Unalienable?

[nathan]

If Life and Liberty are unalienable rights endowed by our Creator, why does our government exercise the death penalty and imprison criminals?

I'm pretty sure that the founders meant something different by Life and Liberty, because they went into the endeavor with the full intent of killing and imprisoning criminals. I'm not sure what they meant, though.

[Kafir]

Maybe Locke's Second Treatise is relevant:

...reparation and restraint... are the only reasons, why one man may lawfully do harm to another, which is that we call punishment. In transgressing the law of nature, the offender declares himself to live by another rule than that of reason and common equity, which is that measure God has set to the actions of men, for their mutual security; and so he becomes dangerous to mankind, the tye, which is to secure them from injury and violence, being slighted and broken by him. Which being a trespass against the whole species, and the peace and safety of it, provided for by the law of nature, every man upon this score, by the right he hath to preserve mankind in general, may restrain, or where it is necessary, destroy things noxious to them, and so may bring such evil on any one, who hath transgressed that law, as may make him repent the doing of it, and thereby deter him, and by his example others, from doing the like mischief.

Locke's thinking, possibly, is that your rights cannot be removed from you, but that you can put yourself outside of the natural order in which your rights exist.

Also, "unalienable" always looks funny to me, although I know it's in the Declaration. Apparently Jefferson's original draft said "inalienable", but it got altered in committee.

[ggeezz]

by the right he hath to preserve mankind in general, may restrain

That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men

My thinking is government is allowed to restrain in order to protect the liberty of others.

I suppose that's compatible with Kafir's thoughts as well, though. If it's necessary to restrain a person it's because they've decided not to play by the rules.

[AGS]

I'm with Kafir here. Remember a discussion on the old GG on war?

I said that when you take up arms you enter into a contract with your opponent where you give him permission to try and harm you, and he agrees to that as well when he takes up arms against your.

That is the same with Crime, the criminal forces you into a contract where he agrees that you may protect yourself. Only in the case of a civilian - such self protection is not always possible, so Government fulfills that contractual obligation on its citizens behalf.

Make sense?

[changa]

I think there is a distinction that must be made between what Kafir said and what Gggeezz has said. If a person loses their rights when they choose to live outside the "natural order," and such order is defined by law, then it inevitably must follow that shop-lifters and illegal aliens need have no rights. Nor speeders, such as myself. In order to remove all rights, the government need merely pass a few more laws until all people are criminals and then it need not worry about rights at all.
OTOH, if the compromising of one's rights is an unfortunate consequence allowed only when we are protecting the rights of others, there is no such slope attached -- unless one is a terrorist of course. Any system can be abused, but it seems to me there is less inherent abuse in viewing it as a tension of conflicting rights than a system of law to which we must each subscribe.

[Kafir]

I wasn't making any claims of my own, just looking at a source that might have been relevant to the philosophy expressed in the Declaration of Independence.

[ggeezz]

I think there is a distinction that must be made between what Kafir said and what Gggeezz has said. If a person loses their rights when they choose to live outside the "natural order," and such order is defined by law, then it inevitably must follow that shop-lifters and illegal aliens need have no rights. Nor speeders, such as myself. In order to remove all rights, the government need merely pass a few more laws until all people are criminals and then it need not worry about rights at all.

Here's another problem with that view. Governments must support themselves and to do so they generally make a claim on the incomes of their citizens. If you believe that we each own ourselves and our own labor, then government infringes everyone's rights, no matter how noble, no matter how libertarian our laws.

But (IMO) this endeavor of protecting the life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness of all is so important that we grant government the authority to infringe rights in order to perform this duty.

[nathan]

Maybe Locke's Second Treatise is relevant:

...reparation and restraint... are the only reasons, why one man may lawfully do harm to another, which is that we call punishment. In transgressing the law of nature, the offender declares himself to live by another rule than that of reason and common equity, which is that measure God has set to the actions of men, for their mutual security; and so he becomes dangerous to mankind, the tye, which is to secure them from injury and violence, being slighted and broken by him. Which being a trespass against the whole species, and the peace and safety of it, provided for by the law of nature, every man upon this score, by the right he hath to preserve mankind in general, may restrain, or where it is necessary, destroy things noxious to them, and so may bring such evil on any one, who hath transgressed that law, as may make him repent the doing of it, and thereby deter him, and by his example others, from doing the like mischief.

Locke's thinking, possibly, is that your rights cannot be removed from you, but that you can put yourself outside of the natural order in which your rights exist.

In other words, those rights are alienable, aren't they?

I had a buddy put it this way: The Declaration was the campaign, the Constitution was the task of actually having to govern. Campaigns have grandiose rhetoric all the time, but they rarely work out.

[ggeezz]

I had a buddy put it this way: The Declaration was the campaign, the Constitution was the task of actually having to govern. Campaigns have grandiose rhetoric all the time, but they rarely work out.

And the Alien and Sedition Acts was the Real World?

[Kafir]

Speaking on my own behalf, rather than on Locke or Jefferson's: Obviously I don't think that we are "endowed by our Creator" with anything. I'm also not sure that I accept rights as having any intrinsic moral existence: to the extent that I do see rights as philosophically useful, I think I would see them as rules of thumb within an underlying consequentialist framework.

So, where the Declaration speaks of rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, I would say that in general a person should be free to live his life as he chooses, because he is likely to be the party with the strongest interest in how he lives it.

The same goes for property rights, which Jefferson left out: I don't think that the deed to a property comes with divine approval. Rather, if you live on a piece of land, build on it, plant crops on it, it generally makes sense for you to make the decisions about how the land can be used, because you will be the person most affected by those decisions.

But when your decisions involve significant externalities--if you decide to pursue your happiness by beating people up, for instance--the language of rights becomes less useful. It's possible to deal with those cases by constructing a system in which limited rights are weighed against each other (your right to swing your fist, the other man's right to keep his nose intact, perhaps a right of the electorate to institute punishments for assault), but it seems simpler (and truer?) to deal with them in terms of interests, instead.

Ggeezz comes to similar practical conclusions, but gets there (as I tentatively understand him) through a two-level system, in which rights have intrinsic force, but can be overridden by sufficiently compelling consequentialist concerns:

(IMO) this endeavor of protecting the life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness of all is so important that we grant government the authority to infringe rights in order to perform this duty.

It makes more sense to me to make it consequentialism all the way down.