Given that at the time John Quincy Adams argued the Amistad case before the Supreme Court the Declaration of Independence hung on the chamber wall, and was referenced without objection as being a governing document, this is rubbish. The concepot of rights in the Constitution and that in the Declaration are the same, and everyone at the time knew it.
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And you're arguing like a Fox News personality that knows the words a person says but pretends they either didn't same them or they meant something else. The Declaration of Independence speaks to and names certain unalienable rights. The Constitution makes no specific mention at all of unalienable rights and instead is a catalog of rights the US Government agrees not to take away or infringe (indicating by its mere existence that they are in fact not unalienable.)
I don't give a shit about North Korea -- that's just changing the subject. You're claiming that the US Constitution contains no concept of inalienable rights, and that's false -- because inalienable rights, as set forth in the Declaration of Independence, was exactly what they were talking about.
Again,
[Text: Removed]. The reason Norton Korea was brought up, and the reason you should give a shit about it, is because you are arguing the universality of the rights in the Constitution (whether they actually are unalienable or not) and the fact that all humans possess them regardless of where they live. That is obviously just not true, taking North Korea as an example. You don't have the protection over there to say whatever you want. You just don't. Thus, your ideas of these rights being universal AND these rights being unalienable are just false. It's been empirically proven throughout history and in numerous locations.
Plainly you don't know what they were talking about, or even what you're talking about. RIghts can't be taken away any more than thoughts can. Rights are nothing but the control the individual has over his own person -- which is absolute. The only way a right could be taken away is if by the thought of person A, the thoughts of person B could be determined -- and by nothing but that thought. You can sit all day and think about me scratching my nose, but my fingers aren't going to scratch my nose unless the thought is mine. You can think all year about what words you'd like to come out of my mouth, but the only words that come out of my mouth are those I choose -- not anyone else.
Ahh, now I see why you appear to be misinformed. Rights are not simply control an individual has over their own person. Those are abilities. The definition of ability is the quality of being able to do something, especially the physical, mental, financial, or legal power to accomplish something. Rights are abilities that you are recognized by some group of people to be able to perform without consequence from that group. You cannot have rights without ability (i.e. people don't possess freedom of speech without speech.) You can possess abilities without rights (i.e. I know how to say "I hate Kim Jong Un" but I'll get killed if I do.) This is where I think you get confused, which is easy because it's tough material to grasp.
Though perhaps you have grasped the difference between having a right and being permitted to exercise it without penalty (please note that the only way to keep someone from exercising a right is to apply sufficient coercion to take away his ability to command his own body). Sadly for you, your view of this matter is what the oppressors you name love: that the people are their property.
There is no difference because a right IS the ability to exercise an ability without penalty. And no, what you stated is not the only way to take away a right. I can use enough coercion to make him decide it's not worth it for him to do so. That doesn't run afoul of your idea of self-ownership, because this person made their own decision, based on what they wanted, to not utilize that ability. No one took control of their body and made them think or perform a certain way.
There is no action the government can take to keep me from exercising any of my rights except to apply sufficient coercion as to make it physically impossible. They cannot keep me from exercising my right to free speech save by eliminating my ability to speak, or my right of freedom of the press but by talking away any and all materials I might use to publish something or by so altering my body that I cannot publish, or my right to peaceably assemble save by physically preventing me from doing so. The proof here is that in countries where the government forbids the exercise of free speech, people still engage in it; in countries where the government forbids the keeping and bearing of arms, people still keep and bear them (on the order of tens of millions in Europe, BTW). If your theory were correct, there couldn't have been an American Revolution, or a victory of Robert the Bruce over the Englishmen sent to receive his submission, or a fall of the Berlin Wall, or an Arabs Spring -- because none of the people involved could have done anything at all, since they (according to you) lacked the right.
You just said there is an action the government can take to keep you from exercising your rights, which isn't totally true. You can exercise your abilities all you want, but to do so in a free manner without suffering consequence depends on whether or not the government has granted you (or sworn to protect) that particular ability. And the only proof here is that a person can indeed exercise their abilities despite what a government may tell them, but that government may then take away their abilities based on the fact they have no rights to exercise that ability freely. And under my theory, there most certainly could have been those events you mentioned. The American Revolution is a perfect example of my theory. The people in the colonies didn't have certain rights to do what they pleased (for instance, right to free speech.) They had the ability to use their speech how they saw fit and they did. As a result, the king sent British troops over to punish those doing it (it's a simplified explanation so you don't have to nit pick about the causes of the American Revolution.) The people in the colonies used their ability to wield weapons and fought against the British. They proved to be the mightier of the two sides and so they won the ability to set up their own government and declare their own rights. See how that works and totally supports everything I have said?
