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The country was founded on the notion that individual liberty was the most important concern. It's right there in the text. You can have equality of rights unde

• shadowgovt 4y ago
  > You can have equality of rights under law (yes please!) without infringing on other's rights to live as they please I think I may need firmer definitions of terms to accept this assertion. Because unless I've misunderstood your meaning, it sounds like this is unworkable. Every law is a curtailment of an otherwise-existant naturally occurring right to do something; the law says, in the universe of all possible things you could do, here is something you must do or must not do, yes? But for the law, I could keep all my money, but we pay taxes. But for the law, I could steal all my neighbor's stuff, but we have property rights. Etc. Social contract theory (a false story of how we got to governments and civilization, but a useful fairy-tale for thought-framing purposes) tells the story of the rights / protections tradeoff, but the first step of the tradeoff is we give up some liberties. So clearly, individual liberty isn't the most important concern; if it were, we'd have solved the problem by never forming a government. Rather, the Constitution appears to lay out several overlapping goals alongside "secur[ing] the blessings of liberty." "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity." The blessings of liberty are important, but so is the general welfare, domestic tranquility, common defense, and a more perfect Union, etc. > The point is that you can jettison racism (or any other kind of inequality) while leaving the racists alone. All people need to be is equal under law. Again, we may be talking past each other if we're operating from different definitions, but how do you do that? The racist wants to operate a business where black people need not apply, nor may they sit at the table. How on Earth do we respect their liberty while preserving the right of every citizen to operate as a citizen? If I understand your meaning correctly, I predict your answer is "one cannot," in which case I direct us back to the Constitution and the note that there are other sometimes-competing objectives alongside the preservation of liberty (it's hard, we discovered, to preserve tranquility or have a more perfect union if a huge chunk of our population just gets to pretend some of our citizens aren't equally citizens in private affairs, not only before the eyes of the law. Hard to the point of unworkable. Violence-in-the-streets unworkable). > Being free doesn't mean you're entitled to relationships (personal or professional) with others Quite true. But it is entirely possible that being a citizen obligates such relationships, in specific contexts, at specific times, and there's a compelling reason to force such relationships (under the very narrowly-tailored privilege of "Owning one's own business," for example). > Just like every other free person, you are born with nothing Goodness is that ever untrue. For example, you're born with your skin, whether or not it will provide you some net advantages or disadvantages because of the complex sociopolitics that already existed before you came into the world. You don't get to choose it; it's just your birthright.
  • thegrimmest 4y ago
    I tend to use the definition of liberty from the Declaration of the Rights of Man[1], which was contemporary to the Declaration of Independence: > 4. Liberty consists in the freedom to do everything which injures no one else; hence the exercise of the natural rights of each man has no limits except those which assure to the other members of the society the enjoyment of the same rights. These limits can only be determined by law. From here it follows that the only legitimate infringement of liberty is in direct defence of existential threats to liberty itself. Therefore taxing people to pay for police, courts, rights of way, etc. is fine. Even drafting people into the military to defend from an attack is acceptable despite the enormous infringement of liberty that being conscripted represents. Liberty is a right to be free from outside interference, not entitled to public services. The only clause you listed that may be interpreted more broadly is "the general Welfare". The re-interpretation of this clause in 1936 gave the government much more broad authority to tax and spend. It was previously interpreted very narrowly by the supreme court. This is the exact ruling (US v. Butler) that opened the door to the erosion of fundamental liberty, and it's one I would like to see reversed. The vagueness of "general welfare" has been the subject of debate since the 1800s. > How on Earth do we respect their liberty while preserving the right of every citizen to operate as a citizen? Simply by acknowledging that your rights to "operate as a citizen" are nowhere enumerated, and don't generally include dining in private establishments anymore than they do dining in private homes. People should be allowed to choose who goes into their business on their property just like they choose who goes into their house. The civil rights movement had legitimate grievances that needed to be addressed. Segregation in publicly funded institutions (so far as these are themselves legitimate) is unacceptable. We actually have never seen a world with fully integrated public schools, universities, police forces, military, etc, but no opinion on private business. I'm not nearly as sure as you are that it would be a markedly more violent one. > But it is entirely possible that being a citizen obligates such relationships It is exactly implicit obligation that I'm against. Obligation should as much as possible be explicit. You're no more entitled to get laid than to eat or work at a restaurant, but in only one of these cases do we recognize the importance of explicit consent. > Goodness is that ever untrue It's quite true. Mothers don't (usually) abandon newborns because they have a strong instinct to care for them. Newborns are very endearing. This is the very first relationship negotiation you do - you convince your parent(s) to love you. Everything our parents give us follows from that. We are born with no possessions. > your skin, whether or not it will provide you some net advantages Right, but these advantages and disadvantages are your own to exploit/bear just as much as your skin is. 1. https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/rightsof.asp https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/rightsof.asp