The OP specifically mentions the right to bear arms. The vast majority of firearms are used for recreational purposes, i.e. punching holes in paper targets or making steel plates go “ding”. Some are used for hunting. All of these uses cause absolutely no harm to others, if done properly.
If you have gun laws that restrict anyone’s abilities to punch holes in paper targets, then these laws clearly prevent people from doing as they please. So either you have the freedom to do as you please (as long as you don’t cause harm) or you have gun laws. It’s one or the other. You can’t have both.
The OP very strongly disagrees that you should be able to do as you please, even if you aren’t harming others.
But Freedom does not require laws (restricting freedom does), as long as you are not harming others there would be no reason for laws, thus bearing arms would be great.
“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.”
For what it’s worth, the OP also disagrees with the founding fathers and the Declaration of Independence.
Actually, I think it’s totally fine to disagree with the Founding Fathers on a lot of things. Or to think they had the right idea for reaching their goal of building a white-males-only government in the 18th century but that this doesn’t really apply to today.
I agree. In liberal democracies, it isn’t so much about specific freedoms, it’s the rule of law combined with the democratic system of government that counts. That way, the people can decide AND mandate that the freedoms they deem important are protected.
Look at it this way- even among the Western-style democracies (most of Western Europe, US, Canada, Australia, NZ, etc…) essential freedoms are basically an overlapping Venn diagram of what each considers a freedom, and what isn’t. But the common theme is that they’re all liberal democracies where the rule of law is very strong.
I mean, the UK has no equivalent of the Fifth Amendment, and many other countries have very strong (to US ears) restrictions on free speech. And some of them have healthcare enshrined as a guaranteed right, which is not the case in the US.
You’d need to compile a list of “freedoms” guaranteed in each country, and then create that Venn diagram and see what’s in common between them. And that would be complicated, in that there are Constitutional rights, and there are rights determined by the workings of the judicial system, and then there are things that are just sort of cultural “rights” that may be centuries-old social conventions that were eventually written down as statutes somewhere. European countries often have a lot of interesting “rights” regarding gathering of berries, hikers, etc… on private land that date back for a very long time and are part of the social fabric.
This seems clearly false to me. What rights existed for enslaved people in the US? Which rights do you say exist ab nihilo (did I use that term correctly?)?
You’re mixing up truth and provability. If you had said “For this to be proved, you must prove…” you’d have a point.
I think this was addressed by @Roderick_Femm when he said “It is also possible, through other peoples’ behavior, to lose the ability to practice those rights, but that is not the same as not having the rights.”
This point of view makes it easier to explain why slavery was wrong: because it denied people rights which they should have had.
OK, my question still stands, then – which rights exist for people that aren’t granted by society or the government?
Did women always have the right to vote, but just couldn’t exercise it? Do fetuses actually have a right not to be aborted? Do people in the UK have the right to own any firearm they want? Do Germans have the right to publicly support Nazi causes? Do North Koreans have a right to be free from government interference? Did cavemen actually have the right to vote in free and fair elections? Do Americans actually have the right to have healthcare?
If you weren’t mixing up logic with semantics, you might also have a point. An irrelevant, tiny, and purely argumentative point, but a point nonetheless.
This is irrelevant to why slavery was wrong. Slavery was wrong because it violates the social value of equality - that is, if some people have a right, others shouldn’t be deprived that same right without a very compelling reason. Social values are described by law and effected by force… if necessary, by force of conquest, which is ultimately how the slavery question was tried.
That’s how we get rights. They don’t fall out of the sky in an angelic chorus. We make them, through violence if necessary.
According to some posters, no society that has ever existed has had the “bare minimum of freedom needed.”
These are odd concepts of freedom. Freedom typically means the right to be let alone to do as you please. You have crafted two definitions of freedoms which infringe on freedoms of others. I don’t want to hijack the thread and debate those two issues, but I wouldn’t ever categorize them as freedoms.
Where does this belief come from if not an outside source? If you read the laws of the day, slavery was perfectly okay.
Even the founders didn’t believe those rights really existed for “all men”, let alone women. And, WTF is the right to pursue happiness? Do prisoners have the right to liberty? Do the condemned have the right to life? Have all humans everywhere had those rights, but no one noticed until some people wrote them in the DoI?
We can absolutely believe it is a foundational document. That the feelings and sentiments expressed are a valuable insight into the founders desires for the new country, and a poetic aspiration for the best of humanity. We disagree that there is a ‘Creator’ that can imbue us with such rights, and acknowledge that the freedoms we have are part and parcel of a social compact we have created for ourselves - and as such they reflect our definitions of freedom and ‘people’: both of which change over time. A better quote would be the preamble to the Constitution.
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
I think an important issue is that the real need for freedom is found out on the fringes.
A popular idea will be upheld by its popularity. If the overwhelming majority of people think something is a good idea, it’ll be protected.
The difficult freedoms come from protecting unpopular ideas. You want a society that protects the right of individuals to say and do things even when the majority of people don’t want to do or say those things - or don’t even want those things to be said or done.