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Post by ltfred on Dec 7, 2011 4:32:32 GMT -5
"States' rights" refers to the powers that the states have the right to exert. So yes, before slavery was abolished the states unfortunately had the right to enslave people. No, they didn't. The states had the might to enforce slavery, but not the right to do so. The slaves had the right to leave, refuse to work or defend themselves if attacked by their overseer. They also had the right to vote- meaning that not even one of those state governments had even the right to govern. Also, isn't it funny that the very system (the constitution) designed, allegedly, to defend the rights of a minority against the potential oppression of the general public prevented the popular vote from ending the worst oppression the continent has ever seen. No constitution has ever stopped an oppression, or slowed a persecution without widespread public opposition, not even for one day. No rights exist without public protecction of them. After long civil rights movements had successfully cemented public backing, even legislative support, it turned out that the constitution was on their side. To the extent that 50 seperate governments can better employ those powers than a single government backed by local councils, I agree that these powers are legitimate. But state do not have the 'right' to do anything- to say that they have 'rights' is to say they have the 'right' to misuse those powers, or to act incompetantly, to poorly serve the public. If it cannot be proven that 50 state governments can better provide some service than a single federal government, the states do not even have the 'right' to exist. Ban it. Why have a substantial constitution?
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Post by ltfred on Dec 7, 2011 4:36:08 GMT -5
But it is just not the case that governments "have no rights." It sounds nice to say, but it just isn't true. For example, the states have a constitutional right to equal suffrage in the Senate. This is actually the most closely guarded constitutional right in the United States as it is the only constitutional right that can never be amended out of the Constitution. No, they dont. They may have the power to equal sufferage, but they do not have that right- regardless of what the constitution says. Yet again, powers not rights. The states exist to provide services- if they can't, they don't have a right to exist.
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Post by Haseen on Dec 7, 2011 6:23:44 GMT -5
Overall, I think it's a good thing for change to work its way through the system slowly, to prevent the tyranny of the majority, and to prevent the whims of people from changing things too fast. That said, the electoral college is nothing but an obsolete way of doing things that was once practical, but no more. It doesn't slow down or provide a constitutional check on power, just distorts the outcome of the election.
As far as states go, I don't think small states should be overrepresented, but that's something that's never going to change. Small states aren't going to vote against their own interests, and because they're overrepresented...
It sounds ridiculous to talk about the "rights" of a nonliving thing like a state, and "powers" is a more appropriate word.
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Post by cestlefun17 on Dec 7, 2011 10:08:00 GMT -5
Before the ratification of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, slaves had these rights? From where did these rights derive?
Unlike some other people on this board, I do not believe in some higher power that has an exhaustive list of "rights" (I guess called "human rights") that governments can violate even if they aren't legally recognized. Rights are granted by the people through their government. If a right does not exist, then it does not exist period. Before the 13th Amendment, there was no right to be free from slavery. I am fortunate that we added that right, but it's not like God created a right to be free from slavery when he created the world, and it just took the United States until the 1860s to realize that. The right to be free from slavery was created with the ratification of the 13th Amendment.
This just seems like a matter of semantics. How do you define "rights" and "powers"? It seems like you think the concept of "rights" is diminished if it is recognized that governments do have some right.
A "power" is a subject matter or domain over which a state has complete control (e.g. the power to regulate inter-state commerce).
A "right" is something that is owed to a person or entity as a matter of law. It doesn't make sense to say that states have the "power" to equal suffrage in the Senate. It is not something they do, it is something owed to them, or more specifically something that cannot be infringed by any other entitity, in the same way that while women exercise the power to vote, they have the right not to have that taken away from them. "Not having that taken away from them" isn't a power: it isn't something one does; it is something that one is incapable of doing.
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Post by Admiral Lithp on Dec 7, 2011 15:03:10 GMT -5
Locke did. So why are you using his arguments if you aren't going to use them correctly?
Here's the thing: All social contract arguments are strictly theoretical concepts. "Natural inalienable rights" does not mean it is literally physically impossible to violate these rights, what they do is provide us with a standard that the theoretical government should not be able to break.
And laws that have a logical basis are harder to manipulate. If we have to provide objective reason to deny black people suffrage, it is harder to do that than to just say, "Well, enough people believe it is so, so fuck 'em."
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Post by ltfred on Dec 7, 2011 18:14:16 GMT -5
Before the ratification of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, slaves had these rights? From where did these rights derive? Classical liberals would say God. I'd say the inherent requiements of human dignity- the things that humans are owed by other humans. Rights are not derived from legislation, they exist seperately of legislation, popular feeling and elite recognition. All liberals should agree with this. Making slaves work without pay is as much a violation of rights as gassing millions of Jews. Yes, the confederacy was morally equivilent to the Nazis. I think that's a reasonable case. A right is something a person is owed, a power is something a person or group may do if they want to- but that can be legitimately taken away.
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Post by cestlefun17 on Dec 8, 2011 3:40:48 GMT -5
I never said that Locke didn't believe rights come from God. I admire a lot of what he says, but I never said I believed in 100% of the same things he did.
Who determines what rights are included in the "inherent requirements of human dignity" and how is this determined?
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Post by ltfred on Dec 8, 2011 7:35:27 GMT -5
Who determines what rights are included in the "inherent requirements of human dignity" and how is this determined? Who determines the speed of light, or the force of gravity?
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Post by cestlefun17 on Dec 8, 2011 9:36:49 GMT -5
The speed of light is a pre-existing phenomenon that can be determined via objective scientific and mathematical calculations. What scientific and mathematical calculations determine whether or not a right to a trial by jury is a pre-existing phenomenon, or a right to bear arms, etc. etc.?
