Look, this whole thing is stupid. The death penalty exists. It exists on the federal level in the Uniform Code of Military Justice. It exists in several states. Clearly the “inalienable right to life” can be legally alienated. Even in the US by officials subject to the constitution. Q.E.D.
Enjoy,
Steven
Oh, and minty, I’ve known that whole “inalienable rights only exist in the context of a government who recognizes and protects them” bit for a while. I’m thinking 9th grade political science IIRC.
BTW, you coming to Lord Jim’sparty on the 26th? He’s going to have his lovely bride sylphishone with him to introduce to the DFW dopers.
I saw that, and would love to come, but schedule conflicts are keeping me otherwise engaged that evening, I’m afraid. May still do a gathering at the new house after we get settled in and all this summer junk calms down. I’ll keep you posted.
The death penalty is one good example of when self-defense is neither legally allowed nor morally correct, but there are plenty more where that came from. Imagine, for instance, a burglar who kills a resident in self-defense because the guy pointed a gun at him and told him to drop the loot, or a belligerent drunk who stabs a bar patron who bumped into him. There’s no constitutional right to self-defense; if a state decided to do away with the defense entirely in favor of a rule of complete nonviolence, there wouldn’t be anything you could do about it.
Okay, we’ve reached page three, and I sense that the death of this thread is imminent.
But first, a few more thoughts to ponder:
To interpret “well regulated” within the 2nd Amendment to restrict the scope of a right of the people, runs contrary to the spirit of the Bill of Rights. All other amendments that comprise the Bill of Rights are strictures that bind the government’s authority.
The “well regulated militia” is dependent on an armed populace. The armed populace is not dependent on the existance of militias.
If one only has the “right” to keep and bear arms while in the service of a government’s militia, is it really a “right”? And would it then be a “right” that the Founders would have found worthy of being protected from government infringement?
minty we don’t stand on formality. The get-together is planned to start ~2 and run until we all decide to go home or crash on Lord Jim’s sofa(or under his table perhaps). Dead informal, that’s us.
Razorsharp, yea, the thread is probably about dead. A good indication of that is when people move away from actual facts and supportable claims and start making vague assertions about things like “the spirit of the Bill of Rights.” The founders believed the proper “security” for a free state was a civilian militia. These days we have a standing army, the coast guard, the national guard, and the homeland security department. Sounds like we’ve got that whole “security of a free state” bit covered. Heck, a lot of these people are even civilians. Given the voluntary nature of military service in the US and the fact that the vast majority of our servicemen are not career soldiers I’d even say we’ve got the “most-time civilian, part-time soldier” bit going for us. The rapid mobilization capabilities of modern forces make it possible to “keep” the arms on the military base and still be able to “bear” them as part of the “well-regulated militia” which handles “the security of a free state”. There is no proof that privately owned weapons are a necessary part of this infrastructure.
We have several well-regulated forces handling the security of our free state. Tell me why we need an ad hoc militia? The days of the minuteman are past. You want to bear arms? The armed forces, coast guard, national guard, etc. They’re all recruiting. No matter what reading of the 2nd ammendment a person uses, it will never take the guns out of the hands of these organizations.
Damn straight. They were very serious about protecting state militias to prevent the necessity of a standing federal army. Kind of a silly concern from our modern p.o.v., but there you have it.
“Alienable” means the ability to transfer ownership, title, possession, whatever, to another.
Just because the state can kill you after a trial and appellate process does not mean your right to life is “alienable.” It means you have forfeited your right to life through your behavior and after due process. In modern parlance one might say that you have waived your right to life through your actions.
OTOH, if the King decides that he can randomly select citizens and behead them, your right to life has been alienated to the King. If the state can seize your property without compensation or a hearing, your right to the pursuit of happiness (property) has been alienated to the state, and so on. The Declaration was making the point that there are certain fundamental rights that must be respected by the King, and that those rights are worth fighting for.
The Declaration certainly did not presume the existence of some omnipresent government ‘protecting’ our rights. Technically that’s the opposite of liberty, practically also.
I have always defined inalieable rights as rights which, when applied to every human being, do not violate themselves between two individuals, unless through force on the part of one of the individuals in question.
Once a human violates the “inaliable rights” of another, they forfeit their own claim to their rights.
Example being if someone murders another. It wasn’t necessary and they violated the other individual’s right to their own life. The murderer thereby forfeits his own right to his life.
Strange…I can’t edit my post. Must be diasbled or some such thing.
Anywho…I wanted to qualify that this may not be exactly what i was trying to say. My word usage may be incorrect under the circumstances. I’ll see what people say and try to ammend my definition in an attempt to state it more properly later.
If a right is “inalienable” it is not transferrable by anyone, even oneself, to anyone. It can not be taken, OR surrendered. An “inalienable right” can not be forfeitted. Even if the person does murder someone else, their inalienable rights are still their own or the word inalienable means nothing. Inalienable is an absolute, and absolutes suck absolutely. Better just to back off of this point, it doesn’t go anywhere anyway.
Razorsharp I have had this discussion with you before and quite honestly I am glad I am not the only one at this site to interpret the Second Amendment in a way you repudiate with such tenacious disgust.
However, no surprise to yourself, I do believe Minty has the stronger argument. Even Federalist number 29 supports Minty’s position. The right of the people to bear arms is not an individual right but one that goes along with the existence of a state militia.
As Minty alluded to in a most recent post some of the Framers believed armed state militias were the best protection and served as the best impediment to a federal government usurping power and becoming tyrannical. In order to effectuate this they wanted to make sure the ability of the people to arm themselves in state militias was not taken away. If the federal government could deprive the state of arming its militias, then what purpose exactly would an unarmed militia serve in precluding or abating the existence of a tyrannical federal government? None.
Hence, the Framer and some Framers viewed the Second Amendment as protecting the right to bear arms in relation to serving in state militias.
