No. I’m not a pacifist.
Dairdo - it is a fundamental disagreement. I don’t subscribe to individual, natural, or self-evident rights. I would defend my life, but I have no philosophical principle to sustain that decision. Rights are simply asserted.
I don’t follow this at all -
While the right to life implies the right to utilise certain life-sustaining objects - say, a plow or even a gun - I can see no necessity in a right to own anything. People can, theoretically, sustain themselves without individually owning anything.
I enjoy the “right” to own a gun, and bemoan the fact that since I have moved back to Massachusetts, that ability is inhibited (I haven’t begun the license and permitting process, but I am not looking forward to the hoops I must jump through.) But the rights of citizens always exist against a government. That’s just historical fact. Anything else is religion.
I dunno about the whole argument here. The legacy of the Lochner era is that rights trump goods. In a police state, goods trump rights as the state espouses a particular good which is strictly enforced. The neutrality principle can’t be applied in the way that is being suggested here.
The Lochner decision is now widely considered to be flawed, and, more importantly, the 600 word dissenting opinion from Judge Holmes, has become consensus. Holmes dissenting with the position that the Constitution advocated a particular philosophy. The Supreme Court has ruled – in most cases – in accordance with Holmes’ “empty constitution” and deferred to the prevailing public attitude and legislative actions as a basis for determining what is or is not Constitutional.
What is the neutrality principle?
Agree to disagree? And leave it at that? I’m not looking for a deeper discussion on these differences today - it’s nearly the holiday weekend and copious quantities of wine and beer will be consumed. 
If you don’t subscribe to individual rights as being self-evident, then we’re probably - as my Dad might say - pissing into the wind, no?
You mean, if the group allows it, right? If you don’t own the gun or the plow - how do you reconcile disputes over use? Moreover, if you don’t own the tool - do you own the product of the tool? If you shoot a wild animal for food - do you own the food? If not - who determines how best to dispense it? What if you disagree with the dispensation?
That’s one interpretation of history - I wouldn’t say it’s historical fact. I see the Constitution as specifically setting up a government meant to protect rights - not act as antagonist to individual rights - forever struggling to increase powers while individuals struggle to limit them.
The neutrality principle is just another way of expressing Holmes’ dissent, the only real legacy of the Lochner era to which we still cling. Not only is the Constitution not intended to embody a particular economic theory, but it is not intended to embody any particular conception of the good. So in determining Constitutional law, one has to be neutral towards the ends of the case and rather focus on the rights of the individuals involved. This sets the stage for a procedural republic, where rights are affirmed over goods. That is to say, it is the duty of the court to be not only neutral towards various conceptions of the good but also to restrict programs that would foster particular perceptions of the good which would unduly bias the free choice of the autonomous individuals in question. I wrote a little about it here and here.
Yup.
K.
Private property doesn’t preclude disputes over use. There are mechanisms for that - mechanisms that we use now.
It’s not inconsistent that you could. It works either way, but private property is private property. Your question assumes a mixed system, but it’s not impossible. We have a mixed system, now.
Again, this issue is extant within private-property systems. As are disagreements over dispensation (tax policy, for instance).
The other interpretations are metaphysical. Hegel would tell you that he wrote history - he didn’t. My claim is that it is at least historical fact, even if it’s something more. The Constitution is unmistakeably concerned with rights against the state. But not in favor of individual rights. For instance, the much-abused idea that all men are created equal, which the Constitution supposedly reflects, can only sensically be read as that all men are created equal politically - as citizens. Their supposed equality exists only within the context of the state, as a class. I’m not sure that the Constitution really does reflect this value, but conservatives seem to insist on it.
