Bush will veto hate crimes bill

[Kulindahr]

The right to security of person is linked to the right to liberty and involves the integrity of an individual and their body, that is the right against bodily harm, this includes control over your body, the right against government inflicted harm and arbitrary arrest and detention (without due process of law), and such things as not being subjected to medical experimentation without consent. If you have no right of security of person (against bodily harm/integrity of person), as I said, there is no foundation for rights of self-defense be those rights of self-defense against assault by an individual or a legal defense for, for example, the right of habeas corpus. Yet, you continue to insist that there is no right to security of person.

Control over your body is prior to all rights; it is a fact upon which rights are based, being part of the truth "You own yourself".
That truth is the foundation of the right of self-defense, of freedom of speech, etc.
I maintain that there is no right to security of person because a goal is not a right. Security of person is the aim of the right of self-defense; the aim of something is not its foundation.

At least in my perspective, the fundamental rights are the right to life, liberty, and security of person. Without those fundamental rights there is no foundation upon which to derive the other rights. All other rights stem from those fundamental three.

And what are they derived from? Whatever they derive from is fundamental, though it may not be a right.
Life: I exist, but that's an insufficient foundation. I own myself -- now there's a reasonable foundation; if I own myself, I have a reasonable expectation that others who own themselves will recognize that I wish to continue my existence, and thus my self-ownership, and since that is what I wish, and there is no foundation for anyone to act contrary to that (without first resigning their own desire that no one act contrary to that), then I can speak of having a right to life.
Liberty: it derives the same way, except that the desire is to exercise ownership of myself without interference.

It strikes me here that we've got two different sorts/categories of rights here -- I'll call the one "philosophical" and the other "practical". The right to life isn't something I can guarantee; life is something I have, and wish to continue, and therefore we can call that a "right". The same goes with liberty, though whether a person is born with it is definitely fodder for philosophers unless you fall back on the fundamental reality of self-ownership. Those are philosophical rights. Practical rights -- what the Bill of Rights is chock full of -- are those which serve to achieve the philosophical rights.
But both sets of rights rest of ownership of self, so they aren't strangers, rather are cousins at worst.
I've been thinking of practical rights, but with the concept of philosophical rights (bad label, I know, but the distinction is necessary), "security of person" might be considered a right -- it can't be guaranteed any more than life or liberty, but it is an ideal which properly belongs to every person because it is the proper (true, correct) outcome of self-ownership.
Let's call them "ideal rights": they are the ideal that self-ownership, if respected by all, demands, and in a perfect world would obtain (in the sense of "be the case").
Practical rights, then, are those which also flow out of the truth of ownership of self, but recognize that this is not a perfect world, but is one in which the ideal rights are goals, not realities which obtain (my philosophy discussions and courses are starting to show...) or are unwavering and evident -- and so those ideal rights become goals, and the practical rights are means to the goals, the place where the rubber meets the road, so to speak.

{I'm sitting here pondering whether "security of person" can in any way equate to Jefferson's "pursuit of happinefs" (as it was originally printed), to make this nice and elegant}

Another way to describe the ideal rights: they are the proper possessions of self-owned persons. They aren't guaranteed, but in a perfect world would obtain, would just be there.
So in a rather stretched sense, the practical rights are "derived" from them, though more properly the practical rights stem just as directly from self-ownership, just with a radically different axiom, i.e. that this is not a perfect world.

Note for clarity: I'm using the word integrity above in its sense of meaning being whole or entire, not in the sense of the word meaning "of sound moral character".

I used "true" earlier in the sense of being faithful to or maintaining course, e.g. "his swing was true" thinking golf), or "his vector was true" (thinking outer space), or one that would be familiar to the Founding Fathers, "his aim was true" (Kipling uses it that way, somewhere [dratted memory]).
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I also can't help but feel you are starting with the right to bear arms and then using that right around which to build all of your other rights and arguments. That is, that you are using that right to bear arms as the foundation for all the rest of your rights and argumentations. You're definitely starting from an attitude that the right to bear arms is the only means of self-defense and the only means of ensuring rights. Much of your argumentation also seems to infer that those who have arms to violate your person (when the right to bear arms is a civil right or is restricted ) have tacit approval to the right to have such arms.

You seem to be arguing some points in isolation as if they exist in a vaccuum and are not informed by any other rights or normative laws to regulate and guide behavior.

This, however, is simply a "gut" feeling.

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At some points I also think you are engaging in solipsism which is difficult to argue against.

I'm not going to pursue the discussion further, but I will say that you've given me things to consider.[/QUOTE]

I rest everything on the firm foundation of that second truth known to all, whether consciously or not, of self-ownership. So things look like isolation, or solipsism, because when you're trying to derive things from points which are actually tertiary or quaternary, the framework from self-evidence doesn't appear to hang together.
Though... with the notion/category of ideal or philosophical rights, that tertiary or quaternary drops to secondary.

