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Among These Rights
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, That to secure these rights Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…
Among these. A government that doesn’t secure for its citizens the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is illegitimate. Ol’ Tommy J. was specific about that point when he penned the Declaration. But he implies the existence of others. Heck, he does more than imply it; let me quote from further down the Declaration, in the list of complaints:
He [George III] has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
No taxation without representation, right? More than that; no government which prevents its citizens from being represented by legislatures can be considered a just government. Maybe TJ ought to have included that right in the original list. “That among these are life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and representation in a legislature. Oh, and freedom of speech.” Right there I’ve slipped into the Spanish Inquisition sketch. The Bill of Rights as well refuses to provide a complete list of rights secured to the people. You’ve got the 9th and the 10th amendment there saying that there may be other rights not listed here.
It’s not that the Founding Fathers refused to list every right, it’s that they can’t. Is the right to privacy unalienable? Perhaps. I think if you put the question to Ben Franklin, explaining everything from pen registers to Facebook cookies, I figure he’d reason back to the ancient liberty of the Englishman, that a man’s home is his castle. From there he could conclude that a right to privacy not only exists in our strange and terrible future, but has always existed, that it’s endowed to us by our Creator, and could have made that list in the Declaration. But much like Ben Franklin, you and I can’t look one measly hour into the future to see what precedents history will generate. The list will have to remain incomplete for fear that, were we to seal it off, we would leave something essential out.
This phenomenon of lists where we can’t know all the members shows up in a lot of places. Once you know about it, you notice it everywhere. You’ll find a million lists of the top ten best rock and roll bands of all time, or something similar. All those lists are wrong. It’s easy to see why if you don’t stop at number ten. A list of the best rock and roll bands of all time can’t be entirely enumerated. Because it can’t be listed out you can’t also sort it perfectly. An imperfect sort can’t yield an unchallengeable top ten slots.
That’s just one more reason to not give in to those stupid clickbait headlines. A listing of all reasons to avoid clickbait headlines is probably also innumerable. See what I mean about them showing up everywhere? Let me give you a list of other examples, to get you started:
- How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
- Potential ninja hiding spots.
- Reasons to distrust politicians.
- Plot holes in Harry Potter (or whichever series you’d care to rant about).
- Phrases that make me distrust the person using them. (Intersectional, wonk, disparity, zucchini, science-based, etc.)
- The set of all people who could use a good sock to the jaw.
As the smarty-pants among you have already guessed, this list can’t be enumerated entirely either. (And, a quick disclaimer to y’all smarty-pants, I’m not taking a strict mathematical definition here. The set of all people who deserve to be punched exhibits a one-to-one correspondence to the set of all people in the world, myself not excepted. In theory, one could enumerate them more easily than the set of all integers. In practice, ease up and just dig it, man.)
So what good is all this nonsense? Well, there’s a practical application and a philosophical application. On the practical side, knowing that you can’t list everything reminds you to also have backup plans. If you were attempting to secure a bank from pilferage you’d list out all the ways you can think of for someone to break in, and then you’d insure the money regardless because you know you haven’t thought of everything. If you’re packing for a vacation, you make general plans for emergencies you can’t immediately define. Hopefully, you’ll never need ’em, but maybe.
Philosophically, the concept ought to endow us with some humility. I say “ought to” because nothing ever seems to have that result. It also ought to help us avoid stagnation; when you’re presented with a potential member of an incomplete list you can’t dismiss it out of hand because the set is already full. Which brings us back to the set of natural rights, and the political questions of the day.
In a grand sense, a lot of the least tractable questions in our politics boil down to membership on that list. Does the constitution actually imply a right to privacy? Is there a right to healthcare? Is the right to bear arms unalienable or an artifact of a more barbaric age?
I’m sure y’all are interested in my answers to those questions and more. So interested that I think I’ll end the post here, and let you stew on ’em yourself. Are there any rights you can think of that ought to have made the Declaration list, or ought to have been explicitly included in the Bill of Rights?
Published in Politics
Which even the English have legislated out of existence.
That’s the benefit of rights being unalienable; it doesn’t matter what mistakes small-minded bureaucrats make. You’re still justified in exercising it even if they lock you up for it.
I always thought Leela was hot . . .
My recollection is that the impossibility of naming all the unalienable rights is exactly why many Founding Fathers opposed the enumerations of the Bill of Rights (and the prior proposal to list them in the text of the Constitution itself). The fear was that an enumeration would imply that the enumerated list was complete and exhaustive.
Unfortunately, Constitutional jurisprudence has, especially in recent decades, degenerated to prove the opponents of an enumerated Bill of Rights correct.
I would argue the opposite.
Without the enumerated rights contained in the 1st Amendment it would been eroded in the progressive era of the 20th century.
One of these is not like the others, and demonstrates an important component of an “unalienable” right.
A “right” that requires participation or contribution from another person cannot be “unalienable” because such a right involves depriving that other person of that other person’s unalienable rights.
Reading “right to healthcare” as the common vernacular “right to demand that healthcare be performed on me” means that the right-holder would have the ability to deprive some other person of that other person’s life or liberty in order to either perform or to pay for the demanded healthcare.
A common language distinction is “negative” versus “positive” rights. A negative right is more or less a right to be left alone and not ordered around. I think all rights that could be considered “unalienable” are inherently negative rights, but there might be some negative rights that are not inalienable. A positive right is a right to demand something of someone else (medical care, food, shelter, clean water, transportation, etc.). I don’t think any positive right can be considered “unalienable.”
Originally I was going to add in two of FDR’s famous four freedoms, before deciding that eighty years might make that not a current political issue anymore.
Taken from here.
I thought you already punched yourself in the jaw with a bit of pavement.
If you think all the world deserves merely one smack to the kisser then I must take issue with your faith in mankind.
You have a point there, but a good hat will cover it.
Inalienable, dammit.
For no particular reason, I’ve always thought Thomas Jefferson a sort of stuffed shirt. It’s hard to think of him tolerating being called “TJ,” or “Tommy J,” of even just plain “Tommy.”
That’s exactly why Ben Franklin would’ve done it.
Have to ask @percival about that. He talks to Franklin quite often.
Actually, he went by “TI.” In ancient Latin, they did not have I and J, but used I for both, so Jefferson, being a classicist, would sign his initials as TI.
Kind of pretentious, don’t you think? Unless he’s going to go by Yefferson.
That and “Carrot Top.”
Well that’s how I’m going to refer to him from now on.
Well, you see, ever since he was a young boy he played that silver ball…
Here’s my proposed addition.
Reread the 10th Amendment. Then reread it again and again until it sinks in and you are willing to obey it.
I would edit it to say.
Re-read it until you’re able to think of something to apply it to.
I have heard politicians in recent years express a desire to fulfill FDR’s “freedoms” (I think Obama said that in one of his campaigns). So, it may still be current.