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>You effectively consent to being governed by continuing to live within the national boundaries associated with the government associated with that nation To p

by jrcii 10y ago

>You effectively consent to being governed by continuing to live within the national boundaries associated with the government associated with that nation To play devil's advocate on this particular point, it could be argued that the place of your birth is by definition your home to which you're entitled a natural right.

ubernostrum 10y ago
And this is where I step in and point out that the idea of "natural rights" existing prior to constituted/codified societies cannot be supported by rational argument. The entire concept dates back to 17th- and 18th-century "state of nature" thought experiments that can be demolished by a moment's reflection. The underlying assumption of "natural rights" is, after all, that if some humans were somehow born and grew up in a context where no society -- and especially no modern Western society -- was inculcating them from birth with its code of ethics or enforcing it on them, those humans would somehow spontaneously derive the core values of the modern Western code of ethics from self-evident first principles and then automatically enforce that code on themselves without any external incentive to do so. And that is pure fantasy, and is the point in these HN threads where I often start quoting Thomas Hobbes.
- sverige 10y ago
  Actually, "natural rights" or at least "rights of citizens" is an ancient idea that goes back at least as far as Ancient Greece and further developed in Republican Rome. It was revived greatly with the writings of Machiavelli (who, when you read not only The Prince or The Art of War, but also his Discourses on Livy, was arguably the most ardent republican of the Renaissance). These ideas were picked up by Locke and others and greatly influenced the thinking of the Founding Fathers (please don't downvote me just for calling them that; I'm old). The U.S. Constitution was the culmination of centuries of thinking about political power and is remarkable for its distrust of absolute power. Unfortunately, that distrust has been slowly eroded over the last nearly two-and-a-half centuries, beginning with Marbury v. Madison and currently at such a state that presidents enter into war without an act of Congress, judges make law from the bench, and Congress dictates to the executive which cabinet positions must be filled. It was a great experiment, but actually already a failed one in the sense of the original debate back in the 1770s and '80s.
  - ubernostrum 10y ago
    beginning with Marbury v. Madison Ah yes. Tell me again how all the people involved in drafting the Constitution came to universal perfect agreement in every aspect and detail of what the right way to set up a government was and how the resulting Constitution should be read and interpreted for 100% of situations, to such a high degree that during their lifetimes there were absolutely no controversies about how the Constitution worked. Hint: the fact that Marbury happened shows what a complete clusterfuck of disagreement and disarray the Constitutional Convention was. Also, Marbury was good law. And yes, there are older concepts of natural rights, but the one always espoused by people who advocate for the perfect-unanimous-agreement myth of the Constitution is the one used by, well, the people who drafted the Constitution, who'd been busy reading the theories of John Locke on the subject.
- cbd1984 10y ago
  To expand on your point: Hobbes was wrong on one count: Human life in a state of nature isn't nasty, brutish, short, or any of the other War Of All Against All nonsense he proposed unless there's been a serious disaster in the recent history, such as a plague or famine or invasion. In short, humans don't live like Mad Max or Walking Dead or Night Of The Living Dead unless their actual society was just destroyed and they haven't built a new one yet. In a state of nature, humans live as hunter-gatherers, usually, which is not terribly bad most of the time. However, hunter-gatherer societies still have rules and ways to enforce those rules and hierarchies which are not fair by modern standards of fairness. Strict gender roles are usually enforced, for example. My point is, humans naturally have a government of some kind, and definitely have rules which you can't opt out of if you expect to keep living with that group of humans. And it is entirely correct that humans raised in that society won't spontaneously recapitulate Locke and Jefferson. But they will have something, and they won't look kindly on people who expect to live outside of their rules and continue to interact with them. And they certainly won't agree on which "rights" humans "naturally" have. Not even the right to live: A number of ancient societies practiced infanticide, for example.
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    You say Hobbes is wrong, but you then acknowledge he was right: the state of nature only exists before they've rebuilt an ordered society. The state of nature Hobbes refers to isn't supposed to be the actual natural state of humanity in society, rather, it is the hypothetical state of humanity in the absence of ordered society.

