[governance] Individual battle for rights

[Paul Lehto]

Good points here.  Though I would correct it by saying that socially
conscious regimes RECOGNIZE rights, not "mandate" them.

The word "mandate" makes it sound like the regime somehow invented
freedom or equality or whatever iteration of rights is involved, when
government by its very nature uses compulsion or is anti-freedom, and
government is rarely clean on the issues of equality.  Government is
in the worst possible position to be determining rights, since all
such rights inherently tie the government's own hands.

Even governments "want" to be free, just as both the wolf and the
sheep differ in their conceptions of freedom but both want full
freedom, but "freedom" for governments is the picture of tyranny of
the most odious kind, since the rule of law dictates that the
government's abuse of powers are presumptively valid, in effect acting
to outlaw self-defense against governmental tyranny in favor of blind
obedience.   Governments by definition only intervene to alter or
structure the status quo, thus reducing freedom in some important
sense (such interventions range from totally just in the case of the
"wolf" to totally unjust in the case of the "sheep", depending on the
specific circumstances).

Thus, governments guarantee, but do not *grant* rights.  If rights are
not recognized by governments, they are being violated even if they've
never been on the books.  The rights are not NON-existent.  If they
were nonexistent then one would have to believe absurdities like
slavemasters had the right to hold slaves in the USA until the Civil
War Amendments, as opposed to believing that slavery is and was always
wrong.  Consistent with this approach, amendments to the US
constitution expanding the right to vote for freed slaves and women
say only that there will be NO DISCRIMINATION in the right to vote,
but never "grant" a right to vote. That's because the right always
existed, even though found nowhere in the US Constitution.

Rights come from reasoning about justice, pure and simple.  There's no
better fount for them to come from.  Although a few may expose
themselves by attacking a perceived weakness in the idea of rights
coming from people, any competing theory of where rights come from
that would have to say they come from the government is even more
absurd or weak, if indeed there's any weakness in the idea of rights
coming from we the people or Nature or Justice (however one thinks of
it).  After all, the governments' only legitimate source of power is
We the People, so it has all the defects, if any, of the people, PLUS
more defects because government is concentrated power.

As Churchill said, democracy is the worst form of government except
for all others that have been tried.  Put more positively, democracy
(including "republics" in modern parlance) is the only form of
government that asks the all-important question, and asks it regularly
both in elections and public opinion as well as the scope of rights:
Are the powers that be the powers that OUGHT to be?

The "security" of anyone's individual rights is inextricably tied up
with the security of the rights of all others.  In this light, there's
no "individual" rights in the radical sense, instead, it is mutual
respect for the rights of all others as the quid pro quo for the
respect of my own rights.  This is basically the Golden Rule, applied
to equality.  It's a community-based reciprocity of individual rights,
taking on aspects both individual and community at the same time.

Paul Lehto, J.D.

On 9/24/09, Eric Dierker <cogitoergosum at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> It is not always pleasantries and handshakes and funding.  It is not always
> given freely.  Individual rights in governance are perhaps devine, but they
> are often only acquired through vicious battles of will.
>
> Those of us who do not merely pontificate (as I appear to do here) but fight
> the battles are ill funded and despised. We are shunned socially and treated
> like pariahs and ill gotten illegitimate step children.  We upset the
> applecart.
>
> There is a reason individual rights are mandated by socially conscious
> regimes. It is because without that mandate we have nothing for it will not
> be provided at the expense of disturbing the status quo.
>
> Please see http://gnso.icann.org/mailing-lists/archives/ga-200709/  I am
> very afraid for users of the Internet.


-- 
Paul R Lehto, J.D.
P.O. Box #1
Ishpeming, MI  49849
lehto.paul at gmail.com
906-204-4026
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