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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
Well, with respect to the likelihood of success, moving is practically no burden compared to the other options. If moving is too much of a burden, then the rest are almost certainly too much, which is why the focus is on the least burdensome option.
What accommodation? Respecting their choice to not be included in an association?
I value it with respect to how it compares to most of history, but truth seems to indicate the balance could be much more optimal. Given human nature, it’s a wonder democracy works at all. We had to build up to this point, but it seems unimaginitive to assume this is the last best system we’ll ever have, even if it is comfortable.
We do respect that choice. However, when the majority agrees that the speed limit should be 35mph on a particular stretch then a dissenter who insists on doing 60mph isn’t merely making a choice for himself but for the rest of the community too.
Of course the lines get blurry quickly, but that doesn’t invalidate the principle or tip the scales to one perspective over the other. And it highlights how the only real answers are structural rather than principled: ie identifiable charter, competing interests, federalism, subsidiarity, regular elections, checks on delegated power, revolution. Finally it highlights just how blessed we are in this country to have had founders and a charter who acknowledge this balancing act.
There’s a problem when it’s couched in these terms. The words, in fact, say that one has a right to a product. That can’t be, since that would oblige someone else to provide it.
The wording has to be something like, “Each person has the right to buy healthcare if there’s any for sale”, or some such.
No, the impact is not a necessity but in some cases it is reasonable to anticipate.
This is not true, at least if the hospital is privately owned. If I offer a product or service, no one has a right to it under any circumstances, for any reason. I have a right to refuse to sell for the most ridiculous reason — even if it’s because I’m a bigot and hate gays and blacks. If any person, for any reason, has a claim on my product, my rights are being violated.
This is why I am against the death penalty. I don’t trust the Government to kill it’s citizens.
This isn’t true, either. Someone would have to be forced to provide the food. You have a right to possess, use, and acquire food, if you can do it without violating the (properly-defined, negative) rights of another.
I agree.
Agreed; and Mike’s way more to the anarcho-capitalist side of things than I.
I share Mike’s frustration with what seems to be the low threshold some here favor for law rather rather than alternative methods. Is law — even local law, which I agree generally has better checks on it than state or Federal — really the best way for a community to enforce standards and civility? Most of the time, I’d say not.
For the record, I’m not entirely sure I understand Barkha’s suggestion regarding speed-limits.
Thomas Sowell simply defined our rights as “negative” things. We do not have the right to take an individual’s life or property or infringe upon his/her freedom of religion. The instant one citizen requires another to give or support something for their particular benefit, it ceases to become a right and becomes coercion.
And now we’re back to our usual squabbles over what constitutes harm and the appropriateness of government intervention.
It’s reasonable to enforce speed limits, therefore it’s legitimate to force everyone into an association (and everything that entails) because otherwise it’s illegitimate to force them to abide by the speed limit? That seems like an excessive amount of force to avoid a small amount of force.
No one is forced into the association. There is nothing to prevent you from leaving the association and going elsewhere.
Again, we’re talking about two different situations. You’re speaking from a place where the associations already exist. I am questioning the point where associations are formed.
For the sake of clarity, you’re saying that the response to “If you don’t like the rule, just move” is “Why is this rule being imposed by force of law?”?
I’m speaking of the world we live in where many of the associations in question have existed for many years.
We do not get to reinvent the world everyday.
It’s more like was the whole foundation which legitimizes government actually done the way people claim it was? I don’t think it holds up, which leaves them with a consequentialist argument. Which would be fine, but one would have to drop the erroneous philosophical argument in that case.
So, since we can’t go back and recreate it, the right to associate is largely irrelevant with respect to government. We have what we have no matter how it came about, and it works pretty good.
It is hardly irrelevant in a republic. We have the power to change it on a regular basis. That it works pretty good is simply reason not to change it too much.
Does it matter if the original invocation of the right to associate was done properly, or is it ok if it’s simply an important and useful myth? I mean, isn’t it irrelevant in a practical sense if the perpetual association wasn’t actually formed by a legitimate majority of individuals?
