5 ms·

To be fair, as a non-US citizen I think it's fair for the US government to ask you what exactly you plan to do in their country.

sneak 13y ago
To be _fair_, the location of a person's birth should not determine the rights they are entitled to. Sure, they can ask. They ask citizens. The difference is that citizens get fifth amendment protections and can politely refuse to answer. If you're a non-citizen coming to visit, refusal means deportation. It's simply racism based on where someone was born, discriminating against people on a trait that they have no control over.
- theycallmemorty 13y ago
  > To be _fair_, the location of a person's birth should not determine the rights they are entitled to. So we've gone from discussing civil liberties to the abstract idea of a Nation State? Either way it's not always racism. I'm not American but I'm as WASPy as they come. If I followed your pattern at the US border they'd never let me in, and that is their right.
- rayiner 13y ago
  It's not racism at all, it's territorialism. Rights don't exist in the state of nature. Rights are just agreements between groups of people to take certain things that they have the ability to do in the state of nature off the table. If you're not part of the group, you're not party to the agreement.
  - foobarbazqux 13y ago
    Legal rights don't exist, but natural & human rights do. Out of curiosity, are you in favor (in principle) of world federalism? That would eliminate the international state of nature that we have today.
    - psb217 13y ago
      "Legal rights don't exist, but natural and human rights do." Given that existence of legal rights can be proven empirically [1], whereas existence of natural and human rights is a philosophical quagmire yet to be resolved after thousands of years of inquiry, I'd argue that your statement is false. Well, at least, as false as anything can be outside of a purely axiomatic system. [1]: Again, as far as such things can be done. E.g., we could probably come to something like an agreement that the Bill of Rights exists and that it describes a set of ostensibly legally guaranteed rights.
      - foobarbazqux 13y ago
        Oh, I meant legal rights in the state of nature, the context rayiner was describing - he was the one that said they don't exist therein and I agreed. Natural and human rights function like morals though, they describe what should happen, as opposed to legal rights which describe what will happen, at least given a competent judicial system. Morals exist, right?
        deleted 13y ago
        [deleted]
        rayiner 13y ago
        "Morals" do exist, in the sense that they are observable states of mind in individual people. You can set up an experiment where you leave a $20 bill on the table, and observe that people don't take it, and call the chemical process in peoples' brains that causes them to act that way "morals." Sometimes, people with similar moral opinions come together and agree to enforce entitlements consistent with that opinion. These are called "rights." While morals can be demonstrated in the state of nature, "rights" cannot be. There are no "rights" without agreements between people, either explicit or tacit.
        foobarbazqux 13y ago
        I didn't really mean to argue about rights, or maybe I did and I just didn't realize. What you are calling "rights" is properly qualified as "legal rights". I am not suggesting there are legal rights in the state of nature, I am just pointing out that there is an entirely different category of rights and that "rights" refers to both categories. This other category of rights, which I'll call natural/human rights, corresponds to morals, whereas the legal rights category corresponds to laws. Typically laws and thus legal rights have some basis in agreed upon natural/human rights. See Wikipedia, which also lumps human rights in with natural rights: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_and_legal_rights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_and_legal_rights Since I'm pretty sure you've encountered the terms natural rights and human rights before, and that you understand that they specify morals without being legal rights, and that we don't basically disagree about how things work, nor do we even disagree philosophically on a wide variety of issues (perhaps importantly that moral absolutism is terrible), I was more curious about whether you think world federalism is a good idea...
gcb0 13y ago
but you are replying to US citizens living abroad. I am pretty sure they are not exempt from paying taxes just because they do not live in the US.

sneak 13y ago

To be _fair_, the location of a person's birth should not determine the rights they are entitled to. Sure, they can ask. They ask citizens. The difference is that citizens get fifth amendment protections and can politely refuse to answer. If you're a non-citizen coming to visit, refusal means deportation. It's simply racism based on where someone was born, discriminating against people on a trait that they have no control over.

theycallmemorty 13y ago
> To be _fair_, the location of a person's birth should not determine the rights they are entitled to. So we've gone from discussing civil liberties to the abstract idea of a Nation State? Either way it's not always racism. I'm not American but I'm as WASPy as they come. If I followed your pattern at the US border they'd never let me in, and that is their right.
rayiner 13y ago
It's not racism at all, it's territorialism. Rights don't exist in the state of nature. Rights are just agreements between groups of people to take certain things that they have the ability to do in the state of nature off the table. If you're not part of the group, you're not party to the agreement.
- foobarbazqux 13y ago
  Legal rights don't exist, but natural & human rights do. Out of curiosity, are you in favor (in principle) of world federalism? That would eliminate the international state of nature that we have today.
  - psb217 13y ago
    "Legal rights don't exist, but natural and human rights do." Given that existence of legal rights can be proven empirically [1], whereas existence of natural and human rights is a philosophical quagmire yet to be resolved after thousands of years of inquiry, I'd argue that your statement is false. Well, at least, as false as anything can be outside of a purely axiomatic system. [1]: Again, as far as such things can be done. E.g., we could probably come to something like an agreement that the Bill of Rights exists and that it describes a set of ostensibly legally guaranteed rights.
    - foobarbazqux 13y ago
      Oh, I meant legal rights in the state of nature, the context rayiner was describing - he was the one that said they don't exist therein and I agreed. Natural and human rights function like morals though, they describe what should happen, as opposed to legal rights which describe what will happen, at least given a competent judicial system. Morals exist, right?
      - deleted 13y ago
        [deleted]
      - rayiner 13y ago
        "Morals" do exist, in the sense that they are observable states of mind in individual people. You can set up an experiment where you leave a $20 bill on the table, and observe that people don't take it, and call the chemical process in peoples' brains that causes them to act that way "morals." Sometimes, people with similar moral opinions come together and agree to enforce entitlements consistent with that opinion. These are called "rights." While morals can be demonstrated in the state of nature, "rights" cannot be. There are no "rights" without agreements between people, either explicit or tacit.
        foobarbazqux 13y ago
        I didn't really mean to argue about rights, or maybe I did and I just didn't realize. What you are calling "rights" is properly qualified as "legal rights". I am not suggesting there are legal rights in the state of nature, I am just pointing out that there is an entirely different category of rights and that "rights" refers to both categories. This other category of rights, which I'll call natural/human rights, corresponds to morals, whereas the legal rights category corresponds to laws. Typically laws and thus legal rights have some basis in agreed upon natural/human rights. See Wikipedia, which also lumps human rights in with natural rights: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_and_legal_rights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_and_legal_rights Since I'm pretty sure you've encountered the terms natural rights and human rights before, and that you understand that they specify morals without being legal rights, and that we don't basically disagree about how things work, nor do we even disagree philosophically on a wide variety of issues (perhaps importantly that moral absolutism is terrible), I was more curious about whether you think world federalism is a good idea...

gcb0 13y ago

but you are replying to US citizens living abroad. I am pretty sure they are not exempt from paying taxes just because they do not live in the US.