Has U.S. Democracy Been Trumped?

[Winstonm]

If we follow the logic that rights are created by governments, then who creates governments that create rights?

 

People.

[Winstonm]

I think Ken described it well -- there's a difference between moral/intrinsic rights and legal rights. There are things that are allowed by law even though most agree that you shouldn't do it (many of them are common courtesies that aren't important enough to warrant legal regulation), and there are other things that are addressed in laws even though a significant number of people disagree with them.

 

My general feeling is that appropriate laws are codifications of the rights people have, but the rights precede the laws. The rights don't come into being as a result of the laws, the laws ensure that we're able to exercise our rights, or prohibit people from taking actions that they don't have the right to.

 

And there are also many laws that aren't really related to rights at all, they're just about keeping society functioning smoothly.

 

I think you are saying that legal rights and moral rights are different things but exist. Myself, I like to challenge my own beliefs to see if they make sense. Perhaps you do not. If you do, you may want to follow up with trying to determine where "moral" rights come from if not from the minds of men.

[kenberg]

If we follow the logic that rights are created by governments, then who creates governments that create rights?

 

And we can follow this back further. I quote from

http://philosophy.la...tro/cause.shtml

 

Thomas' Argument from Efficient Cause begins with the empirical observation of causal sequence in the world. Hence, this argument is an à posteriori argument, and the conclusion is not claimed to follow with certainty.

1. The Argument from Efficient Cause:
   1. There is an efficient cause for everything; nothing can be the efficient cause of itself.
   2. It is not possible to regress to infinity in efficient causes.
   3. To take away the cause is to take away the effect.
   4. If there be no first cause then there will be no others.
   5. Therefore, a First Cause exists (and this is God).

 

This argument has a history with me. In college I was assigned to speak on which of the five arguments St. Thomas advanced for the existence of God i found to be the most convincing. I asked what I should do if I found none of them convincing. The assignment was changed. I was to speak on the argument that I found least convincing. I chose this one.

 

I thought I did a decent job but the prof faulted me for not paying sufficient attention to the modifier "efficient". I was unprepared to discuss Aristotle's four causes: material, formal, efficient and final. Oh well, another day, another F.

 

One might think, as I did, that this criticism was unfair since neither Aristotle nor his causes had previously come up in class, but on the other hand, some sixty years later, I can still bring them to mind.

[Winstonm]

Well we effectively begin with the right to do pretty much anything we choose. Like that cave Ugg lives in? Just overpower her/him and take it. Societies remove some of those rights and replace them with new ones. So Ugg's tribe might ostracise you and either drive you away or make life so intolerable that it is not worth staying. The act of governments making laws formalises this process. In effect, governments modify our rights to reflect what works for a society better. So in a democracy it is true that rights come from governments; in an anarchic state not so much.

 

My understanding of your position is that you believe there are rights that everyone has that do not come from the decisions of people. Are you saying an infant has this right?

 

From what I have seen, an infant cannot do "anything it chooses". Do you claim an infant can have this right? I agree that when we get to an age where we are self-sufficient we start to have rights. But aren't those rights determined by people, i.e., societies? I think of societies as an informal type of government. In your example, I view an anarchist society as comprised of individual monarchies, each doing as it pleases. Still, the rights granted to each monarchy comes from the decisions of the king.

 

Perhaps I should be clear on this: I view governments as people. Right come from the decisions of people (governments), not from nature or from a supernatural source.

 

Edit: On a further note, I think we all do the following at times: we exclude exceptions in order to embrace our beliefs. When we make an all-inclusive statement such as "we all are born with the rights tp life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness", we tend to ignore that some infants are born with illnesses or conditions that guarantee that those same rights will be impossible for them to enjoy. If our original position needs an asterisk to modify it, how can it be valid?

[Zelandakh]

My understanding of your position is that you believe there are rights that everyone has that do not come from the decisions of people. Are you saying an infant has this right?