Here’s one from the Constitution itself - the right to bear arms, again. This is asserted within the context of the militia - not the Michigan Militia. Not some bunch of wackos with souped up .223’s. The militia. Which does not exist. It is the Supreme Court’s very practise of imposing contemporary societal values that preserves my (alleged) right to have my own weapons despite that the conditions that spawned the original right are (materially) no longer intact. Despite that I belong to no militia. Of any kind. I just like to shoot at tin cans. If real fighting ever broke out in the streets, I’d head for the proverbial, and literal, hills. Luckily, there is no oath I must take to own a gun (at least back in Maine). No one cares about my individual reason for owning guns. Again, fortunately.
Or take the Voting Rights Act. It’s not the Joe Blow Voting Rights Act - it applies to classes of people, and not individuals.
You’ve likely had a debate of this kind before on these forums. Are there old threads that you can think of for me to go read before we discuss?
I suppose I have. I have no memory for those things, though. I have a lot of posts, and I’m sure I lack the patience to search through them until I found one. It probably would have been a while ago, and probably not one that I started.
For the record, I do think that there are times when armed rebellion is warranted. But I also think that America could have become a huge Hong Kong if we’d stayed with the Brits. Not so bad, really. Also, the Great Depression brought rebellion in Spain, for instance. I don’t think it led to anything so great. And it led Germany’s misbehavior - also nothing so great. In the US, it led to the most affluent generations ever known on this Earth - absent revolution.
These rightwingers never had it so good. Yes - gays, catholics and blacks are no longer lynched. But it’s preposterous to me that an armed revolution is remotely close to justifiable under present circumstances. They are just a bunch of thugs with guns.
While it can be fruitful to investigate the conditions under which armed rebellion is warranted, it’s also worth noting that dying for a cause is rather extreme. Death is extreme. Universal health care, fiat money and Barney Frank don’t even come close to the conditions the Colonists faced. Even they could have found another way.
I don’t follow.
Yes, it is, but it is rooted in something objective - like property rights. In the absence of property rights - how are such disputes settled?
I’m confused how it could be anything else - given the pretext found in the DoI, the preamble, various founders’ essays, memoirs, etc. - and its near approximation to the larger philosophy of liberty - which specifically requires a fundamental acknowledgement of individual rights.
I agree with your evaluation that it must refer to political rights - as citizens - as that is the only rational way it can be read. I’m not sure I follow your meaning of a “class” within a state - if all are politically equal, how is there a class? Again - given the circumstance and the guiding principles that the founders appeared to value as evidenced by a number of documents - I find it difficult to view the Constitution as not reflecting that value.
I thought the Constitution differentiated between a state militia and a people’s milita - the former meant to implement the government’s mandate to protect individual rights from foreign aggression - the latter meant to protect people against the possibility of government abuse of power. I don’t agree with your interpretation of “militia” within the context of the 2nd amendment.
I don’t think the Supreme Court is acting within its proper scope when it imposes contemporary social values that conflict with the Constitution. With respect to the conditions that spawned the right to bear arms, whether they exist or not is a matter of opinion and interpretation. I see the conditions that spawned the right as inherent to a republic built on a foundation of individual liberty - with a Constitution meant to restrict government tyranny. Unless the republic is declared dead - I fail to see how the conditions have changed.
Fair point. And interesting.
For the record, I agree completely.
Quite probably. I don’t disagree. I don’t know enough to agree though.
Dairdo -
Faust -
The short answer is “yes”. There is no reason why property rights could be granted for the product, and not the means of production. I don’t own a factory, yet I own things that are made in factories. Those factories may be owned by anyone - private or “public”.
Use rights. Think “cattle grazing rights”.
I don’t have any rights because I’m me. I belong to many classes. Citizen/noncitizen (some of us aren’t citizens - but noncitizens are not nonpersons - they have some rights and not others - we decide), voter/nonvoter, nonfelon/felon, minor/adult, resident of a particular state, insured/uninsured, pedestrian/motorist - and so on. I have some rights and not others. Once in a while, someone tries to sue the government but is found not to have legal standing - the bad thing they are suing about could happen to them, but it hasn’t, for instance. they don’t, in that case, have the right to sue. They don’t, at the time, have the right to sue, even though many others may have that right. Rights are granted to classes - which may be fixed or fluid, permanent or temporary. Rights cannot be tied to individuals, for they may change classes throughout their lives.
