It shouldn’t boggle anyone’s mind. The question arose as a follow-up to: “Trump’s proposal to make vast cuts to food stamps.” See the OP.
Asked alone, it’s not.
Asked immediately after a question about “Trump’s proposal to make vast cuts to food stamps,” it is a loaded question.
It’s true, of course, that he didn’t answer it because he didn’t want to expose his fanny. But what his fanny feared was getting gotcha’d by the apparent contrast: if you say people have a right to food, how can you favor Trump’s proposal to make vast cuts to food stamps?
He’s a wily old bird: he knows that in similar circumstances the heavens opened and God provided all the manna you can eat at no cost whatsoever to the taxpayer.
All poor Americans have to do, after exhausting all other possibilities up to and including prostituting their first-born, is to keep the faith, stare up at the sky with mouths ready to receive, and wait.
OK, these comments suggest that we don’t all have the same understanding of what a “right” is, and that some of you are using a narrow legalistic interpretation and specifically one that is borrowed from the US Bill of Rights. But the word also has a broader meaning, such as in “basic human right”, which is how I and others here mean it. This is the kind of right that is enumerated in, for example, the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in which Article 25 states:
Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.
Such a right conveys, not an individual legal right, but rather a collective societal moral obligation to each of its citizens that is incumbent on any civilized society. Which is pretty much what I said earlier, but I see now that we’re working with slightly different definitions. However, such a human right and consequent societal obligation is no less important to the fabric of a free, peaceful, and moral society than the narrower set of constitutional legal rights.
I’m not against food stamps, but I have to disagree with the idea that removing the program infringes on anyone’s rights. The same goes for public education or sidewalks. These are things that we have agreed for the most part that the government should provide for society to function at a high level. We can argue about what level should be provided but framing it as a rights issue seems silly.
Can we agree that food stamps are how we currently ensure that those who cannot afford food don’t starve, and that that’s a socially desirable objective in America?
So what? Even if this is true, and I rather doubt it, it’s moot until and unless they gain so overwhelming a level of elected positions across the board they can’t do it…and basically, if they do it means the country has so changed that it would be the wills of a huge majority. I don’t see that ever happening (quite the opposite, in fact, as I think the current upswell in Republican sentiment is going to be sunk by this one term of Trump’s).
Well, this simple statement would NEVER fly with today’s Republican party. And anyone who supported it would immediately be labeled a snowflake libtard crybaby SJW.
“Adequate”?? That word alone would lead to hours upon hours of debate. Well, Hoovervilles were adequate, weren’t they?
ETA. Trump’s next move will probably be to pull the USA out of the UN.
Are countries like Haiti in violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights for their failure to provide food stamps?
OK, so you do want to win by claiming your definition is the only one that reasonable people can have. That’s fine, but then I don’t see much reason to continue the debate. We have different definitions of what a right is. I recognize that your definition is OK, but not the only one. You are unwilling to recognize any definition but your own.
Compound question.
‘Can we agree that food stamps are how we currently ensure that those who cannot afford food don’t starve?’
Answer: no. Food stamps are merely one way we deliver food to those that cannot afford it so they don’t starve.
‘…and that that’s a socially desirable objective in America?’
Answer: It’s a socially desirable objective to ensure people don’t starve, but not a socially desirable objective to continue the current food stamp program unmodified.
Your use of the compound question made the meaning of the word that ambiguous: was “that” preventing starvation, or was “that” the food stamp program? Undoubtedly purely accidental, yes?
A societal ‘moral obligation’, to me, means a contract to ensure society is bound to provide those (pretty vague) things…which to me DOES have connotations of a legal right. Otherwise, it’s just a fluff statement. I agree that (rich) modern nation states and their societies SHOULD (and do in every case I know of) provide a safety net of some kind, ensure people don’t starve and have basic necessities to get back on their feet or move ahead in life…but I don’t believe that they are obliged to do so by anything more than because it’s the will of their people to do so. Every nation sets its bar differently on when and how it wants to do this…and that bar is set by their citizens, the people living in that society.
The answer to me is Yes, of course Americans have the right to eat. Abraham Lincoln said “even the black man has the right to put into his own mouth, the bread his own hands have earned.” Unfortunately, that has little to do with the food stamp program, because it is the bread that someone else’s hands have earned.
Feeding the hungry does not involve a right of the hungry to receive food. It involves a duty of the rest of us (sorry) to provide it.
Simon is making the common liberal mistake of assuming “I have the right to X” means “I have the right to receive X from the government”.
Had Smith said anything of the sort, Simon would have presented the story as “Smith doesn’t think Americans have the right to eat, and would like to see them starve rather than raise taxes on the rich”. Which was the point of Simon’s question in the first place, and some in this thread have reacted as Simon intended.
Regards,
Shodan
Poor phrasing: “That” = preventing starvation.
Agreed, and it wasn’t my intention to imply it was the only means. But it is a fairly well established gov’t program with a well defined objective, i.e. ensure people don’t starve.
Then I would think that the congress critter should have been able to answer the question without tying himself up in knots and sounding like he’s okay with letting people starve.
I reject the authority of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Separately, in the context of the interview, it doesn’t seem like the UN idea of rights was what was being discussed.
Aren’t you splitting hairs here a little too fine?
The food stamp program, funded by tax payers, is exactly that - the execution of our duty to provide food to those not able to pay for it and thus starve.
Look how complex my answer to you needed to be. And I had the benefit of typing and editing before posting.
It is, to be sure. But it’s not the only way, nor likely even the best way.
Sure. Made even easier by the fact that you didn’t need to continue licking Trumps boots in the process.
The answer is it depends. If society can’t or doesn’t produce enough food it doesn’t matter what people’s opinions are. Do North Koreans or Venezuelans have human rights like the so-called right to eat?