What you have the right to do and what you have the ability to do are not the same thing. The infant in an anarchic state has the right to defend itself but the chances of it doing so successfully are rather slim. There are plenty of examples of rights that everyone in a given society has but that cannot be exercised in practise by specific individuals for various reasons. From your edit, I think we agree on this point (actually I think we agree on all points except for a society without a government).

[mike777]

Again to the follow that logic since governments can and do change all the time, rights can be changed all the time. The word rights tends to not mean much.

 

If you are going to create a country based on the philosophy rights tend to not mean much in that they come and go at the whim of the government. or popular opinion of the day....good luck.

 

 

The counter argument is that certain rights exist outside of government, in other words even if the Government does not grant the exercise of certain rights, they do exist.

[PassedOut]

The counter argument is that certain rights exist outside of government, in other words even if the Government does not grant the exercise of certain rights, they do exist.

I don't believe that anyone disputes that, Mike.

 

Although many of the US founding fathers didn't believe that African-Americans had the right to be free--and established a government that permitted the suppression of that freedom--we know that they were dead wrong. That's why it is important to have a "living constitution," so to speak, so that the errors of the past can be corrected as civilization advances.

[Winstonm]

Again to the follow that logic since governments can and do change all the time, rights can be changed all the time. The word rights tends to not mean much.

 

If you are going to create a country based on the philosophy rights tend to not mean much in that they come and go at the whim of the government. or popular opinion of the day....good luck.

 

 

The counter argument is that certain rights exist outside of government, in other words even if the Government does not grant the exercise of certain rights, they do exist.

 

If these rights exist outside of governments, isn't it only because some group of humans agreed that those ideas were just? Concepts are not like diamonds that can be found and handled; without the mind of a human, how can there be a "right" of anything? Or another way of asking is to say, prior to humans in the universe, did these rights exist and if so, where were they and why were they there?

[kenberg]

Questions:

 

1. Is the Constitution the fundamental law of the land? Fundamental means that laws and practices must conform to it.

 

2. If the answer to question 1 is yes (my answer would be yes) then to what extent can we reasonably interpret the Constitution to suit 21st century needs that the writers of this 18th century document could not have imagined. When can we interpret, and when must we amend?

 

Sample: Surely Madison did not imagine our modern communication system. It would not have occurred to him or anyone else to address the issues of whether the government can force a private manufacturer of a cell phone to assist the FBI in tapping into the stored communications of a terrorist. I can just imagine Madison: Dolley, what's a smartphone?

 

Surely we cannot have The Constitutional Amendment of the Month. Surely it is undesirable to have the Constitution so open to interpretation that every time there is a change of administration the old interpretation is gone, the new administration will let us know, when they get around to it, what the new interpretation is.

 

For me at least, this is where the action is. How open to interpretation are we, what do we consider as beyond interpretation so that change requires an amendment? I don't see that the issue of where rights come from really helps all that much.

[barmar]

The founders expressed much of this philosophy in the Declaration of Independence. "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that men are endowed ... with certain inalienable rights ... That to secure these rights, governments are instituted ..." So the government doesn't create the rights, it creates the laws that ensure that people can enjoy their rights.

 

But the word "right", without qualification, is ambiguous, leading to confusion. My dictionary defines it as "The moral or legal entitlement to have or obtain something or to act in a certain way". Moral rights are intrinsic, although it still takes collective understanding to realize that these rights exist. Legal rights are created by governments, and we hope that they're consistent with moral rights, but they aren't always. And different collectives come to different understandings of what those rights are -- the community of slave owners mostly believed that Africans weren't "people" in the same sense that they themselves were, and thus were not deserving of the same respect or endowed with the same rights. Some modern societies still have concensus beliefs about women and homosexuals that Western society considers obsolete.

 

Governments are made up of people, people are both fallible and flawed, so it would be unrealistic to expect their product (the laws) to be a perfect manifestation of the moral rights that people should have.

[mike777]

Questions:

 

1. Is the Constitution the fundamental law of the land? Fundamental means that laws and practices must conform to it.

 

2. If the answer to question 1 is yes (my answer would be yes) then to what extent can we reasonably interpret the Constitution to suit 21st century needs that the writers of this 18th century document could not have imagined. When can we interpret, and when must we amend?