Patriotic constitutional convention rhetoric aside.
There is no way that the Founders were thinking about the Michigan Militia when they wrote that amendment. Read the amendment - it’s pretty straightforward. It says nothing about two militias. No one really thinks this was about individuals shooting up the back lot. But it’s a right that most americans want.
There is no militia, for one thing. To interpret otherwise is quite a feat. I’d like to see your case for that.
Don’t get me wrong - I love guns. I wish more second-amendmenters would just say the same - guns are fun, and we want to be able to shoot bad guys. But the US armed services? Armed conflict with them?
I don’t think comment is needed for that.
I’m not suggesting that what you’re proposing isn’t “possible” - at least in the short run. But whether or not it is optimal, or even desirable, is a matter of philosophy - and specifically, the nature of what it means to be human with an emphasis on how we ought to live.
From a more articulate author:
Said another way, commenting on human nature:
While the absence of private property - supplanted by public or non-ownership(?) and simple “use rights” - is possible, I fail to see how the “granting” of rights to “use” this publicly owned property could be managed effectively. What happens when the individuals that comprise the “group” responsible for granting these rights decides they don’t like you? If rights don’t exist - what recourse do we as individuals have against tyranny? If you’ve imagined some democratic function - what happens if the group decides democratic function and your right to vote is void? On what principled basis would you resist? Would you resist?
You have rights specifically because you are you - human.
This, in my opinion, contradicts the founding of the republic. It was founded on a series of principles - one of which was the self-evident philosophical position that asserts each and every human being has a right to their life - and, as noted above, an implicit corrollary right to property. These rights weren’t “granted” - they were recognized as existant regardless of what governing body was in power. The governing body was thusly set up to specifically protect those rights.
The notion that rights are granted to classes is a substance over form interpretive issue. You’re suggesting that the concept of classes are antecedent to the concept of individual rights - that to have the right to life requires that you first be recognized as a citizen. I disagree. I see the appearance of that condition as being a contemporary symptom of the republic as influenced by successive generations of Statists - who view the government as a source for personal enrichment and not as an agent for the defense of individual rights. Immigration control - manipulation - is, in my opinion, a violation of individual rights.
I don’t see how the Founders weren’t thinking about a people’s militia, independent of a standing army, given the circumstance and general context of the times. I imagine the 2nd amendment was inspired by any of the following: repelling invasion, deterring undemocratic government, facilitating a natural right to self-defense and participating in law enforcement. Each one of those considerations would require that individuals be free to arm themselves.
Whether there is, or is not, a militia at the moment is irrelevent. The issue is whether a militia, independant of the standing army, could conceivably exist from a perspective of protected rights in the Constitution.
I spent most of my life as a pacifist. My perspective has changed. I’ve only ever shot a paintball gun. Philosophically, and historically, I find reason to advocate individual rights, from which I derive support for the right to bear arms. Clearly an armed conflict with the US armed reserve by any militia would be suicide (if that was your meaning). It’s not the point though - the principle of whether individuals are free to arm themselves is constitutionally recognized or not. No?
This series of assertions may be articulate, but they don’t constitute an argument. And some of it is just plain incorrect. You can force people to work, for one thing. Calling people “intelligence” is pretty, but it doesn’t mean anything. I’m not going to respond in detail - it’s mostly drivel.
More poetry.
We already do this all the time. Highways, beaches, electrical power generation. It’s a long list. The 'group" is the government. What happens when the barkeep of a privately held barroom decides he doesn’t like you? He throws you out. I am not inventing this stuff - it’s everyday life.
In my example, rights do exist. I don’t know what you’re talking about.
How does owning property guarantee you civil rights?
Grand assertion. Not much of an argument for your position, you must admit.