by jrcii 10y ago

ubernostrum 10y ago

And this is where I step in and point out that the idea of "natural rights" existing prior to constituted/codified societies cannot be supported by rational argument. The entire concept dates back to 17th- and 18th-century "state of nature" thought experiments that can be demolished by a moment's reflection. The underlying assumption of "natural rights" is, after all, that if some humans were somehow born and grew up in a context where no society -- and especially no modern Western society -- was inculcating them from birth with its code of ethics or enforcing it on them, those humans would somehow spontaneously derive the core values of the modern Western code of ethics from self-evident first principles and then automatically enforce that code on themselves without any external incentive to do so. And that is pure fantasy, and is the point in these HN threads where I often start quoting Thomas Hobbes.

sverige 10y ago
Actually, "natural rights" or at least "rights of citizens" is an ancient idea that goes back at least as far as Ancient Greece and further developed in Republican Rome. It was revived greatly with the writings of Machiavelli (who, when you read not only The Prince or The Art of War, but also his Discourses on Livy, was arguably the most ardent republican of the Renaissance). These ideas were picked up by Locke and others and greatly influenced the thinking of the Founding Fathers (please don't downvote me just for calling them that; I'm old). The U.S. Constitution was the culmination of centuries of thinking about political power and is remarkable for its distrust of absolute power. Unfortunately, that distrust has been slowly eroded over the last nearly two-and-a-half centuries, beginning with Marbury v. Madison and currently at such a state that presidents enter into war without an act of Congress, judges make law from the bench, and Congress dictates to the executive which cabinet positions must be filled. It was a great experiment, but actually already a failed one in the sense of the original debate back in the 1770s and '80s.
- ubernostrum 10y ago
  beginning with Marbury v. Madison Ah yes. Tell me again how all the people involved in drafting the Constitution came to universal perfect agreement in every aspect and detail of what the right way to set up a government was and how the resulting Constitution should be read and interpreted for 100% of situations, to such a high degree that during their lifetimes there were absolutely no controversies about how the Constitution worked. Hint: the fact that Marbury happened shows what a complete clusterfuck of disagreement and disarray the Constitutional Convention was. Also, Marbury was good law. And yes, there are older concepts of natural rights, but the one always espoused by people who advocate for the perfect-unanimous-agreement myth of the Constitution is the one used by, well, the people who drafted the Constitution, who'd been busy reading the theories of John Locke on the subject.
cbd1984 10y ago
To expand on your point: Hobbes was wrong on one count: Human life in a state of nature isn't nasty, brutish, short, or any of the other War Of All Against All nonsense he proposed unless there's been a serious disaster in the recent history, such as a plague or famine or invasion. In short, humans don't live like Mad Max or Walking Dead or Night Of The Living Dead unless their actual society was just destroyed and they haven't built a new one yet. In a state of nature, humans live as hunter-gatherers, usually, which is not terribly bad most of the time. However, hunter-gatherer societies still have rules and ways to enforce those rules and hierarchies which are not fair by modern standards of fairness. Strict gender roles are usually enforced, for example. My point is, humans naturally have a government of some kind, and definitely have rules which you can't opt out of if you expect to keep living with that group of humans. And it is entirely correct that humans raised in that society won't spontaneously recapitulate Locke and Jefferson. But they will have something, and they won't look kindly on people who expect to live outside of their rules and continue to interact with them. And they certainly won't agree on which "rights" humans "naturally" have. Not even the right to live: A number of ancient societies practiced infanticide, for example.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  You say Hobbes is wrong, but you then acknowledge he was right: the state of nature only exists before they've rebuilt an ordered society. The state of nature Hobbes refers to isn't supposed to be the actual natural state of humanity in society, rather, it is the hypothetical state of humanity in the absence of ordered society.