Of course.
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This is some evil tactic to divide and conquer! I can smell it.
No, but there was a certain philosophical basis on how to determine natural rights. I believe one of these - and this is only from my rather limited reading on the subject - was that no one had the right to force anyone else to do anything. This seems reasonable to me, because one person having ‘the right’ to force someone else to do something is slavery to an extent.
Each question would have to be answered on it’s own merits. I’m not saying property rights are immutable, but that, in this particular case, the government may have overstepped it’s bounds and set a bad precedent.
The argument then talked about my view of property rights, and I suppose I must’ve conveyed the idea that I think they’re immutable in every single case, because that’s the impression people have gotten.
My mind has been changed a bit on the basis of economic harm and the interstate commerce clause. Since I disagree with the argument that there’s a right not to be discriminated against, I’ve argued against that.
The Constitution is the basis of our government. I was not saying that the Constitution was the end-all when it came to rights, I was saying that out of all those rights considered important enough to specifically enumerate, none of them included a right that let one person force something else on another person.
Except that’s not true, as Jodi has shown with regard to the freedom of speech.
Let me tell give some advice to you. And everyone else in this thread, you should listen as well, because if you pay attention, it will save a lot of aggravation for both of us. If you ever want me to accept that something is inconsistent or self-contradictory, the proper way to do so is to take a statement and its negation (and be sure to negate it properly; that’s a skill that many people seem to lack), and prove both using the position which you find inconsistent. I do not see how “cannot get anywhere in forming a society” follows from every freaking thing you do affects someone’s property or ability to acquire property or whatever", nor do I see how, even if it did, that would establish incosistency.
Gadarene
Could you refresh my memory as to how she did so?
SENOR BEEF –
You do realize, do you not, that at the time the Constitution was put forth they had, not “slavery to an extent,” but real honest-to-goodness slavery. They also had taxes, and (in some cases) militia obligations, and various laws contstraining behavior. Therefore, reading into the Constitution some underpinning that “rights cannot be impinged by coercion” is reading that document so overbroadly that the reading is simply flat wrong. Now I do not say that original rights, in a state of nature, may include the libertarian ideal of being free from coercion, but in an organized society, some degree of coercion is par for the course – we all pay taxes, for example, though we may not want to. The founding fathers knew that, and while their philisophical underpinnings may have been grounded in natural rights, I have never seen any indication that they ascribed to your belief that no person has the right to force another to do anything.
I’m afraid I’m not willing to let you off so easily. I have given you a question to answer on its own merits: What is your opinion of zoning restrictions, vis a vis property rights? Okay, or not? (If you feel some are okay and some are not, please explain how you decide that.)
Okay. But then I have never really cared about the right versus privilege argument; as I have said, it does not IMO change the analysis at all. Since the government only needs a rational basis for interfering with property rights, the extension of a privilege that it feels is in society’s best interests is sufficient IMO to justify the limited intrusion at issue.
Aside from the fact I don’t think that’s true, it misses the point: If you admit that Set [A] does not include the entire subset of [a], then you can draw no fair inference based on the fact that a particular [a] does not appear in Set [A] – because you have admitted Set [A] is not all-inclusive. It’s like arguing against chocolate chip cookies because the cookie store on the corner doesn’t carry them. If you admit the cookie store doesn’t carry every variety of cookie (and in fact doesn’t even claim to carry every variety of cookie), then the fact that it doesn’t carry chocolate chip cookies tells you exactly nothing about cookies in general. See what I mean?
Here:
And here:
And again here:
Conversely, you have never explained how the coercion implicated in the exercise of these rights does not invalidate the rights, which is the argument you are making regarding freedom from discrimination.
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Not a bit. It’s an opportunity for you to be intellectually honest, since I believed you’ve discussed this kind of reasoning in the past in some depth, or do you now agree with TheRyan on this point?
Well, you really ought to do a bit of reading on the different theories of justice various people have used to derive natural rights. I’m tempted to send you back to Locke but perhaps you ought to start with Anarchy, State, and Utopia by Robert Nozick. It’s quite accessible and even occasionally amusing. I’m quite certain you’d enjoy it. Moreover, you’d then be able to enage in a thought-provoking dicussion on this topic. I’m sure you’ll agree that you can go down in flames all too easily attempting to defend your conception of natural rights with the ammo you now have available. We could go after you on this topic now, but it wouldn’t be sporting, really – too much like shooting a sitting bird.
I just would like to point out to Senor Beef and The Ryan that Truth Seeker is being very generous and sporting here in leading you to Nozick’s book which is really, as I recollect it from reading it in college 16 years ago (and just having picked it up again off my bookshelf and browsed the TOC), an attempt to come up with a theory of justice along the lines of your libertarian / minimalist-government thinking.
If he wanted to subvert you, he would be telling you to read John Rawls’ Theory of Justice. Or maybe something in-between. (Rawls is pretty extreme in the “other” direction.)
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This was, I’m guessing, due to slaves not being considered human. Not that I advocate that in any way, it’s just that it existed in different social conditions.
