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Grants, Rights and Other Distinctions…
Many a time, I have gotten into discussions with my lefty friends about the Second Amendment. It usually goes something like this:
Friend: Are you for gun rights?
Me: Yes!
Friend: Would you be okay with machine guns?
The issue with the any such conversation is the context of the questioning. Is the Second Amendment a right or a grant?
When one “receives” a grant, then one can have the conversation about the extent of the grant, the specifics, etc. Is the grant for one gun or a hundred? Is the grant for one bullet or 15 or 100? Does the gun shoot one bullet per trigger pull or 10 or 50?
Is the ability to carry a gun openly more or less convenient for women and disabled people? Are guns better or worse for minorities?
While these are good questions, they still are questions that arise from the premise that gun ownership is a grant; that there is someone or something greater than us who is benevolent enough “allow” us to have guns. And hence we get to negotiate with this benevolent entity… but only after they are being nice by letting us have our guns.
We do this again and again in life. We think of agreed-upon rules and regulations as necessary, as if we have no right to our freedoms. Whether it be speed limits on highways or expiration dates on food products, we operate from the “grant” premise — and act as if we should be grateful for “someone looking after us” — by protecting us from ourselves.
Should there be a limit on speed on all roads in the country? Certainly not. Can a community set limits near, say school zones or residential communities? Not as a negation of our rights to drive at any speed, but by self-policing? Sure.
When we delegate our freedoms to government, we are letting our rights just go away. And as happened in Europe, the first step towards taking away rights is to start treating them as grants. Once you have people start talking about rights as if they were grant, then we are clearly on the path to relinquish our rights.
So the appropriate answer to “Are you in favor of speed limits?” is “Who has the right to enforce it upon me?” And to “How do you feel about machine guns?” is “Who has the right to take it away from me? By what authority? You and whose army?”
While we continue to operate from the premise of “grants,” we are just arguing over degrees of allowance. In order to secure true freedom, one has to get the distinction between rights and grants. If I am a free citizen, then I should not have to negotiate on the degrees of allowances.
This is the truth that is “common knowledge” to all libertarians but not always — I think — to conservatives.
If we are free, then we do not “seek” grants for guns, how fast we drive, who we marry, or any other matter. While laws exist, they only exist to ensure individual liberty. They do not exist to “grant” anything to the citizenry.
Published in General
… and laws are another topic that I can go on about.
I think a right is something that can only be possessed by everyone at all times. If it falls under that definition then it is a right. If the government decides to limit that then it no longer falls under that definition. In order for a right to be maintained they need to be safeguarded by the people. The idea that rights are given by our creator is beyond helpful. It allows us to say there is a higher order that no man may invade upon. They should be treated as sacred. A right furthermore must be something that may not infringe on others. The Bill of Rights is very good at this. Freedom of speech is something all should possess at all times. It is held by all people all of the time. However, if someone wishes to speak I do not have to listen. I can walk away. It doesn’t infringe upon me. The founders could’ve said everyone has a right to housing. This enslaves everyone to everyone and forces all of us to provide something to each other. Something like this can never be a right. This is why it is absurd when liberals say healthcare is a right or education is a right. They aren’t. Furthermore, rights are things that the government recognizes but that the government did not create. The Bill of Rights instructs the government that it may not restrict freedom of speech. Not that it grants freedom of speech. Government is the only entity that can restrict and suppress and oppress on a massive scale. If an individual citizen or group of individuals oppresses people by violating their rights, then we expect the government to step in and forcibly stop him to preserve our rights against that individual or group.
A grant to me seems temporary. Not only temporary but transitory and ever changing. Unlike a right which is permanent and held by all a grant is temporary and held by few. Different people can get different types of grants creating more inequality. This is why the idea of liberal economic equality is laughable. Where you have freedom and rights you get a greater total of equality. Where you have controlled economies and different grants given to different people based on their circumstances you get increased inequality.
This is an excellent point and one that I had not elaborated on; in fear of using the dreaded phrase “slippery slope” when I was think on it.
So much is fleeting about the grant premise….
By operating from the premise of “grants”, we essentially give away our power, our autonomy, our birth right. We put ourselves in the territory of serfdom, we play the victim card. We are looking to be rescued, instead of being the masters or our lives.
Barkha – you are a person after my own heart! I have been saying just this – to friends and enemies alike. This whole concept that rights are “a little bit” is rather like saying someone is “a little pregnant”.
