Thursday, March 02, 2006
You have the right to not have any rights.
It might be a day or so before I revisit the current, animated discussion regarding Christian proselytizing and electric cattle prods but, in the meantime, I want to quickly touch on the subject of "rights" which will be important for that discussion.
Most people, if you ask them, would undoubtedly tell you that people have certain "rights," be they the right of free speech, right to worship in their own way, right of assembly and so on. Some folks will even go so far as to say that some of those rights are "inherent," "fundamental" or "inalienable," by which they mean that some rights are so utterly basic that everyone is somehow absolutely entitled to them.
That is complete nonsense.
Quite simply, the only "rights" you have are the ones granted to you by those in power, and nothing more. You don't inherently have the right to, say, free speech if the government doesn't allow it. You can whine that you deserve it, or that you're entitled to it. But if no one allows you to exercise it, then you don't "have" that right. Period. End of discussion.
As an example, consider the civil rights movement in the U.S. Many civil rights leaders, quite incorrectly, claimed that minorities had numerous rights that were being denied to them and, as proof, they would point to the Constitution. But what the Constitution said was, quite simply, irrelevant.
These people certainly had the right to say that they were entitled to certain rights as outlined in the Constitution. But as long as there were people who refused to let them enter restaurants or colleges, those people did not "have" those rights, regardless of what was promised to them by a piece of paper.
As a more recent example, protestors at the 2004 Republican National Convention could argue all they wanted about their "right" to assembly and free speech, even as they were being rounded up and collected into "free speech zones" behind razor wire. In other words, they had no such "rights" whatsoever. See my point?
There is no such thing as an "inalienable" right. The only rights you have are the ones you're allowed at any one time, and they can be taken away just as quickly as they're granted. Once you digest that, we can revisit the previous topic.
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16 comments:
CC, you have this one backwards. You don't get granted rights by the government, they take them away. In a hypothetical world with no ruling authority, I definitely have the right to free speech, assembly, all that good stuff. I also have the right to a lot of bad stuff, like murderous revenge, stealing, etc.
Now put a structure on society, and tights aren't being created, they are being removed. Often this makes vast improvements. But the creation of the society and the ruling authority isn't granting rights to anyone, it's taking them away.
I'd argue that I have the rights the government has not taken away, not what you are saying, which is that I have the rights the government is giving me. Rights cannot be granted, per se, they can only be not restricted. To me, this is a very important distinction that you are missing.
aweb:
I'm willing to go with your reasoning since I think it's a matter of semantics (albeit a fairly big matter, I'll give you that).
In any event, I think we still agree on my underlying fundamental point -- "rights" are whatever you're allowed at any point in time, even if you want to define it from the other direction.
I don't think that you have a 'right' to do anything, whether good or bad. You 'can' or you are 'capable of' actions like free speech, and also of murder and theft, but that does not mean that you are 'entitled' to either. "Rights" are a construction, and shift depending on the values of a society at a given time. There are arguments that there are "natural rights" which people are entitled to, but this is primarily a judeo-christian concept, and has been used to justify such brilliant entitlements as "the right to bear arms." The societal structure creates and revokes rights, it does not, through placing a structure revoke things that exist in the abstract.
However, this argument hinges on whether you define rights as merely "something you able to do"
CC: On the notion of "inalienable rights", there is such a concept in United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
So, there is a concept in the domain of international law of such things - even if certain governments choose to ignore or abuse them.
The point being that these are individual rights, and must be exercised with a degree of respect for the individual rights of others.
To paraphrase (and I've said it before) - Your right to swing your fist ends precisely at the beginning of my nose - I think that sums up the whole bit quite nicely.
katrina writes (among other things):
"Rights" are a construction, and shift depending on the values of a society at a given time.
Precisely. That is exactly the point I was making -- the concept of "rights" is entirely artificial. Once upon a time, blacks weren't allowed to go into certain restaurants in the U.S., and now they are. Nothing in the U.S. Constitution changed during that time. Those people undoubtedly deserved that right all that time -- they just never had it until recently.
However, Grog writes:
On the notion of "inalienable rights", there is such a concept in United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The U.N. is free to define whatever it wants, but those rights aren't worth the paper they're written on unless those in power accept them.
Here's one of the definitions of "inalienable": incapable of being alienated, surrendered, or transferred.
Well, that sounds just ducky in theory but, as long as your "rights" can be taken away from you by force or at the point of a gun, they aren't inalienable, and that's all that counts.
Grog said...
CC: On the notion of "inalienable rights", there is such a concept in United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
My understanding is that these are attempts by society to formulate a universal morality. As such I think that they are misnamed as "rights".
Googling stages of morality produces a lot of hits. The first one seems to be ok.
http://students.usm.maine.edu/bmcpha61/Kohlberg_stages_of_morality.htm
Interestingly only cc used the word "rights" on the comments so far under the previous entry.
edwin
edwin writes:
My understanding is that these are attempts by society to formulate a universal morality. As such I think that they are misnamed as "rights".
I think that's a good way to describe it. What the U.N. is proposing might be perfectly reasonable in terms of defining what basic rights everyone ought to have, and more power to them.
But all the U.N. resolutions in the world granting the right to freedom of the press won't mean squat in a dictatorship where a muckraking newspaper editor can be dragged outside and silenced with a bullet to the head.
In short, there is simply no such thing as an "inalienable" right. That's all there is to it.