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Post by Dragon Zachski on Dec 8, 2011 14:55:20 GMT -5
Who determines what rights are included in the "inherent requirements of human dignity" and how is this determined? Who determines the speed of light, or the force of gravity? Where are you going with this?
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Post by ltfred on Dec 8, 2011 17:44:44 GMT -5
Who determines the speed of light, or the force of gravity? Where are you going with this? Rights exist prior to and independent of legislation or public opinion. There's no scientific way of proving something a right- but then, there's no objective way of proving much at all.
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Post by Admiral Lithp on Dec 8, 2011 19:09:33 GMT -5
Inborn rights form the very basis of the social contract theory. It hardly makes sense to argue for something you essentially believe is flawed from the ground-up. It makes even less sense to use those arguments to scoff at people who are actually applying them correctly.
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Post by cestlefun17 on Dec 9, 2011 4:16:58 GMT -5
If this is the case, then either way we both end up at the same point. Each person has an opinion as to what constitutes a "natural right" that cannot objectively be proven neither true nor false. Therefore, such rights are debated on and chosen by the people through the democratic process to be protected by the government. In the 1800s there were some people who believed there was a natural right against slavery, and others who believed just as strongly that there wasn't. Neither one can be "proven" true like the speed of light can be objectively shown to be 299,792,458 m/s. Through the democratic process, the people ultimately chose to recognize this right. Whether they did so because they personally felt it should be a right, or whether they thought it was a right existant in nature or due by some god is ultimately immaterial: either way the process unfolds in the same manner. There is a divide in social contract theory between the concept of "le droit naturel" (natural rights) and "le droit positif" (rights given by man). "Le droit positif" is an integral part of juspositivism (as opposed to jusnaturalism), which is the philosophy I have been espousing and which I do not see as incompatible with social contract theory. Locke's concept of social contract was heavily reliant on the concept of natural rights, but this is not true of all social contract thinkers. It was you who originally compared my arguments to Locke; I never brought him up. In the broadest sense, a social contract is a rupture of man from his natural state, in which man is only pre-occupied with his own self-interests. In creating society, man constructs a pact based on mutual consent that establishes the relationship between himself and others and himself and his government. Locke saw the social contract as a means of protecting rights inherent in the natural state of man, particularly the right to private property. Rousseau, on the other hand, was heavily critical of the concept of le droit naturel and saw the social contract not as a reflection of a natural state, but of a "volonté générale" (or general will). Hobbes was also very much a juspositivist. The French Wikipedia page on "contractualism" has a good table outlining the main differences in thought between Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau: fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contractualisme#Le_contrat_social_selon_LockeThe headings going left to right are "Conception of the state of nature," "The logic in which the pact is inscribed," and "Values that must preserve the pact and that can be legitimitely invoked to resist the State" For Hobbes these are: war of everyone against everyone, security (rupture with nature), security and life of everyone For Locke: Everyone enjoys natural rights (liberty and private property); liberal (gaurantee state of nature); liberty and private property For Rousseau: Everyone behaves according to his particular interest; security and democracy (break with the state of nature; the people become their own sovereign to guide their action towards the general will); the general will This paper also gives a good analysis of juspositivism and jusnaturalism according to Rousseau: www.scielo.br/pdf/trans/v31n1/v31n1a02.pdfOn page 51 this sentence sums up the question nicely: La loi n'a pas besoin de garantie supérieure parce qu'avant le peuple il n'y a rien et il n'y a rien non plus au-dessus de lui : la loi de nature, même si elle existait, ne serait pas au-dessus du peuple puisque c'est par le peuple que l'homme acquiert sa nature.(My poor translation:) "The law does not need a superior guarantee because before people there was nothing and there also is nothing above him : the law of nature, even if it existed, would not be above the people since it is by the people that man aquires his nature."
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Post by Admiral Lithp on Dec 9, 2011 6:15:43 GMT -5
Locke was the most influential to the US Constitution, you don't really have to invoke his name for anyone to compare him to you, we are talking about the US here. With that said, there's probably a good reason Locke broke away from the "war of everyone vs. everyone" reasoning. That's not a contract, that's a temporary armistace, to keep with the analogy.
Also, you are misapplying the word "objectively." Physical constants are objective, but they are not the only things that are. Objective simply means unbiased. That is how a natural right is defined. All things being equal, this item is a right unless it infringes on those of another. This is the difference between a logical proof & an empirical one, both of which are objective.
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Post by cestlefun17 on Dec 9, 2011 7:04:09 GMT -5
Yes, the United States was founded on the belief that our rights come from God. I disagree with this; I find it to be factually incorrect, just like the official policy of the United Kingdom is that their monarch is chosen "by the grace of God." That the United States was founded on this belief does not make it any more or less factually correct.
You are using two different definitions of the word "objective." By objective I meant "of, relating to, or being an object, phenomenon, or condition in the realm of sensible experience independent of individual thought and perceptible by all observers" (Merriam-Webster, emphasis added). Bias really has nothing to do with anything, and I don't see what it has to do with natural rights.
The problem is that this definition still does not arrive at a comprehensive definition of rights because it relies on a pre-supposition of what a right is (i.e. it uses the word "right" via the word "those" in its own definition). Do you have the right to walk naked down the street, or do I have the right not to encounter naked people in the street? You walking naked down the street would infringe my right not to see naked people in public. Yet my right to not see naked people in public would infringe on your right to walk naked down the street. Which of these is the "real" right then?
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