set of “personal freedoms” does change as society changes. We can and should stand up for the rights we believe in and do our utmost to persuade others to view these rights the way we do, but if enough people oppose our position strongly enough, those rights will change or vanish. Simply repeating that “these rights are established and inalienable” is not going to alter that fact.

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Good: We both agree nowhere is it written that “government gives rights.”

But the same cannot be said about natural rights.

Both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution pay tribute to Natural Rights. We’re all familiar with the former, of course:

"When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”

But our very own Constitution also tips its hat to Natural Rights:
*
Amendment I: Congress shall make no law… abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Amendment II: …the right of the people shall not be infringed.

Amendment IV: The right of the people… shall not be violated…

Amendment V: No person shall be… deprived of life, liberty, or property…

Amendment IX: The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
*

Notice that the Bill of rights does not say, “The government grant you these rights”; it says, "The government will not take these rights away." There’s a world of difference between “granting rights” and promising not to take rights away.

The Constitution promises not to take away rights because those rights were already there. Disagree? Re-read the Bill of Rights. It should be plainly obvious it assumes you already have these rights. If this ain’t an obvious endorsement of Natural Rights, I don’t know what is.

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CM: *If this [various remarks about rights in the Bill of Rights] ain’t an obvious endorsement of Natural Rights, I don’t know what is. *

It ain’t. The Bill of Rights simply asserts that the people possess these rights. It doesn’t say that God or Nature gave them to them, and that they are therefore somehow “inherent from birth” in all humans anytime and everywhere; just that these are the rights (enumerated and otherwise) that citizens of the United States are considered to possess.

I agree that plenty of other sources do say that it was God or Nature who gave people these rights, and you don’t have to go on digging up cites from Thomas Jefferson to make me acknowledge that. :wink: But that doesn’t remove the logical and practical difficulties with the concept of “natural rights” that I’ve pointed out previously.

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Crafter Man, I think you’re arguing against a point I’m not trying to make. As Kimstu said, there’s a huge difference between saying “rights are defined within the context of a society” and “rights are granted by the state”. It’s certainly not inconsistent to recognize the former while denying the latter.

I agree that the state protects rather than bestows the rights delineated in the BoR. My disagreement is with your statement that these rights are natural and inherent to the human condition and therefore unaffected by government decree. I stand by what I said above: “The exercise of rights cannot be effected except through the sufferance of government.”

ExTank said:

I agree completely, even with the inalienable part. My disagreement, as I said above, is with the “natural” or “endowed by their Creator” argument. I understand the influence of Locke’s writings, ET; I will submit, however that the “just powers” derived “from the consent of the governed” include the ability to suspend and convey certain rights, that the Founders knew this, and that they recognized the necessity for those powers of government. Inalienable to me means that the government is not granted the power to usurp those rights, for political expediency or any other reason, NOT that humanity is graced with those rights through nature (rather than through sociological forces).

ExTank and Crafter Man: I’m enjoying this, but I’ll be out of touch for the next few days, so if you respond to any of the above, please be patient.