There are all manner of things the various governments have simply grabbed. Licenses to drive are clearly one. The lawyers will parse this into oblivion, but it is simply the right to move about our nation as we see fit. Speed limits are arbitrary limits, mostly associated with driving as a privilege. If you once determine that the government cannot constrain a citizen unless there is direct harm to another, then the whole issue of driving and speed limits goes away. Don’t have an accident – that is clearly damage of another or another’s property. But otherwise drive as quickly as you feel you can – and see to the above. In Venezuela there once were no speed limits, but Lord save you if you hit anyone!
Until we get back to this basic concept we are hardly a free nation.
Barkha:
A point of clarification. What do you mean by “self policing?”
In this case, self policing might be setting laws on speed limits for school zones, residential communities etc. by explicit agreement.
You mean the people of a community might wish to set the rules for the community they live in?
Rights are not absolute and they often bump against each other. The right that seems to be missing from your analysis is the right to associate. If that right is to mean anything, it must include the ability to set rules and conditions for the association.
I think this is a distinction which needs to be repeated again and again. A right belongs to you (whether or not you choose to exercise it), and the burden of proof should never be on the right-holder to defend it, but rather always on the person or entity trying to restrict it.
But I would push back on two points:
– Our rhetoric often gets wrapped up in the notion that our rights are absolute. But no right can ever be 100% absolute in a functioning society. While I think most people on the right recognize that fact in private, by not acknowledging more in public we often cut ourselves out of useful debates.
– Please don’t group driving in with constitutionally-protected rights like freedom of speech or bearing arms. While I agree on your policy proposals, we need to be careful not to automatically include everything we like as a “right”, lest we end up like the liberals who think housing, employment, healthcare, etc are also “rights”.
One reason why basic rights are so strong is precisely because there are so few of them.
Right to associate as in what? Who is restricting you from association? It is consensual association or are you “forcing” association on u-willing parties? Feel free to elaborate.
If one is allowed to join or leave the association freely, then there is no “bump” – and this is what I mean by “explicit” rules.
The federal government in the United States levies several penalties for leaving it – so no, it’s certainly NOT a free country.
Right to associate in a civil community. I know of no impediment to leaving the town, state, or country I live in.
@Mendel: The grouping was due to a very specific recent conversation, with a rather well know member of Ricochet – and perhaps in part for his benefit.
But it follows that the Federal Government, commerce clause or no commerce clause, has no jurisdiction on setting national speed limits. The shift in perception from grants to rights serves us in reducing all areas of government.
@Klaatu; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expatriation_tax
That is hardly an impediment to leaving.
Recently had a conversation with some lefty friends of my own (honestly, BH- how do you manage to engage with yours so calmly?) about the “lax” background checks on buyers who approach gun purchasing in a legal manner.
I questioned whether anyone had given some thought as to how to control the real root of gun-related crimes – the thriving black market. Are we putting enough pressure on law enforcement to control it; are we enforcing stringent enough penalties upon those who buy and sell illegally?
As I’ve argued with my “progressive” friends, where do we think 14- yr-old gangbangers obtain their guns? From a store?
Very good point Barkha. As TheChuckSteak notes above believing that our rights are inalienable is the best defense against those rights being abridged by governments. Also I think we have to remember that rights can only involve those things that do not place positive obligations on others. For example, everybody does have a right to own housing, but that doesn’t obligate the government to provide housing to everybody. Just like my right to own guns doesn’t obligate the government to buy me one.
Perhaps you might explain why not. The usual lawyer argument is that no where do you have a “right to drive”. But then, no where do you have a “right to breathe” either. Parsing things to the absurd is the classic way to destroy things. “Safety” is the other safe harbor government retreats to. Neither are appropriate.
No one ever considered that you would need to have a license to ride a horse or drive a carriage or wagon. Or even a train. Driving a vehicle is merely moving about in a particularly chosen way. If you believe that that cannot be done “safely” without the state’s intervention consider that we have some 11 million illegals running around the nation and most don’t have a license. Go to traffic court and see how many end up there. Yet we don’t seem to have any significant increase in auto accidents. Indeed, accidents are decreasing in number.
Furthermore, contemplate just WHY you would need to renew your license every 3-5 years, from the age of 16 onward. I’ve been driving for 60 years and nothing the state has done has changed anything about my driving ability. Yet I dutifully get my license renewed every couple years when the state sends me the notice.
