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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 c

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

shadowgovt 4y ago
> don't generally include dining in private establishments anymore than they do dining in private homes That's an interesting hypothesis but it doesn't stand up to scrutiny. A private establishment isn't a home (indeed, there are often zoning laws against conflating the two, lest business interfere with neighbors' domestic tranquility). Owning a business, including the protections under the law and the separation of the fate of the business from the fate of its owner, are protections granted under the law that are privileges, not rights. They are contingent and revokable. The same governing authority that lets government demand you not dump toxic waste in the river behind your factory lets it demand you serve every citizen who can afford your fees and has not transgressed in a non-protected way against you. I agree that in the '30s we reinterpreted the general welfare. I like to tell people we're basically on US version 3 now. To our credit, we pulled this one off without the bloody civil war it took to hammer out version 2. But like the change to version 2, it was also quite necessary; we'd tried ad-hoc'ing a functional nation of millions together using massive individual liberty and we got ourselves a Great Depression for our troubles. > Segregation in publicly funded institutions (so far as these are themselves legitimate) is unacceptable The bus boycott wasn't about that. Nor were the lunch-table sit-ins. These were all parts of the civil rights movement. > I'm not nearly as sure as you are that it would be a markedly more violent one. As I said, you have more to learn from a closer study of the history of the civil rights movement. It was never about mere government equality; this is a government of the people, and those who fought for equality rightly recognized they would never get it without the hearts and minds of the people changing (something that, history has since shown, is a slow process but one that can be accomplished modulo outliers). > Any obligation or consent should always be explicit. Oh, it's quite explicit. Form a corporation, and here's the whole set of federal, state, and local laws you're now obligated to comply with. It's quite a bit more than the private citizen complies with. ... and you've completely dodged the fact that though we are born naked, the skin we're born into matters in this society, still. While that is still true, we impose obligations on our citizenry to make it less so specifically because we believe people should have the freedom to do that which injures no-one else... Such as share a lunch counter with a stranger in a restaurant that serves the public.
- thegrimmest 4y ago

shadowgovt 4y ago

> don't generally include dining in private establishments anymore than they do dining in private homes That's an interesting hypothesis but it doesn't stand up to scrutiny. A private establishment isn't a home (indeed, there are often zoning laws against conflating the two, lest business interfere with neighbors' domestic tranquility). Owning a business, including the protections under the law and the separation of the fate of the business from the fate of its owner, are protections granted under the law that are privileges, not rights. They are contingent and revokable. The same governing authority that lets government demand you not dump toxic waste in the river behind your factory lets it demand you serve every citizen who can afford your fees and has not transgressed in a non-protected way against you. I agree that in the '30s we reinterpreted the general welfare. I like to tell people we're basically on US version 3 now. To our credit, we pulled this one off without the bloody civil war it took to hammer out version 2. But like the change to version 2, it was also quite necessary; we'd tried ad-hoc'ing a functional nation of millions together using massive individual liberty and we got ourselves a Great Depression for our troubles. > Segregation in publicly funded institutions (so far as these are themselves legitimate) is unacceptable The bus boycott wasn't about that. Nor were the lunch-table sit-ins. These were all parts of the civil rights movement. > I'm not nearly as sure as you are that it would be a markedly more violent one. As I said, you have more to learn from a closer study of the history of the civil rights movement. It was never about mere government equality; this is a government of the people, and those who fought for equality rightly recognized they would never get it without the hearts and minds of the people changing (something that, history has since shown, is a slow process but one that can be accomplished modulo outliers). > Any obligation or consent should always be explicit. Oh, it's quite explicit. Form a corporation, and here's the whole set of federal, state, and local laws you're now obligated to comply with. It's quite a bit more than the private citizen complies with. ... and you've completely dodged the fact that though we are born naked, the skin we're born into matters in this society, still. While that is still true, we impose obligations on our citizenry to make it less so specifically because we believe people should have the freedom to do that which injures no-one else... Such as share a lunch counter with a stranger in a restaurant that serves the public.

thegrimmest 4y ago