Yeah, property rights were “noted”. Anything can be “noted”.
Please try to calm down. I never said that.
Exactly. You’ve repeated a point that I have made. Glad we could agree about something.
I notice that you have not included shooting tin cans in the back yard, hunting game and crawling around in the mud in a ghillie suit, pretending to shoot cops, queers and FBI agents.
Correct. It can’t. The Supreme Court has been winking at this because that’s what a majority of US citizens want, and because no minority is harmed by enforcing this right.
You really should try the real thing. It’s a lot of fun. Yes - individuals are free to arm themselves. I never said otherwise. I not only support that freedom, but I wish we were even more free. I wish I wasn’t restricted to 10-round magazines, and that I didn’t have to get both a license and to register my firearms in Massachusetts. I wish I could own a machine gun. Or at least fire one.
But the idea that a bunch of guys who feel powerless in the world, who were picked on and bullied as kids, who never got over being a Boy Scout, armed with Rambo trench knives, surplus SKS’ and gunpowder-filled coffee cans are defending my rights is ridiculous.
I am member both of the NRA and of Knife Rights (another lobbying group). I own several guns and several knives. I keep a bugout bag fully stocked and ready to go at all times. I have studied and practised survival techniques. Shit - I never leave home without a first aid kit, a flashlight and pocket knife. I keep a large survival knife in the car. Well, a medium-sized one.
But to claim I have a God-given or Natural Right to do so is not required.
Voting helps, though.
I suppose your baseless assertions that my assertions are false or incorrect somehow constitutes a superior argument?
You can force people to work - you can’t force them to think. As the author alluded to - there is only motivation to avoid the gun, or the whip, which binds them physically in servitude. Your assertion that people can be forced to work - to think - contradicts reality. Unless of course you take an incredibly superficial and irrational view of reality.
They are observations - not poetry. If Man does not have to work to produce in order to support his life - how does he support his life?
When a barkeep throws you out - he’s exercising his right to use his property as he sees fit. There’s no contradiction or issue there. If that offends some notion of “justice” that you believe ought trump the barkeeps right to dispense with a patrons “asserted” right to consume - you’ll have to provide something more concrete.
With respect to highways, beaches, etc. - if we’re going to be juvenile and engage in a game of anecdote as a basis for argument - I can go around and find many highways, roads, rivers, beaches, etc that have been ignored, mismanaged or generally left to disappear when the whims of government shifted priorities - regardless of those individuals who depend on the roads, rivers, beaches, etc.
We can conveniently look back at many failed ideas, that at the time, from all appearances, worked in the short run-- but ultimately failed in the end. The question is not whether it’s working now - but whether how it’s working now is sustainable and consistent with the underlying principles that govern the relationship of individuals with the State.
I never implied it did. I’m not sure how you came to that conclusion. Your “civil rights” are simply the logical extension and implementation of the fundamental right - the right to life.
I suppose I looked at your baseless attempts at refutation (ie: poetry, drivel, incorrect, false… ) and considered them the benchmark. I’ve tried to aim a little higher in this response.
Not much of an argument for your position - you must admit. You’re making it sound as if the Founders were simply engaging in a fantastic act of wishful thinking - in the absence of reason or objectivity. I disagree. The recognition of individual rights - specifically the right to life - as self evident - resonates with a core set of philosophical (metaphsyical, epistemological) concepts. There is a distinct difference between “noting” something as selected from fantasy - and noting a logical corrollary of a principle.
I’m not particularly excited at all. Please attempt to refrain from making unsubstantiated character evaluations in your arguments. Someone might, mistakenly, think you were flirting with an ad hominem.
You said “I don’t see how the Founders were thinking about the Michigan Militia”. I disagreed by noting that I don’t understand how the Founders could not] have been thinking about militias in general - independant of standing armies. In what way do we agree?