There can't be a society without self-ownership, for two reasons: first, it is impossible to neutralize a man's self-ownership without killing him, and dead people can't constitute a society, and second, without self-ownership no one can agree to cooperate, do all you would have is anarchy (or total brainwashing by wiping of personality and replacing it with an artificial one).
See this is where it gets funny because you argue the idea of self-ownership when, in actuality, the idea of self-ownership is a pretty ludicrous idea. Ownership implies the ability to not have ownership (you can't be an owner unless there is the possibility of not being an owner.) That either implies that a) the body could somehow be physically separated from the body, allowing someone else to own it or b) there is a possibility that one could possibly take over another's thoughts, processes, etc. using something like modern technology to make it impossible for one to control their thoughts or processes any more. The first is impossible and thus shows that the idea of self-ownership is an empty theory existing solely for comfort of those who like to believe they control their world. The second would prove that the idea of self-ownership actually doesn't exist, since anyone could take over anyone's functions, and would also show that (assuming you start counting abilities as rights) rights actually aren't unalienable after all. Of course, all of this ignores the idea that the idea of self-ownership doesn't truly exists in a society anyway since the very definition of a society is that it's a group of people working together for a common goal instead of a group of people all practicing self-ownership in the same space. The goals of the group are always not going to be 100% controllable by each of the individuals, so you can't possibly have self-ownership since you're inclusion in said society is dependent on your subservience to the needs of the group as a whole. Thus, I go back to my original statement of self-ownership not being a realistic scenario in any society or population of more than one.
You really can't conceive of any interaction between humans that doesn't rest on people as property, can you? Requiring people to be property is the only way you can make the above statement of yours contain any sense at all, because it is precisely my self ownership that makes it possible for anyone to talk to anyone at all. Self-ownership is the foundation of what you describe -- of people talking to each other. Your reliance on slavery as the root of all human interaction is the only way to make sense of your second sentence -- you redefine the term self-ownership to mean omnipotence, i.e. ownership of everyone else. Self-ownership doesn't make me a tyrant with mental powers that extend over everyone, it makes me in charge of myself -- which is an observable truth. Self ownership means I can choose to either respond or not respond to you walking up and talking to me, options which turn out to correspond absolutely to reality.
No. It is your physical abilities that allow you to talk to other people. Just because you make a decision doesn't mean it's necessarily the decision you want to had made. There are numerous external factors that will influence (and sometimes force) the decisions you make and so it's not 100% up to you. And how you got my reliance on slavery as the root of all human interaction is beyond me. Those are words you put in my mouth. See there? See how you took what I said and restated it as something you wanted to hear? I chose what words I wanted to say to get my point across and you basically forced me to come back and address it again because your decision to exercise your ability to type messed my decision all up. Sure I could decide not to say anything, but then my goal, on which I based my decisions up to this point, of getting my point across in the way I wanted it wouldn't have been achieved.
And no self-ownership doesn't make you a tyrant with mental powers over everyone. It makes you someone who lives under a delusion that you control absolutely everything you do and no one can take that from you. This is true to the extent that you make your own decisions on how to actually utilize your abilities, but you make those decisions based on the numerous external factors from people outside of your inner-self and not necessarily in line with what you want. It also neglects the fact that if I walk up to you and kill you and you didn't decide for yourself that you should be killed or they you were ready to die just then, then I've proven your idea of self-ownership yielding rights wrong. I took away your "right" to life and you have absolutely no say in it.
Yes, you have the power to trample over my inalienable rights -- but that doesn't mean I don't have them, any more than my ability to trample on your toes means you have none. You can cut out my tongue -- but even that won't end my right to free speech; to do that you'd have to cut off my fingers and nose and elbows and anything else capable of making words recognizable to others by sign or use of some external instrument.
Possessing a right means the you can perform any of those abilities without having to worry (generally speaking) of someone actually coming to take that right away from you. You just stated yourself that if I removed your abilities to communicate words to people, then I have removed your "right" to free speech. That right there shows that your "rights" are indeed not unalienable. You just said it yourself.
All I can say here is that you [Text: Removed] think that changing the words on paper or saying that they mean something different changes reality. All you;ve really done here is say, "If he owns the car, he owns it, but if I change the rules so he doesn't own it, he doesn't own it." Come to think of it, that sounds a lot like Bill O'Reilly......
It's amazing how someone can't seem to grasp a simple concept. The idea of ownership is only valid if those in a society recognize it. You might think you own a car, but that means nothing if no one else around you thinks you own a car. If you tell me you own a car and I say "no you don't" and take it, then what? You may come over and take it back by force, but only the strongest of us will win that battle. So here is where you enter in the government, which has defined ownership, and through its collective might, it gets you back your car and punishes me for taking it because they didn't give me the right to take it, even though in my mind I was right in doing so and I had the physical ability to do it. So we once again find that might actually does make rights.