These are but a few areas where the state invades individual rights. MOSTLY this is done for revenue purposes. Speed limits are mostly about writing tickets and generating money for the government. There is no significant evidence that they make any real difference in property damage – other than possibly your own.
I would argue that basic rights are strong because they are basic, not few.
The key distinction between rights as seen by the right and the left is in the nature of negative vs positive rights. Our Rights are things we hold independent of any government, and they are things the government may NOT interfere with. If one contrasts this with a “positive” right, we have something a government must do, and this in its nature , must represent some form of tyranny, since government must limit some persons in some fashion, to provide anything to everyone. The left always wants a right to healthcare, or a right to a job or a right to housing, to be provided these must reduce freedom.
Devereaux,
Can you imagine any situation where the right to drive should be denied? What if a person is functionally blind? A driver’s license is a reasonable restriction that helps to improve the overall operation of the transportation system and maintain public safety. However, a person’s right to drive should not be removed for non-safety reasons. For example, in MT if you steal gasoline you can have your driver’s license suspended, I am against this sort of law.
I would argue that what the left wants are not rights but grants. You have a right to healthcare, but that doesn’t obligate the government or anybody else to provide it. If I am denied service in a hospital because I am black, gay, etc. my rights would be violated. The Fair Housing Act doesn’t obligate a landlord to give me an apartment rent free, but it does prevent him from discriminating against me based on color.
Even these sorts of rights only go so far, particularly when they conflict with more fundamental rights that are delineated in the Constitution. For example, I think a landlord would be in his right to reject a tenant based on conscience grounds such as not renting out commercial space to an abortion clinic, or to a BBQ place if one is Jewish or Muslim, etc. Food is a right, wedding cakes are not rights.
Why is it the obligation of the dissenter to leave? Why is physically leaving considered the only necessary and sufficient act to decouple oneself from that imposed by the majority? Requiring moving to another place of imposed requirements is quite a large impediment to liberty.
Requiring moving to another place of imposed requirements is quite a large impediment to liberty.
Not when you include the right to associate within the definition of liberty.
I would answer, “yes.” I interpret the opening clause of the second amendment to mean that — because the essential need is for a militia — the people must have the right to be armed in such a way as to allow them to form an effective militia. In the eighteenth century that meant rifles and muskets; today it would include machine guns, grenade launchers, anti-tank weapons … essentially all infantry weapons. Any “arms” that one can “bear.” I haven’t met too many people willing to go that far. I wish the debate centered around mortars instead of automatic rifles.
It does if you conflate the use of police powers with association.
Define the right to associate.
It does if you conflate the use of police powers with association.
Define the right to associate.
In this case, the right to form a civil community.
The government is just a bunch of people. Why should we trust them to have machine guns and mortars? Why do they have special powers to keep them from being used unnecessarily?
What’s a civil community? Please define it in some detail instead of using another word which we may disagree on.
What’s a civil community? Please define it in some detail instead of using another word which we may disagree on.
I’m not sure how to make the meaning any more clear. Perhaps ‘a number of people united in a political/legal grouping.’
Well, if these words determine what our liberty is, then their specific definition is extremely important, no? How do people become united in a political/legal grouping? If we have this “right to associate,” how did we agreed to it? It seems to be an incredible presumption that living where you were born is consent to associate.
How can forcing those who do not consent into the association, unless they physically leave, be considered a kind of liberty?
How can forcing those who do not consent into the association, unless they physically leave, be considered a kind of liberty?
How can being denied the ability to set the rules for the community you live in be considered a kind of liberty?
Strikes me that usually these things end up not looking at the correct part. So, in your instance, I would say no restriction. BUT remember that I would also hold people accountable for injury/property damage. So if you actually attempted to drive blind and, as you undoubtedly would, end up crashing, you become liable. Note that nothing in the law says that someone blind can’t attempt to drive; it’s only illegal. So it becomes yet one more thing the government piles on if there is an issue.
I would not, however, have a problem with the state making a law that says you have to have insurance if you drive – I think (haven’t really hashed that through completely yet). That is for the protection of others, and doesn’t impede your driving. Your insurance company may have other restrictions in order to issue you a policy.
OTOH laws about seat belts, helmets on motorcycles or bicycles are out of the realm of what a state can do, as they directly address you personal safety. You are responsible for your safety, so whether you wear it or not is a personal decision. Stupid not to, but still …