None of those actions enter the domain of social interaction wherein individual rights become an issue… unless you know something I don’t of course. If someone wants to discharge a million rounds into a few tin cans… what’s the problem? Oh wait - I see - you’re attempting to equivocate between non-individual rights issues as they relate to the 2nd amendment, and some inferred strawman whereby my arguments can be foolishly misconstrued to support any psychopath with a gun (ie: shooting FBI agents and homosexuals).
By your interpretation. In your opinion. Right?
I’m not sure why we keep coming back to this. As originally discussed (and I thought agreed on) - it’s a fine line between when citizens are compelled to violent action to oppose oppression - and when violent action is simply delusional, psychopathic behaviour. For many of the reasons you’ve previously cited - I don’t know that I could ever advocate violent resistance - not in the near or even distant future. More probably - I would resist by simply moving (which I’ve done - though admitedly, not originally for that reason) - or taking myself off the grid and living a simpler life.
That’s pretty cool. In the past year, I’ve become pretty interested in survival knowledge - picked up some survival gear pieces here and there. And yes - I do plan on learning to shoot and eventually, owning a gun or two.
The fact that you don’t believe your right to your life precedes any governments “granting” of that right allows you to make that statement. I disagree. As a human being in nature, I believe I have the right to my life, and by extension, the right to defend that life against the initiation of force against me. If a gun helps me do that - it most certainly is a natural right.
The problem here is that the “author” magically, and without argument, equates working and thinking (or intelligence). he makes no inference about this - he simply states it. The fact is that you can force people to work. Do I really have to make a case for this? Or do i merely point out that he is saying that if we take his guns away, he is a slave.
The problem I have is that the argument you’re promoting goes something like this:
I have the right to life.
My right to life gives me a right to private property.
I have the right to own guns, just in case someone wants to take away my property.
How we arrive at the first premise and how that leads to the others is a bit of a mystery.
It is true that the Declaration of Independence declares the we have the right to life. if we are to take this as scripture, then the mystery is solved. That does, however, leave the question of how we justify actually using those firearms to deprive others of that same right. So much for absolute rights.
Yes - your core set. And it’s those metaphysical ones that concern me. The epistemic ones, as well, as I consider epitemology to be metaphysics. In philosophy, if I may follow your lead, we argue for our metaphysics and epistemology. Self-evidence is in the eye of the beholder, and just because a piece of parchment that has no legal status in this fair republic of ours makes an unargued-for assertion about what our rights are doesn’t mean that those rights magically exist. The Supreme Court doesn’t think so, and neither do I.
That is the basis of our disagreement.
Again, I am not arguing against the right to own guns. I am arguing against the same blind faith in a few platitudes that camo-covered wackjobs have being the basis of a purportedly reasonable and reasoned position about guns. Right-wing violence is on the rise because all too much is “self-evident” to all too many people.
Dairdo- by the way, try Zombie Squad’s website message board site, zombiehunters.org/forum/
It’s non-ideological and full of good information about survival and also about weaponry. If you have any questions about survival and/or guns, feel free to email me or PM me.
How we arrive at the first premise - I agree - is the subject of a much deeper discussion. However, if we assume the first premise holds, the others flow logically from that first premise. The right to life is effectively negated without a corrollary right to property. It’s like saying you have a right to live - just not according to your own volition. Rather, your ability to live is subject to some unspecified “authority”, effectively granting that authority the right to your life.
The right to defend your life against initiations of force meant to violate your right to life - seems fairly straightforward. “Guns” are just the best tools available to contemporary man. If it were 1,000 years ago - I might have said a nice blade of some kind and a suit of armour.
I’m not sure I follow. Do you mean in situations where the line is crossed and citizens attack government officials? I agree - it’s a grey area. Some could argue that government has, incrementally, initiated the use of force against the citizens prior to the attacks - which we’re retaliatory and meant to protect the rights that government not longer protects. Are we anywhere near a set of circumstance that could justify that argument - most certainly not. That doesn’t mean an argument couldn’t be made one day - given different, more oppressive, circumstances.