Amusing. That you even believe that you could ever hold a gun to someone's head shows you acknowledge that they world runs on self-ownership -- because only a man who owns himself could ever hold a gun, let alone put it to someone else's head.
This shows nothing else except that I have the physical ability to hold a gun, the physical ability to aim it at someone's head, and the psychological ability to make myself do it. This happens because only a man who can physically will his body to do certain tasks can hold a gun and put it to a man's head. However, I don't have the right to pull the trigger on that gun and end a man's life. Sure I have the ability to do it, but if I did, I would suffer any number of consequences, including my loss of liberty and possibly my loss of life - two rights that have been declared unalienable by the Declaration of Independence. Funny, it seems like they may actually be alienable.
I don't get motivated much by losing something I want -- that's just a part of life, for most people. I do get motivated to oppose tyranny, because I believe that lies should not be perpetrated, and tyranny always rests on a lie -- the lie that people are inherently nothing but property, except for the few who manage to gather power. Self-ownership is the truth, and tyranny has to deny that truth to function.
So you argue the idea of self-ownership, but then automatically decry the idea and practice of tyranny. What if the population, through their decisions as individual self-owners, decide that tyranny is best for them? Who are you to come in to squash it? Why are your self-owned ideals more important that someone else's self-owned ideals? What about the person or people being tyrannical? Why are their self-owned desires for power over others not valid? Maybe it's because the idea of self-ownership is really just an idea of self-timeshare and it turns out that you actually are forced, through external forces, to either believe in pure self-ownership, which isn't attainable in a society where inter-dependencies on others are required, or to sacrifice what you want and desire for what needs to be decided for the society. No matter how you look at it, self-ownership just isn't a reasonable or well supported idea.
In other words, you realize that people have self-ownership and that it is the foundation of our lives, but you refuse to admit it because you prefer to uphold might as the basis for human relationships. But what that makes you, sir, is [Text: Removed], or rather a thinking man attempting to use that capacity to descend back to the level of an unthinking, savage animal: thinking beings recognize that because they think, and their thoughts drive their actions, they are in charge of themselves, and so is every other individual in charge of himself.
Might is the basis for human relationships. Even in your idealized Utopia of completely independent self-owned individuals, those with the strongest physical abilities are those who get what they want. In a system where you had no government and everyone was walking around freely exercising their "unalienable" rights, the ability of those "rights" to be exercised are completely determined by the strongest external force among them. So if Bob and Sam are both self-owning individuals and they come upon a cache of food that they both decide they are going to exercise their "right" to eat all of, only the strongest is going to get the food. Thus, one of them is going to achieve their ability (or "right") to eat, while the other does not. It doesn't make one a savage animal at all. It's the direct application of your idea of self-ownership and the control of ones destiny lying only within themselves.
The people of Syria aren't getting killed because they weren't given the rights of free speech or of assembly, but because they have chosen to exercise those rights and are being penalized for it.
They chose to exercise their ability to speak and, since they don't have the right in that country to do so (i.e. they aren't afforded the protections by the mighty to do so), they are being punished.
If a right is something you can do without fear or reprisal, then rights are only those things that not only does the government affirm but every last person around you agrees is a good thing. Your view leaves rights in a heap anyplace where someone can be harassed or persecuted in either an official or unofficial manner by anyone at all. Just as an example, where I am there would not be a right to live in peace unless you're a well-to-do white person whose family has resided in the county for a couple of generations -- the kind of world [Text: Removed] where conformity is the name of the game and differences are moral failings.
You're almost getting it now. However, the rights only have to be agreed upon by the mighty at the time. So those in control grant and deny rights as they see fit. Eventually, individuals may get tired of not being able to freely exercise their abilities to do what they want, and so they'll band together to overpower the mighty and establish what they want, but then we've yet again gone back to the idea of whoever is the strongest dictates what rights people have. Where you live is a great example of that. Your local community may support the idea of people not living in peace unless they meet a set of requirements. However, since the federal government possesses more strength than the collection of individuals where you live, their desires and actions are squashed by those of the larger, more powerful group of individuals.
The only need of individual citizens government has any business being interested in is their individual rights. Governments exist to uphold those rights, not to meet whatever "needs" people might decide they have.
Oaths to violate one's conscience are never binding -- to hold otherwise is to decree again that people are property.
And government cannot protect you from anything: only people exercising their self-ownership can do that. Protection never comes from government, but only from individuals who decide to provide it -- that's reality. To hold anything else is to deny individual responsibility, which would mean that no action undertaken because someone else ordered it is ever wrong.