 

Sample: Surely Madison did not imagine our modern communication system. It would not have occurred to him or anyone else to address the issues of whether the government can force a private manufacturer of a cell phone to assist the FBI in tapping into the stored communications of a terrorist. I can just imagine Madison: Dolley, what's a smartphone?

 

Surely we cannot have The Constitutional Amendment of the Month. Surely it is undesirable to have the Constitution so open to interpretation that every time there is a change of administration the old interpretation is gone, the new administration will let us know, when they get around to it, what the new interpretation is.

 

For me at least, this is where the action is. How open to interpretation are we, what do we consider as beyond interpretation so that change requires an amendment? I don't see that the issue of where rights come from really helps all that much.

 

 

I think one argument is that the Constitution is silent on many issues. The purpose, in general of the Constitution is to set up a framework of how the government will function and the limits of the central government.

 

To use your example, if Madison was silent on an issue and he was silent on many many issues then the political power belongs to the people and the states.

 

OTOH if you believe the Constitution speaks on all issues and the central govt has the power to rule on them,....ok...

 

Again to use your example, if you think the Constitution does not address this issue then I would argue that the people could elect a Congress to grant the FBI the power to do this or forbid it.

 

Now if you think the Constitution does address this issue one way or another....ok then the issue is settled.

[Zelandakh]

Or another way of asking is to say, prior to humans in the universe, did these rights exist and if so, where were they and why were they there?

The rights of a person under anarchy are not dissimilar to the rights of a chimpanzee. So it could be argued that the basic rights are natural rather than imposed by humans. But those rights are rather different from those of the American constitution! I think it is also worth mentioning that the most important role of the constitution document was to ward off any potential future challenge from the British and that that was perhaps a higher motivation for the specific wording than any beliefs that the drafters possessed.

[mike777]

If these rights exist outside of governments, isn't it only because some group of humans agreed that those ideas were just? Concepts are not like diamonds that can be found and handled; without the mind of a human, how can there be a "right" of anything? Or another way of asking is to say, prior to humans in the universe, did these rights exist and if so, where were they and why were they there?

 

Winston I cannot speak for other countries but clearly here in America our founding documents say that some rights come from a higher power. Now if you believe this was just self delusion fair enough.

[mike777]

I don't believe that anyone disputes that, Mike.

 

Although many of the US founding fathers didn't believe that African-Americans had the right to be free--and established a government that permitted the suppression of that freedom--we know that they were dead wrong. That's why it is important to have a "living constitution," so to speak, so that the errors of the past can be corrected as civilization advances.

 

Winston says he disagrees. As for slavery, it was not solved by interpretation by 9 people from Harvard and Yale. It was solved my a bloody, horrible war were many died and the ability of our constitution to be amended, thus the brilliance of our founding fathers. They were not Gods but they were great men with flaws as we all have them.

[blackshoe]

Rights are established by laws. Laws are established by government. It really is that simple.

And governments are established by whoever was the latest to seize power. It really is that simple.

[blackshoe]

If y'all want to argue about rights, seems to me you ought to first define what a right is. Of course, that debate has been going on for centuries, and still has not be resolved to everyone's (anyone's?) satisfaction, so good luck.

[PassedOut]

I think one argument is that the Constitution is silent on many issues. The purpose, in general of the Constitution is to set up a framework of how the government will function and the limits of the central government.

 

To use your example, if Madison was silent on an issue and he was silent on many many issues then the political power belongs to the people and the states.

 

OTOH if you believe the Constitution speaks on all issues and the central govt has the power to rule on them,....ok...

As time has passed, the states have become more and more interconnected, and few matters are not commercialized. When you take the Commerce Clause together with the Necessary and Proper Clause, both in Article 1, you can see that the Constitution does give federal government the power to resolve many, many issues that arise, whether or not they were specifically envisioned by the founding fathers.

[mike777]

If y'all want to argue about rights, seems to me you ought to first define what a right is. Of course, that debate has been going on for centuries, and still has not be resolved to everyone's (anyone's?) satisfaction, so good luck.

