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The title is completely misleading, given that Wozniak concedes: “Every freedom we have in the United States, every one of them, was given to us by congression

• wissler 14y ago
  Government is merely a set of people. These people don't give you your rights any more than some random person on the street gives you your rights. Both merely either respect them or not. America, in spite of its contradictions, was to a significant extent based on the idea of "inalienable rights", and is why it was so successful. The verbiage in The Bill of Rights was intended to recognize, not confer rights, and it was intended to restrain government from violating them.
  • kijin 14y ago
    Exactly. Political theorists routinely distinguish between natural rights and legal rights. Legal rights are conferred by law, and would not exist if not for law. The right to run for President is a legal right, because the office of the President would not have existed if not for the U.S. Constitution. Natural rights, on the other hand, exist regardless of law. Nobody is supposed to rape you, not only because the law says so, but also because you have a right to decide who you have sex with. If the law does not prosecute rapists, the law is wrong, and you still have the right. The U.S. Constitution is remarkable not only because it created (legal) rights that didn't exist before, but also because it finally recognized so many (natural) rights that used to be blatantly ignored by despots. Of course, whether "freedom of information" is a natural right or a legal right is a contentious matter. Most likely, it has components of both.
  • rhizome 14y ago
    40 states have positive right-to-speech laws: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruneyard_Shopping_Center_v._Robins http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruneyard_Shopping_Center_v._Ro...
  • rayiner 14y ago
    This is historical revisionism. "Inalienable rights" made for some great rhetoric in the Declaration of Independence, but the Constitution does not use the phrase (and uses the phrase "right" only a couple of times in the main articles). Government is a set of people, and rights arise from consensus and practice among those people. When the Founders spoke about "rights" they were referring to those recognized by British consensus and practice.
    • mbreese 14y ago
      That's why there was a great initial push after the Constitution was ratified to establish the Bill of Rights. People didn't feel that it was safe enough to leave things like the freedom of speech to be covered under common/unwritten law. So some of the unwritten/understood parts of the Constitution were written into the first 10 amendments.
      • sageikosa 14y ago
        There was also great initial resistance, not because the opponents didn't want to safeguard rights; but because they feared enumerating some rights for named protection would leave other rights not named unprotected.
        • danielweber 14y ago
          And if Hamilton could print out this discussion page, he'd be shoving it in people's faces and pounding his fist on the table furiously. "See? I told you so!"
  • slurgfest 14y ago
    If my exercise of my rights is restricted then it hardly matters how much respect or recognition I find in some verbiage - in practical terms, I am denied those rights. This is unfortunately common, so that most freedoms cannot actually be realized without the help of law and the judicious use of institutional force, far beyond what I or almost any citizen can personally wield. And it is not even vaguely exceptional that the source of the problem is coming from non-governmental entities. Law is much more than "a set of people." I think it's fairly clear that the Constitution is also intended to restrain non-Governmental entities from violating personal rights. Otherwise, the 13th Amendment would only make Government slavery unconstitutional while reserving it to the states or the people, which would be nonsensical and useless. The rights of plantation slaves have surely existed all along, but they didn't make any difference until a lot of blood was spilled to change things.
    • rmc 14y ago
      This is why some places have 'positive rights', that require the government (or whatever) to do a thing to ensure you have the ability to exercise your rights http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_and_positive_rights http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_and_positive_rights
    • danielweber 14y ago
      I think it's fairly clear that the Constitution is also intended to restrain non-Governmental entities from violating personal rights That's question-begging a bit. If I hire you for my radio show and you say something stupid on the air, am I not allowed to fire you, lest that be a violation of your personal right to free speech? If I refuse to sell you a gun, am I denying you your right to bear arms? Otherwise, the 13th Amendment would only make Government slavery unconstitutional while reserving it to the states or the people, which would be nonsensical and useless. That seems to argue against point. If the whole Constitution was meant to restrict non-governmental actors, then they wouldn't have limited it just to slavery. Also, the Fourteenth Amendment generally applies the restrictions on the Federal government to State governments. I'm unaware of any restrictions it places on non-goverments.
• eurleif 14y ago
  But that's not how the constitution is supposed to work. The federal government is supposed to have specific powers, enumerated by the constitution, and no more, with all remaining powers going to the state or the individual. The federalists were concerned people would misinterpret the bill of rights as an exclusive enumeration of individual freedoms, and they added the ninth amendment to explicitly say that it isn't. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninth_Amendment_to_the_United_S...
• corkill 14y ago
  You have freedom as defined by your government. Want two wives, nope sorry. Marry someone same sex, maybe depends where you live.
  • eikaterine 14y ago
    Someone is always defining your freedom though, in any situation where you come in contact with other people. If you don't have a government, your freedom is defined by people who are stronger than you, financially, physically, militarily, whatever.
    • Gormo 14y ago
      And if you do have a government, the same is true, but your set of options is reduced, and the power distance is far greater.