Oh -- if there are normative laws to restrict freedom of the press, as in Russia (yeah, let them deny it; Putin's thugs are murdering reporters who stray from the rules), don't have "tacit approval" to run an underground newspaper, they have the right, because it is inherent. Likewise, if there are normative laws to restrict the right of self-defense, e.g. to forbid firearms, then those who have firearms anyway don't have "tacit approval", they have the right, because it also is inherent. For as I pointed out, it has been held to since before there was a U.S. Supreme Court to remain true to it that to deny means to a right is to deny the right -- as my examples made abundantly clear.

 

[Kulindahr]

I had to start over on this, and rush it... I went to look back at something and forgot that using the back arrow tends to wipe everything already typed, killing careful wording, points from research, and all. I can't afford another 3/4 hour to build it all again, so I'm doing my best from memory.

Clarification:
... ones duties and obligations (responsibilities) [to/for ones self].

..., that psychological concept or realization is from where I derive the political concept of the right [for liberty and] security of person.

Addendum to the note above:
The use of the word "psychological" is being used here in its sense of "relating to, or arising from the mind or emotions."

Self-ownership is psychological, but only because it is first of all an existential truth, i.e. a truth of existence. The psychological aspect comes into play when a person realizes that truth, and then acts -- or does not act -- on it (I know an excellent psychologist and a superb psychiatrist who both acknowledge that realization/actualization of self-ownership is the foundation of all mental/emotional health, because it is the quite basic reality that has to be faced in order to achieve mental balance).
It is also political, but only because it is first of all an existential truth; it enters into the political realm because that is where humans interact with each other (all human interaction is political, though we ordinarily think of politics as the public/professional manifestation of that activity -- just as all human activity is economical/economics, though we generally associate the term with business and money). It is political very basically because it must be recognized in any political dealings or structure, because it is a fact, the root fact, and the way things human are. Systems which infringe or put penalties on self-ownership do so at risk, and can only get away with it because most people aren't really aware of their self-ownership, or find it preferable to let themselves be stripped of it for comfort reasons, or aren't sufficiently angered by the limitations to do anything about it (thus Jefferson's "when in the course of human events" statement).

Addendum to the entire above post:
I am positive you will still disagree, but in the least it leads further insight into my own thinking as your comments have shed insight into yourself.

Just a general question:
Didn't you earlier in this discussion use a rephrasing of Descarte's "I think, therefore I am?" I was too lazy to read back through the posts.

I quoted it in Latin, and translated it into English with the fleshed-out meaning (which tends to deflate such fun take-offs as "I drink, therefore I spam"). It was in this post: http://www.justusboys.com/forum/showpost.php?p=2660414&postcount=136
most of the way down the post, and said:

Cogito, ergo sum: I (observe that I) think; therefore (I conclude that) I am. My awareness of my own thinking is the evidence to myself that I am in fact a self, who is thinking and is aware of it.
The next step from there is the awareness that my thoughts do what I want, and my body does what I want. I am in charge of myself, and not someone else -- thus I own myself, and not someone else.
Those two truths are, as Thomas Jefferson might observe, "self-evident". Stated or not, consciously recognized or not, they are the foundation of the way everyone lives. They come before everything else not from some philosophical meandering, but because that's the way it is, the way we exist, and because they are thus the way we operate.


That doesn't do the original justice, but chores and such call!

 

[Kulindahr]

I thought you'd made reference to Descarte whom, I believe, is one of the philosophers engaged with epistemological solipsism.

Yep.
And as far as the Cogito goes, he's absolutely correct: the starting point of thinking has to be the self, and the starting point of relationship to the rest of existence, too.
Though if he'd been honest, it would have been "Dubito, ergo sum".

Yes. I'm aware of that, or rather what you allude to if we were discoursing on the broader subject of sociology, formation of cultures, and the establishment of social institutions. Although I'd say that all human interaction has a sociological component in that sense rather than political. In terms of this discussion the concept remains psychological rather than a political concept. Especially if you would stop ignoring my specific notes qualifying the sense in which I'm using a word in a specific context in order to bracket the conversation without it becoming too broad so that you can expand your comments into much broader generalities.

I wasn't aware I was ignoring anything. I was trying to pin down specifics, whereas it seemed to me you were sliding all over the place without a unifying concept or even a source of rights.
"You own yourself" is a truth that while deduced with reference only to yourself, is the actual basis of all human action, and therefore of all political activity. Those things which arise from it -- self-defense, liberty, etc. -- are political only because the rest of humanity functions on the same basis, and since there are others, those things must be defined in relation to others -- thus becoming political. But they are truths which don't require the existence of others, and thus cannot be altered by others.