Wow these posts are getting long.
Me:
I do believe that individuals have rights. They are not innate…but are human constructs…
Rights that the society recognizes but that an oppressive government suppresses are still rights.
You:
Please take a close look at that.
Yes? I was drawing a distinction between society and government by saying that society is what determines rights, not the government. An oppressive government can suppress rights that the society claims. What part of this
is it that I should be looking at? Or do you maintain that any infringement or suppression of individual rights makes a government oppressive?
You:
We agree here, but in order to go further, we’re going to have to agree on what rights are. You seem to agree with the concept of rights, but then confuse “right” with “desire”:
Me:
…right to conduct commerce…
…right of the public to eat disease free food.
…right to a community with certain minimum standards of appearance.
You:
You have no offered a clear definition of “right”, and it makes it difficult to to discuss this with you. I offer the Libertarian definition. Since I don’t think I can improve on it, I’ll use a quote from waterj2:
quote: Rights are those things that incur an obligation on others to act in a certain way. By giving you a right, an obligation is incurred upon me to act in a certain way. Libertarianism is based on distributing the same rights to each person, and not violating any person’s rights by incurring an obligation upon that person that would violate them. Basically, this works out to a system where each person has the right to be free of violence and fraud be initiated on them.
An interesting perspective on rights in that your definition claims the primary obligation that one’s rights carries is laid at the feet of others. I believe that the most important obligation lies with the holder of the right. Certainly if I am given the right to bear arms, that confers the obligation to others not to unlawfully suppress that right. However the primary obligation is laid at my feet. I have the obligation not to kill or recklessly endanger others. Mine is the primary responsibility not to infringe on the rights of others
by the use of my right.
As far as confusing rights with desires, I would put it to you that all the examples you quoted are rights (but I did goof up on the one you didn’t quote.) While they may not be starring in the Bill of Rights, they are nevertheless all things that the society, even if it is a local society like the town I live in, assume as a right. The public assumes these rights, all of which have been upheld in the courts. If anything, I misspoke when I mentioned my “right” to grow my grass as long as I want. That is NOT a right since it comes from me only, and not society.
Rights are those actions that are permissable, or conditions that a person can reasonably expect as determined by society. I have a right to conduct commerce by opening a restaurant because our society has determined that anyone with the means can do so, but that right confers on me the responsibility to offer food that is safe and disease free because society assumes the right to reasonable public safety. The public also assumes the right to certain minimum appearance standards in my community, and therefore I have no right to grow my grass 4 feet high.
You:
Now, you’re introducing choice, which gets my interest. However, you’re advocating imposing your choice on others.
Actually, I am in favor of imposing society’s choice, not mine alone. I am aware that society says that reproduction is a right and that the state is not at this time empowered to revoke it. The OP broadly asked whether or not reproduction should be a right, and I got here by arguing that for a certain segment that has abused this right in a profound way, it should not.
See, the rights discussion goes back to whatever rights a potential person may or may not have, which was my justification #1. Since I don’t think you want to use that justification, then we’re talking about punishment.
Generally, our punishments focus on crimes actually committed, not on those potentially committed. Now, I will admit that we have laws aimed at “preventing” crime, but will not accept them as evidence in this argument because I disagree with them as well.
The problem with punishing potential crime is that there is no rational way to do this. We all have different notions of what degree of likelihood justifies prevention, and there is no uniform way of drawing a line that can be applied to any situation. Also, prevention efforst always violate the rights of citizens who have broken no laws, in addition to those who have broken laws but would not have broken any more. Once we accept one justification for “prevention”, we cannot rationally reject any others,
because we have no basis for distinguishing them. Therefore, by accepting this prevention argument, you are accepting other prevention arguments that might be made by others. Yep, the slippery slope: Eventually, there are no
rights left.
Well, as to the slippery slope argument, I reject that out of hand in the same manner you reject the prevention laws, simply because I disagree. The slippery slope presumes that everything gets worse, an inch given becomes a
mile taken, and that the government can only become more oppressive. That hardly gibes with the history I am familiar with, from voting rights to racial discrimination issues to freedom of speech. If you want to argue
that governments move back and forth like a pendulum, from more restrictive to less and back depending on the times, then I could climb on board, but the slippery slope is a chimera, because it always assumes the worst, and if the peinciple were true, we would have already hit the bottom. It totally ignores the idea that the state is, in any action I can think of, actively opposed when it falls out of step with society.
You say that there is no rational way to distinguish between one preventive law and another? Accepting one must mean accepting all? As with any law, you make predictions based on what is likely to occur if the law is
passed versus whether the law is not passed. I know you will say that a likelihood is not enough, which is precisely why (or so I imagine) you dislike all the prevention laws. Suffice it to say that I do think that a
likelihood is enough justification. The way we distinguish between one preventive law and another is in their effects and in their costs. You have already acknowledged that preventive laws exist, so if the slippery slope is
so dangerous, then why are we not already at the bottom?
When you state that “there is no uniform way of drawing a line that can be applied to any situation,” you are basically describing any sentence handed down by a court for anything more serious than a traffic offense. All sentences are relative with a range of possible punishments. In the same district you may have two murders with very similar evidence that, due to the vagaries of the jury, the judge, and the lawyers’ talents, receive to wildly different sentences. Is justice served when one gets lethal injection and the other gets 20 years? Probably not, but it is an unavoidable consequence of an imperfect system. Any number of crimes allow leeway in the sentencing due to differences in the individual cases. There is, in short, no way of drawing the line that you speak of whether a sentence is preventive or punitive.