      • _delirium 14y ago
        I would argue the opposite; in cases where your freedom is decided by network-effects rather than a more "flat" playing field within a governmental system, your set of options is reduced, and the power distance is far greater. Burbclaves isn't a path to freedom. Even otherwise-market-oriented Hayek argued that to some extent, in arguing for why the state should provide national defense and a social safety net. In his view, it increased individual freedom for there to be a large protective umbrella that handled defense and the basic safety-net, within which individuals could move freely. Otherwise those services are provided by tribalist groupings, which set up numerous boundaries and entanglements diminishing scope for unencumbered individual decision-making: society becomes more about those groups, acting as collectives, with less of a role for individual action.
        • Gormo 14y ago
          But the government is just another "tribalist grouping"; one that's been given reach that extends beyond what would otherwise be its natural limitations. I don't understand the common mindset of the government being somehow 'special', and not shaped by the same influences and subject to the same failure modalities as every other institution in society. Human society itself is a "network effect", and the ability to form connections within that network without artificial constraint is the definition of freedom. Society is defined by what you're calling "boundaries and entanglements", or what less cynical people might call "well-defined communities and relationships"; there's never room for completely unencumbered individual decision-making: individuals are always constrained by the laws of nature and the existence of those other people with whom they share a common social space. Maximizing individual liberty means maximizing individuals' ability to choose whether to participate in a particular social context, whether to opt out and go it alone, or whether to attempt to forge their own new social context. Flattening down all of the boundaries and subjecting all social contexts to monopolistic rules only reduces choice and makes one social context dominate over all others - this is hardly a path to freedom. I admit, though, that I've got no idea what a "burbclave" is - I understand it's a concept from Snow Crash, which, regrettably, I have yet to read. Could you elaborate on this?
• Volpe 14y ago
  Kind of an irrelevant point the internet is not part of the U.S... nor should the U.Ses laws apply to it.
• antoinevg 14y ago
  As near as I recall your founders were opposed to a bill of rights for this very reason: That a time would come when people came to believe their basic rights only existed by virtue of the bill of rights. For more on this point of view see: http://www.fff.org/comment/com0202e.asp http://www.fff.org/comment/com0202e.asp http://the-classic-liberal.com/the-bill-of-rights/ http://the-classic-liberal.com/the-bill-of-rights/
  • deleted 14y ago
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• mtgx 14y ago
  The Bill of Rights says the Government "can't restrict your freedom of speech", not that you have the right to free speech. There's a difference. So you already have freedom of speech. And the Government is not allowed to restrict it with any new law. The US Constitution was not made to give you rights, but to restrict the Government from taking them (although it seems lately they don't seem to even acknowledge the Constitution exists, and people should be more outraged about that, because if the trend continues, it's not a matter of "if" it will hurt you, but "when"). Wozniak is wrong on that one. I think he got a little confused thinking about net neutrality. But net neutrality plays into this very well too. We already have the freedom of net neutrality, because that's how the Internet has always worked. Net neutrality just ensures that the companies can't restrict it or abuse it in any way. This is exactly what Al Franken said in the interview with TheVerge, too: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8kuhj4SKCE&feature=youtu.be&hd=1&t=6m12s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8kuhj4SKCE&feature=youtu... I don't think there's anything like this in the US Constitution, but net neutrality is trying to be just another bill of rights basically, saying no one can restrict or control how you're using the Internet. It's just that it's a law, not an amendment to the Constitution (though maybe it should be).
  • TheGateKeeper 14y ago
    Thank you for this post. I'm constantly amazed, dumbfounded, and outraged that people don't know the BASICS OF REAL FREEDOM in this country. It's not what the government allows you to do. It's what we allow and not allow the government to do.
    • dedward 14y ago
      in principle, yes. In fact, that's not how things really work...
  • rmc 14y ago
    And the Government is not allowed to restrict it with any new law. The US Constitution was not made to give you rights, but to restrict the Government from taking them This is called 'positive rights' and 'negative rights'. Negative rights are your rights and the government is not allowed to restrict them, they prevent the government from doing a thing. Positive rights are where the government is required to act to ensure you actually have the right to something. (e.g. the right to a fair and speedy trial requires the government to set up a courts system that is able to handle the load, they can't just have 1 court for the whole country that has a waiting list of 100 years, some places have "a right to education" which requires the state to set up and fund schools). Some constitutions & binding declarations of rights have positive and negative rights. E.g. Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union has been interpreted to include positive rights. I have no idea of the US situation. It would be interesting if 'Freedom of speech' was a positive right. What would happen then... (more details http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_and_positive_rights http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_and_positive_rights )
• halts 14y ago
  I love Woz but as others said, it's wrong to think of the government "giving" us our freedoms.
• davidhollander 14y ago
  Quite simply, Wozniak has conflated regulation of government (constitutional law) with regulation by government (statutory law) through the use of the ambiguous phrase "government regulation". The Bill of Rights regulates the actions which government may perform upon individuals, not the actions which individuals may perform upon each other. For instance, no article of the constitution ensures that murder is illegal. There is a difference between constitutional law, common law, statuatory law, and regulatory law. Wozniak's phrase "congressional regulation" perhaps best describes only the last two categories.