In your opinion of how government should work, that may be correct. However, despite you being an owner of yourself, that's not what the majority of the society thinks, and so the way you want things to be isn't the reality that is currently there. It's proof positive your idea of self-ownership is bunk.
And if oath's to violate one's conscience aren't binding, then indeed self-ownership doesn't exist. You seem to be of the impression that unless people's ideas and practices of what they want match up with your's, then they're somehow enslaved to some system or person.
And yes, government can protect you from something. Like any group on this planet, governments are made up of people, not following their own interests and doing their own decided thing, but instead acting in the interest of the population over which they govern. The majority of that population always gets their way. Even in situations like the Supreme Court overturning democratically installed laws where it appears that they are protecting the minority, the majority is the winner because the majority is what lends legitimacy to the Supreme Court. If people truly did what they wanted under the guise of self-ownership, then laws, governments, courts, and rights wouldn't exist because everyone would do as they chose. This is definitely not the case.
No, "free exercise of rights" indicates nothing more nor less than that government can establish penalties for a person's decision to act on his rights, or to refrain from action, or to provide benefits for acting.
The position you;re describing is the one you're defending: might makes right. It relies on the concept that people are at root property, because that's the only way you could justify murder or rape. Self-ownership means just that, not ownership of others.
No. Rights allow free exercise of ability. The whole idea of rights is the the government provides protections for me to safely practice what ability the right protects without needing to worry about others stopping said abilities. It allows me to make decisions without having to worry about balancing the rights granted to me with each other. So I have an unalienable right to live as mentioned in the Declaration of Independence. I have a right to free speech as given in the Constitution. Thus, in the United States, I can make a choice to exercise my ability to form whatever words I want into sentences without having to weigh the consequence of death with that decision. In other countries, I wouldn't be able to do that. So whenever I wanted to make a decision to use my ability to form sentences with words, I need to weigh the fact that I can lose my life by doing so. Those external forces in a situation like inhibit me from choosing what I would truly want to do because I value my life slightly more than I value saying what I want. The government giving me rights to do those things allow me to make a decision that is more in line with what I actually want to do.
And no. I am arguing that might makes rights. No one said might always results in what is considered a moral right, but it does result in someone either having or not having rights.
Self-ownership is the foundation of politics: if there's no self-ownership, then those with power are right to do as they please, whether using other humans for slaves or even for food, or slaughtering them out of hand.
That force is required to tame the animals among us into recognizing self-ownership doesn't mean there is no self-ownership, it proves there is: only by self-ownership could anyone band together to tame the animals.
Your view of things is that this is a jungle, that there is o such thing as human dignity or worth, and that there is no difference between another person and a cockroach or a croissant, because you maintain that morality comes from having more force.
Self ownership is not the foundation of politics. If anything, it is the foundation of anarchy. You're confusing the brain physiologically controlling the actions of the body with the idea that everyone has the ability to do whatever they want, whenever they want, and the only consequences they'll face are those that they themselves choose. Self-ownership in itself is a flawed idea. It relates to the question "can God make a stone big enough that he can't lift?" If you truly are self-owning, then that means you can make the decision to turn ownership of yourself over to someone else if you so choose. Yet, you can't do that under self-ownership by definition (and you also can't physically turn control of your brain and body over to someone.) Thus, you truly aren't self owning if by no other reason because you can't truly make a decision that contradicts the ideas of self-ownership.
Your problem is that you seem to take the idea of the brain controlling the body and just attach a Libertarian term to it. What you talk about is nothing more than a brain telling the body to do something. They are abilities. Rights say what you can and can't do with those abilities. Rights are an application of the interaction of abilities in a population. If you live by yourself with no one else around, you wouldn't have rights. You would merely have abilities. And those abilities can be controlled by others. For example, let's look at North Korea again. When Kim Jong Il died, television showed thousands upon thousands of people just being eccentrically mourning in the streets. I have no doubt most of these people felt no sorrow at all inside for this person. I would be willing to bet that many of them didn't want to be out wailing in the streets. I bet many more wanted to dance with joy he was dead. But none of them did that. Their self-owned "rights" were bottled up inside and instead they presented exactly what the government wanted them to present. Why? Because they know they don't have the right to do as they please. They don't have the right to freely express themselves. They knew that if they did freely express themselves, that would be the end of them. So because the mighty commanded it, they behaved and acted exactly as they were told. Sure you could argue that because they were self-owned, that they were freely thiking everything they wanted to, but they were not able to express themselves at all.
So I will cede the point to you that people are free to think whatever they want without consequence (until technology one day gives us the ability to read and control one's thoughts), but anything beyond that are abilities that are expressly controlled by the rights that people are given or not. It's nothing more than that.
I wish I had the capacity to say all that myself.