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The examples you give are examples of government requiring some civil service from each individual. This derives from government powers - not individual rights. I never said that no one can be obligated to do anything, ever - I simply said that I don’t believe a right can force private individual A to be able to force private individual B to do anything.
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Answered that in my second to last post.
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That is unfortunate. The same apathy is shared by almost the entirety of the population - and that’s why the government gets little resistance when it tries to push down illegal laws that violate rights - seizure of suspected drug property without trial, PATRIOT act, etc. We don’t think we have any rights, and whatever the government does to us is, by default, what our rights are.
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And they could judge confining us to house arrest 24/7 will make society safer. That could meet a rational basis test, depending on who is applying it. Not saying you’re necesarily wrong, but the application of a rational basis test doesn’t automatically justify restriction of rights. But you said IMO, and so I’ll take it at that.
Yes, I understand that. And I wasn’t trying to submit the Constitution as an exclusive, definitive piece of evidence - just that the trend of the rights that WERE enumerated for protection did not allow private person A to force private person B to do something.
In the first two examples, he simply lists restrictions on rights, not conflicts of rights. By this logic, you can say that any restriction whatsoever of rights creates, by default, a positive set of rights. I don’t believe this to be true.
With the third, he may have a point. I’m not sure, however, that ‘forcing’ someone to endure your speech on public property is the same as being able to force someone who do not wish to provide a service to you to do so.
This relates, back, of course, to the idea that people have the right to be free from discrimination - but only on the basis of age, religion, race, whatever. Again - if the government changes the law so such discrimination is legal, does the right not to be discriminated against still exist?
Done. It’s on The List.
To clarify, in general, I now see a more solid basis of discrimination laws, under the justification of economic harm, and Congress’ power to react under the interstate commerce clause.
I’m still just sticking around because of my disagreement with the ‘right to be discriminated against’ argument.
SENOR BEEF –
And, of course, the problem you see with discrimination laws “infringing” on property rights also exists because of “different social conditions.”
Private individual A pretty clearly doesn’t have the right to make private individual B do anything. It is the government that is compelling Individual B to refrain from discriminating, by imposing penalties if Individaul B continues to do so. So if your hang-up is that the action is undertaken by an individual and not derived from an exercise of governmental power, then you should be okay – the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was an exercise of governmental power.
No, dodged in your second to last post. And dodged again in this one. Which, of course, you are free to do, just as I am free to assume you couldn’t come up with a good answer.
I find it amusing that you would consider me apathetic on the issue of constitutional rights. I assume you have your own novel definition of “apathy,” just as you do of “rights.”
But you’ve taken it too far. Property rights generally may be infringed if the government has a rational basis. Personal liberty may not be infringed without a compelling state interest. This is because these rights are not considered equally important. That’s why I was talking about zoning (property) and why you are incorrect to now talk about around-the-clock house arrest. I have never said, and do not believe, that “application of a rational basis test automatically justifies restriction of rights.” It is only applied at all in certain cases (including property rights) and its application is never automatic.
Ah. So now it’s a “trend.” Fine, so long as you see that it does not support your assertion that the idea of rights may not include, under some circumstances, allowing person A to force person B to do something.
They are obviously not the same. But they are similar, and they show that you are not strictly correct to assert that the exercise of one right may never “force” someone else to do something he or she does not want to. And speaking of, “he” in this case (meaning me) is a “she.”
That depends on what you mean by “right.” Since you consider it a privilege, since it is legislatively created, I assume you would conclude that, were the law abolished, that privilege would not still exist. But if the government took away every indicia of your right to free speech, would that right still exist? Why? And how could you tell?
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And if social conditions make government INFRINGE on rights, then they (the government) are not following their oath.
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Exactly. This is exactly what I’m saying.
And there is no affirmative ‘right not to be discriminated against’, the government is simply enforcing certain standards.
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He asked if I was opposed to [insert lots of different laws], when I said that each need to be evaluated on their own basis?
How is that dodging?
I stated that I don’t think property rights are totally immutable, but each has to be evaluated on it’s own merits, with respect to property rights given. This is consistent with how I’ve been the whole time. What am I dodging?
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I believe that if someone doesn’t see the difference between a right and a privilege, or doesn’t care, then they’re pretty apathetic about their rights.
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Fair enough. I didn’t realize you were limiting your statement to property rights. My fault.
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I guess. I still don’t think being free from private discrimination in any sort of right, and I doubt the Constitution was written with that in mind.
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Well, one requires one person to actively do something for the other person, whereas the other is simply exposing someone to something that they can avoid (by shutting the window, or whatever).
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My point was that I don’t think many people believe that the “right” to be free from discrimination is not a natural right, but a “right” created by a legislative body, and in this case, a “right” created simply because other things are restricted. So, if the legislative body stops restricting such things, the ‘default right’ dissapears. This is not in line with natural rights, which are innate.
It would exist, it would just be suppressed. It would only be robbed from those who refused to defend it.
And yes, I realize there’s no concrete way of defining and recognizing rights. I guess you just have to ascribe to a certain philosophy or set when determining your beliefs.