I’m not sure the association is necessarily perpetual but the circumstances of its founding lessen in importance over time as people accept its legitimacy.
There is no book of answers we can refer to in order to have these disagreements settled in a definitively objective way. These disagreements are the proper matter of the political process. What’s the alternative, assuming that “just agree with me already” is off the table?
So, acceptance of legitimacy is what’s really important, not necessarily actual philosophical first-principles legitimacy, because it leads to good consequences of a stable changeable system that reaches better outcomes than a variety of systems that came before it.
Legitimacy is defined by acceptance.
Can an illegitimate system evolve into a legitimate one? Of course, once it is consented to.
The problem with jumping into a 100+ comment post on your lunch hour is that you don’t have enough time read all the comments AND post something. So I’m not going to read all to comments, just to first two pages.
I have two things to say in the context of gun control.
First, are we not, by relying on the 2nd Amendment, essentially saying that we can have a gun because the government says we can? Without the 2nd Amendment, do we have a natural right to keep and bear arms? I think yes, but if the 2nd Amendment wasn’t there I wonder if our gun laws today wouldn’t be a lot more restrictive. If you aren’t sure what I’m saying here, you are in good company. Neither do I. This classifies as an undeveloped thought.
Second, if you were to agree that we can be prevented from keeping and bearing a “machine gun”, by which I think someone means any fully automatic weapon, aren’t we essentially agreeing in principle to any and all restrictions to the keeping and bearing of arms? There are two arguments against a person owning a “machine gun”. The first is “Nobody needs that for hunting or personal defense or even sport.” The second is “They are too dangerous.” The second reason is the only one with any merit, I think. But neither is a compelling argument against me keeping and bearing a “machine gun” precisely because both arguments can be used to prevent me from keeping and bearing virtually any other firearm. I am no more dangerous to society at large with a machine gun than I am with a genuine Red Ryder BB gun with a compass in the stock and this thing which tells time. The boy who shot 5 young people including himself (only one of who is still with us) would most certainly have been more dangerous had he brought an MP5 to school that terrible day instead of the handgun he did have. But if I’m willing to agree to ensuring that no one save the military and police have an MP5 on the grounds that a: no one needs one and b: we are all safer then don’t I also have to agree to the same regarding hand guns? Or magazine sizes? Or mandatory gun safes? Or background checks? Or a complete ban on all firearms period?
So, a government that violates any amount of rights is legitimate as long as it is accepted. And living there means you’ve accepted. So, living where you were born is acceptance as legitimate of any and all rights violations by your government power, because of association.
We may be speaking past each other here. Legitimacy is defined in this context as popularly accepted. Locke said legitimate governmental power is that which is derived from consent of the governed. That which is accepted is by definition legitimate.
Ahh. I’ve been using legitimacy to mean something like “properly constructed and morally sound.” As in, I question whether the association was properly constructed with the consent of a majority (though I question a simple majority is sufficient), and that a group of people getting together and claiming “right of association” is sufficient to incorporate dissenters against their will.
This is too fuzzily worded. It should be couched in terms of rights violations. Lots of actions “impact” (I would say “affect”, since “impact” is a noun) others without violating their rights. Regardless of laws, I have a right to not wear a seat belt because not wearing one does not violate anyone else’s rights.
Regarding defamation, the fact that speech can injure is what limits freedom of speech. Does A have the right to say that B is a child molester? A has freedom of speech, but he doesn’t have the right to make false accusations, or to divulge state secrets to the enemy, or to incite a riot. Why not? Because exercising that supposed right in these circumstances would cause more harm than the speech itself is worth.
As to your 80% notion, you make an interesting philosophical point. But is it a practical truth? Where do rights come from? If from the constitution, then 75% of the state legislatures in conjunction with 2/3 of the two houses of Congress can revoke the right with a constitutional amendment. If from an ordinary statute, than only a bare majority of the legislature can remove it.
Where does the right to bear arms come from? It’s not a right given by God, so far as I know. That only leaves the laws of man as its source.