It seems to me that having rights is independent of whether those rights are respected by a particular government. To make rights contingent on government recognition actually fatally undermines the whole concept, which is that a right is something inherent to an individual or group and which they cannot LEGITIMATELY be denied. The logical inference of your position is that if Stephen Harper wakes up tomorrow and decides that public criticism of his person or government is illegal, well then it's illegal. You went to bed in a democracy and woke up in a police state. No point in looking to the courts for redress, your legal position has also fatally compromised the concept of judicial review. If "rights" exist only with government approval, they don't really exist at all. And if they don't really exist, the courts have no basis for challenging governmental authority.
Rights are a citizen's ultimate security against arbitrary authority. Think carefully about the consequences before defining them so narrowly.
Argggghh. Pay attention cuz I'm only going to explain this one more time. Lexington writes:
To make rights contingent on government recognition actually fatally undermines the whole concept, which is that a right is something inherent to an individual or group and which they cannot LEGITIMATELY be denied.
No one said anything about whether those rights are being denied "legitimately." They are simply being denied.
Once again, consider the right to freedom of speech by the protestors at the 2004 Republican National Convention. Those people were entitled to a public protest, and a fat lot of good it did them.
Regardless of their "rights" under the U.S. Constitution, they were rounded up and herded into free speech zones. Others who simply wore protesting t-shirts were arrested at George Bush rallies, freedom of expression be damned.
What the Constitution said didn't fucking matter, OK? Deal with that simple fact.
Whether you are entitled to certain rights is not the same as whether you are actually allowed to exercise those rights.
If any of you don't understand the distinction by now, I suggest you find an easier blog to read.
CC-don't go alienating your fan-base!
What's the difference between saying you have rights and saying you're entitled to them?
Yes, rights are a fiction, but the "inalienable" part of the fiction is what gives this fiction any relevance in our battles against totalitarianism.
and, actually, i think lexington hit the nail on the head with the danger of accepting your position.
and it is correct to point out that under his Stephen Harper scenario (and your other ones) they are being "legitimately" denied.
The law-makers are using their power to take away the rights that at one time they chose [were forced] to allow. They now take them away because they have the power to do so and they don't anticipate anyone will have the power to make a stink about it.
While I somewhat agree with you cc, you're leaving something out: the judicial branch and congress/parliament.
There were laws barring African-Americans from their rights which were challenged through the courts. So, regardless of the fact that some right may or may not appear in the US Constitution or our Charter, the judiciary and congress/parliament serve to act as the intermediaries.
Semantics...
Inalienable rights are those things imbued to me by the Creator (or whatever/whoever), such as the ability to speak, and those things that I need to do to survive. These inalienable rights are constrained only by other people exerting identical rights. Thus, for example, I can kill, but that should only be in self-defense. I can eat, but not off my neighbor's plate without permission, and so on.
Granted rights, or freedoms, apply to things which can be given or taken away without adversely affecting my inalienable rights. It's always a mugs game as to what those things are, as I have an inalienable right to be happy.
Of course, in a practical sense, we have only those rights which the state and society let us have.
So I doubt I've helped matters here. ;)
CC, rights are an intangible. You can't touch, smell or taste them, but most folks believe that they exist, by virtue of citizenship, paying taxes, by the basic concept of being born in a civilized society. To the average citizen of Sudan, particularly Darfur, rights are an alien concept - they don't have any and don't understand the word. Your point is well taken, in that the belief in rights is a ephemeral concept, when the forces that oppose those rights get into power and strip them away, as is being done in North America. Is that the point of your post, to open folks eyes to the reality that we are at the whim of whatever power group governs at whatever time?
CC - I understand your point that rights can be suppressed by politicians, and I don't per se take exception to that.
My point was that the concept of fundamental rights is a part of the world dialogue, and not one that can simply be ignored in the discussion of human rights.
Without such a measure, we cannot stand up and hold China up to scrutiny for their treatment of their citizens and claim that they have breached fundamental rights, nor can we similarly criticize BushCo for violating their citizen's rights either.
Is there any way to 'force' a nation to respect the declared 'fundamental' rights? No. However, that does not remove the concept from the discussion either.
Pointing back to the example in China that sparked this whole debate, I would assert the following:
1) China clearly violated the international concept of individual rights with regards to assembly, religion and speech. This is clear from the most basic reading of the events and the UN Declaration I cited earlier.
2) The arrested parties, did however, break Chinese Law, and are being prosecuted for it. Legitimately, they are suffering the obvious consequences of their actions.
The actions of the accused are consistent with global conventions on human rights, but Chinese law is at odds with those conventions.
Who is right? Everybody and nobody in this case. From an external perspective, Chinese law in this regard seems rather arbitrary and may even be characterized as misguided. However, conversely, as you pointed out, the accused knew that their actions were inconsistent with Chinese law, and they suffer the consequences of their actions.
However, looking at civil rights history in North America, it took the seemingly innocent actions of Rosa Parks refusing to give up a bus seat to unleash a series of legal and social changes that the US is still reeling from. In South Africa, it was Nelson Mandela paying the legal price for his actions that created the figurehead which the anti-apartheid cause could rally around. (and eventually the world's governments did too)
Rights exist not just because some government 'grants' them and chooses to respect them, but also because people exercise them. Sometimes it is the exercise of those rights that brings about the changes needed.
Yes brutal oppression can and does happen - that is the recurring theme of human history. But similarly recurring is that the oppressors sooner or later lose their grip. (or they die)
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