 

 

This is very similar to some threads we had years ago regarding Knowledge and the claim that knowledge is socially constructed. The Philosophical question is "is there a way the world is that is independent of human opinion, and that we are capable of arriving at it, beliefs that are objectively reasonable, binding on anyone capable of appreciating the relevant evidence regardless of their social or cultural perspective."

 

Paul Boghossian and others have written extensively on this subject and I have quoted from them liberally in these forums.

[PassedOut]

Winston I cannot speak for other countries but clearly here in America our founding documents say that some rights come from a higher power. Now if you believe this was just self delusion fair enough.

As you've discussed earlier, the founders believed some things that were dead wrong. The good thing was that they wrote a Constitution adaptable over the course of history, but not lurching back and forth with the whims of the moment. When a politician mentions "the Creator" or anything about a "higher power," you can be sure that it really means that the politician is drumming up support for a particular position. That includes the founding fathers.

[kenberg]

I largely agree with the above. Really it is often simply an emphatic way of speaking, even those of us who have very little interest in religion sometimes say things that are not to be taken as literal. "I hope to kiss a duck". No I don't. A column the other day opined that God created baseball as a relief from politics. He doesn't mean it. And I am not at all sure that Jefferson really meant "endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights" as literal truth. The Declaration of Independence was not intended as a lesson in Theology.

[mike777]

too suggest that Judeo/Christian Philosophy does not infuse the founding documents is to deny history. In fact theology runs through the founding documents/foundation that formed the USA.

 

Now if you want to claim it was delusion/ a lie that is a different subject.

 

In any event we are clearly more secular in 2016 and that is one reason we are at war with radical Islam.

[kenberg]

Sure Judeo-Christian Philosphy was involved. I think Judeo-Christian philosphy has a lot to do with how I see the world, and I gave up any belief in any God long ago. Religious beliefs are complicated. Perhaps Jefferson meant his words to be understood as literally true, perhaps not. The Constitution, our actual governing document, has much less to say about God endowing us with anything. This does not mean that the FFs were non-religious but it does seem to suggest that they thought governing a civil society was primarily a secular undertaking. Their religious views could guide them in what was valuable, but then there was work to be done.

 

I have known many very religious people who see religion as a guide to how to live. Exact theological truth often is not a priority for them.

 

Actually, I think of this as one of the major problems of our times. Can we keep the general moral and spiritual outlook without the support of theological structures that do not really (my opinion of course) hold up well to close examination. I think the jury is still out on this.

[Winstonm]

Winston I cannot speak for other countries but clearly here in America our founding documents say that some rights come from a higher power. Now if you believe this was just self delusion fair enough.

 

Mike, I think it is quite evident from these words: " "We hold these truths to be self-evident .." that it is an expression of at best an opinion, and more likely simply a statement in keeping with of the language of the times.

[Winstonm]

too suggest that Judeo/Christian Philosophy does not infuse the founding documents is to deny history. In fact theology runs through the founding documents/foundation that formed the USA.

 

Now if you want to claim it was delusion/ a lie that is a different subject.

 

In any event we are clearly more secular in 2016 and that is one reason we are at war with radical Islam.

 

The solution is to rid ourselves of inane beliefs on all sides instead of continually trying to prove one inane belief system superior to another.

[barmar]

As you've discussed earlier, the founders believed some things that were dead wrong. The good thing was that they wrote a Constitution adaptable over the course of history, but not lurching back and forth with the whims of the moment. When a politician mentions "the Creator" or anything about a "higher power," you can be sure that it really means that the politician is drumming up support for a particular position. That includes the founding fathers.

FYI: Jefferson's Religious Beliefs. Summary: He was a deist, but didn't believe that the Christian Trinity was the Creator. He didn't think Jesus was divine, but his teachings were "outlines of a system of the most sublime morality which has ever fallen from the lips of man.". And he played a leading role in the separation of Church and State.

 

So I think when he makes religious references in the DoI, he's writing to the audience. And even people who are not very religious use religious metaphors, like when Einstein said "God does not play dice with the universe."