You bemoan the rights of “those who have broken laws but would have broken no more” as well as “citizens who have broken no laws.” I am not at all sure which citizens you speak of who have broken no laws, but whether you speak of the wrongfully convicted or those whose lives are entwined with the criminals, it matters little in this argument because the charges you level against preventive laws are equally applicable against punitive laws. They also infringe on the rights of those criminals who would never again break the law as well as the wrongfully convicted and those involved with the life of the criminal. You cannot logically single out preventive laws with these arguments.
You:
So, for you, it is reasonable to avoid x unpleasantness by foregoing x protections of rights. Once again, I ask you to think about additional ways in which this line or reasoning can be used.
Is this not the basis of many of our laws? You aren’t allowed to carry a .357 in your shorts because of the possible mayhem that may result. Sure, you have a right to own the gun, but the potential danger, the “x unpleasantness” does indeed outweigh your right to bear arms. The additional ways this reasoning might be used are already a factor, and are not a result of what I proposed.
Nope, doesn’t work. If you are going to presume the existence and protection of “as yet nonexisting” children, I don’t see how you cannot presume the rights of “never existing” children; particularly when they would also be
“as yet nonexisting” if you weren’t actively preventing their existence.
There, now who’s got the bigger headache?
No headaches here. One last time I’ll try this. Let’s put ourselves ten years after the decision to pass or not pass the sterilization procedure. Assume I am the ultimate authority and have the power to pass the law or not. In universe A it passed, in B it did not.
In universe A, no children were born to the offender. They are “never existing”. They never had rights, could never have rights. There was never anyone to harm. A whole bunch of criminals’ rights were infringed upon.
In universe B two dozen children were born and abused. They not only had rights once they existed, but those rights were violated, but hey, those lucky felons’ rights are intact.
In universe A I have not “protected” any child’s rights, for there are none to protect. In universe B I have by my own inaction allowed the abuse to safeguard the rights of felons whom I believe have relinquished any moral claim to those rights.
Me:
Raping or brutalizing a child is tantamount to surrendering your right to parent.
You:
I think this is too big of a generalization. You have violated the rights of others and opened yourself up to punishment by society (which will violate you). By committing crime, you give up your expectation of having any of your rights protected. However, we, as a society, still have an interest in the rights of each individual and cannot categorically deny them all just because the crime exists. If we did, that would make it okay to kill someone
for stealing a pack of bubblegum.
That follows? Really? Murdering is tantamount to surrendering one’s right to life. The state, in the persons of judge, jury, and even the governer may choose not to take it, yet the murderer has still placed his right to life in jeapordy by his own actions. Committing any violent crime is tantamount to surrendering your right to bear arms. How does the surrendering of one’s right to parent lead inexorably to the death sentence for petty theft? How is it that surrendering this right is equivalent to surrendering all freedoms when surrendering these other rights are not?
You:
It should be a fascinating law to read. And how many rights of law-abiding citizens do you expect to violate in enforcing it? (In response to my wish to be able to keep all abusers away from children.)
I guess I should have made it clear that I was wishing out loud for a magic solution, not seriously proposing that any such law were possible.
You:
Thanks for the nightmare material. Do keep in mind that we don’t won’t to react to barbaric acts with more barbaric acts, if we can help it.
I wasn’t in the least sensational when I pointed out exactly what crimes I was talking about. I didn’t even come close to providing nightmare material. The “if we can help it,” is interesting though, because it presumes that there are times when what you call barbaric acts are unavoidable. We recognize that certain crimes are indeed heinous enough to deserve the maximum punishment provided for by law while others do not. There is no reason to presume sterilization would be any different.
You:
An aside: Your arguments do not seem, from here, to be built up on a firm foundation. You’ll notice that I tend to always refer back to a foundation (individual rights); whereas, you tend to take a meandering course, where
rights are mentioned here, positive and negative valences there, with a general scattering of “this sounds fair to me”. Add to this only a vague definition of some of the key terms, like “right” and “fair”. As I believe it is possible to have your moral positions stem from a common source, I
think that this may indicate a weakness in your worldview.
Well if that’s your take on it, then so be it. From here, you seem to sing a two note song: The guarantee of individual rights is more important than one’s obligation to exercise them responsibly, and that any power the state has to infringe on those rights leads us inexorably down to totalitarianism where no rights exist. I categorically reject the first, and see no evidence to support the second.
My personal beliefs rest on the idea that one’s individual rights can be justly infringed upon or revoked by the state if the individual has abused those rights grievously enough. Once an individual commits a heinous act, he has no moral claim to the protection of his rights. If you disagree with me that the crimes we are discussing fit the definition of “grievous enough”, that’s fine. That is why we have juries and a range of sentencing options.
In an earlier post you stated:
“I don’t know of any rights that are “inviolate”. However, some rights are higher on the hierarchy than others. The higher they are, the better justifications you must have for violating them. As I mentioned, your justifications are nowhere near sufficient for violating a right that so many people think of as fundamental.”
Very well. Since you indicate that the right to reproduce is not inviolate, exactly what justification would be sufficient for its removal if child rape is not?