Yes. I agree completely. It is clear that this is the basis of our disagreement.
I would probably agree with you if so many Americans - and so much legal precedent - didn’t specifically speak to and uphold individual rights - as they flow from the right to life. I disagree with you because of the unending series of contradictions - ie: we believe in individual rights, but we believe in violating individual rights if it helps enough people. Effectively, a form of pragmatism has emerged as the guiding ideology of the Supreme Court - and the result appears to be an ever increasing nanny State that feels justified in exercising the power to violate individual rights on a whim.
In the absence of individual rights as a philosophical foundation - I don’t see how a slow descent into tyranny is avoidable. In the absence of individual rights - on what basis do you resist a majority elected authority to control your life? You’ve referenced the courts - but if the courts continue to move towards a more “pragmatic” intellectual philosophy - whereby their job is to rationalize whatever the majority wants - void of any philosophical foundation whatsoever - what recourse does the individual have?
I agree. I see the problem today as a critical failure of philosophy. Empty platitudes are just that, empty, and therefore irrational. I abhore blind faith in anything. My support of the right to life is the result of my application of reason - as best I can muster it - to the objective world.
Looks very interesting. Thanks!
Well, I have been trying to have that deeper discussion, since your entire thesis depends upon certain a priori rights. First you say that we must first assume the right to life, and that the right to property is logically derived from the right to life. But then you say that the right to life is dependent upon the right to property.
Either way, if the right to life is a natural, self-evident and therefore a priori right, and that we cannot live without it, then anyone living in a truly communal society, where no one owns any property, will soon die.
I find that difficult to believe, as such communal societies have existed and still do, and do not, to my knowledge, have a significantly higher death rate than other social groups.
But further, you say without that right, then our ability to live is subject to some authority. Well, it always is. In any society. Rights, even Natural Rights, are claims against the state. Locke and Rousseau, the two major sources for the conception of rights that the Founding Fathers used, clearly thought this to be the case. That government - that authority - is exactly what those rights were meant to counter. Rights don’t remove that authority - they just describe the rules under which it operates. Under the rules that the Founding Fathers gave a foundation for, the state still has some authority over life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Let’s not get too caught up in the rhetoric of the Declaration of Independence - it wasn’t a legal document, it was wartime propaganda.
This is just a bit testosterone-poisoned. Laws, moral rules, social pressure, police forces (who don’t use guns very often) - these and more are more likely to protect your rights than are privately held weapons. Now, don’t get me wrong - I support castle laws and the ability to carry a weapon outside the home. But if this were our primary and best defense against physical aggression, we would have nothing like the society that we do. The idea that guns are the only or even best way to defend ourselves is not reflective of american society - or the way we live day-to-day.
Not primarily, but we could include that, sure. My main objection to that is that it’s buck stupid, however.
Sure. But you’d be better off lobbying for privately held rocket launchers than for shotguns.
One of the many problems with a rights-based system is that rights inevitably collide. Especially in ours, where so many have so many rights. John Rawls attempted to find a way to mitigate this - it’s one of the better parts of his thinking. No one is listening to Rawls, but it was some good work. It doesn’t matter if the rights are conferred to groups or to individuals - the conflicts will arise. it’s complicated enough with just the two rights you mention. As we have seen. What you’re describing is a form of Utilitarianism. I have a suggestion for those who object to Utilitarianism as a tool of a rights-based system. Babysit ten small children for one day. You will very quickly become a Utilitarian. No matter how much you focus on any set of individual rights, however small, that you wish to bestow upon them.
Okay - you’re not a fan of Socialism, nor of Democracy. Libertarian? Just a guess.
Do you mean besides shooting up the streets? I can think of a couple. Maybe you could just move to Montana and join a militia.
I’m not a rights guy, but I can go along with a right to life, for nothing else can happen to you, good or bad, once you’re dead. I just don’t think that this right entails any other rights.