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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   35551 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 16, 2025

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The US is based on this idea yes. But the idea "rights are bestowed by our Creator" is not correct on its own terms. If those rights were bestowed by our Creator, then they would have had those rights. But they didn't. So they fought a war to get those rights. Saying "we actually have these rights, King George is just going against God" or whatever is unfalsifiable. Those rights didn't exist in a material, verifiable, empirical sense in 1770. And if the war was not fought, then those rights would not exist in a material, verifiable, empirical sense.

Hence the position that "right" is a human construct. It exists not as intrinsic, regardless of the claim, but because humans make it exist.

Ah, yes, the "unalienable rights." Each year someone quotes that magnificent poetry. Life? What "right" to life has a man who is drowning in the Pacific? The ocean will not hearken to his cries. What "right" to life has a man who must die if he is to save his children? If he chooses to save his own life, does he do so as a matter of "right"? If two men are starving and cannibalism is the only alternative to death, which man's right is "unalienable"? And is it "right"? As to liberty, the heroes who signed the great document pledged themselves to buy liberty with their lives. Liberty is never unalienable; it must be redeemed regularly with the blood of patriots or it always vanishes. Of all the so-called natural human rights that have ever been invented, liberty is least likely to be cheap and is never free of cost. The third "right"? - the "pursuit of happiness"? It is indeed unalienable but it is not a right; it is simply a universal condition which tyrants cannot take away nor patriots restore. Cast me into a dungeon, burn me at the stake, crown me king of kings, I can "pursue happiness" as long as my brain lives - but neither gods nor saints, wise men nor subtle drugs, can insure that I will catch it.

  • Robert Heinlein, Starship Troopers

I just commented on this. A man drowning in the Pacific has the right to life in the sense that he should live. In this sense we have rights even if they are not respected, upheld, or even known of by anyone.

Its a beautiful book, isn't it?

https://www.themotte.org/post/1208/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/259175?context=8#context

One of my favorites, my only complaint is his hard on for boot camp that makes it take up so much of the book (and after that's done he decides to go to OCS for even more training!).

The word "right" is confusing because it refers to

  1. Things people deserve and should have. E.g. if I have the right to free speech, that means I should have free speech. This is unalienable and arguably bestowed by our Creator.
  2. The realization of #1. E.g. in this sense I only have the "right" to free speech if the government recognizes that right. This is the kind of "right" that people fight for and the kind they're referring to when they say they want rights.

We can argue about whether category #1 actually exists, or is just something that people define into existence, but the discussion will be hopelessly confused without this distinction.

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