2016-06-04

The USexit campaign

“Our jobs are being sucked away from our country, and we’re not going to let it happen anymore, folks,”
— Donald Trump quoted in “Experts Warn of Backlash in Donald Trump’s China Trade Policies”,  The New York Times (2 May 2016)

There are some people in the USA who are intrigued by the Brexit referendum (jobs are being sucked away from the UK, and we’re going to end it now) and see parallels between Brexit with the anti-foreign (USexit?) comments of the Donald Trump (and of Bernie Sanders).

An interesting collection of comments (“letters”) about Brexit,  from Europeans who are not British-born, appeared in The Guardian: I particularly liked a cartoon by Riad Sattouf from France, and a letter in the same article (a couple of contributions down) from Slovenian-born Slavoj Žižek with a wonderful line — relevant to the US primaries — "Socialist nationalism is not the right way to fight the threat of national socialism." 

From The Encyclopaedia Brittanica entry on “National Socialism”, last updated 2016-03-22:

In almost every respect it was an anti-intellectual and atheoretical movement, emphasizing the will of the charismatic dictator as the sole source of inspiration of a people and a nation …

2016-05-15

Inherent rights

Are there any truly inherent rights?

In Thomas Jefferson’s initial draught of the US Declaration of Independence, inherent rights are at the forefront:

We hold these truths to be sacred & undeniable; that all men are created equal & independant [sic], that from that equal creation they derive rights inherent & inalienable, among which are the preservation of life, & liberty, & the pursuit of happiness;
— Thomas Jefferson, Original Rough Draught of the Declaration of Independence, June 1776
These clauses form the basis for the most quotable sentence in the final document, where Jefferson’s original was modified by others to read:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
The US Declaration of Independence, 4 July 1776
Note that “from that equal creation” became “endowed by their Creator”.
 
Published shortly before Virginia native Jefferson’s rough draft, the Declaration of Rights by the Virginia Constitutional Convention contained affirmations of inherent rights similar those made by Jefferson, with an additional assertion of a civic right to property. There was a partial list of rights of men in Virginia, and Jefferson will have been well aware of its content:
Section 1. That all men are by nature equally free and independent and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.
...
Section 11. That in controversies respecting property, and in suits between man and man, the ancient trial by jury is preferable to any other and ought to be held sacred
Virginia Declaration of Rights, 12 June 1776 [My emphasis]
In Virginia, to be a slave was not treated as really human (not a “man” with any inherent or civic rights); slaves were treated as a man’s “property”. Many years later, treating humans as property (because that was what the US Constitution allowed) created the infamous Dred Scott v Stanford decision by the US Supreme Court. There is a world of difference between the metaphysical claim in the US Declaration of Independence that every person has an inherent right to life and to liberty, and the pragmatic requirement in the Virginia Declaration of Rights that people should not be deprived of the enjoyment of life and their liberty.
 
Societies differ and a metaphysical “inherent” right is only worth anything in a particular society if, pragmatically, it is also considered a “civic” right in that society. Any inherent right is only a right if it is an agreed civic right, and that agreed civic right is enforced by civic society (“... the ancient trial by jury is preferable to any other”). To claim an inherent right to “liberty” (from a creator?) might make a persuasive ideology but, in a conflict between different people’s liberties, the supreme authority is not a god creator but some sanctioning civic institution such as the judicial system.
 
After searching the US Constitution for explicit references to what is a “right”, there is one right that is asserted:
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
Of course, those writing the constitutional drafts contained many authors and some inventors … After adoption, there were pressures to clarify what were rights and what society could do to curtail those rights:
The Conventions of a number of the States, having at the time of their adopting the Constitution, expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added:
— Preamble, US Bill of Rights, ratified 15 December 1791 (my emphasis)
In the language of the time, clauses to be added to the US Constitution were further stipulations that either were “affirmative; expressive; not decretory; not promissory” (declaratory) or were “expressing limitation” (restrictive) — definitions taken from a contemporary dictionary by Samuel Johnson (A Dictionary of the English Language; Various publishers, 1755). Decretory is defined by Johnson as “judicial; definitive”; thus declarative clauses — which are not decretory — are not dependent on judicial processes, they just exist. In other words, there were two types of clauses: clauses affirming the inherent rights of individuals (rights independent of any societal process); and clauses blocking impositions on the civic rights of individuals.
 
When we look at the US Bill of Rights, there are no inherent rights defined, there are only civic rights. Ultimately, the designers of the Bill realized that giving general definitions of rights or of admissible powers was well-nigh impossible, and so — after enumerating a few rights and a few powers in previous amendments — there were the cop-out amendments, and no definitions of either rights or powers:
9. The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

10. The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people
In a controversy between one person’s liberty to smoke (a right?) and my liberty not to have my lungs assailed by that person’s nicotine pollution (a right?) we need a system of laws, and the power to enforce those laws. The preservation of liberty does not mean unfettered liberty, rather it means we need strong judicial sanctions to enforce conflicting liberties, and civic society government is the enforcer.
 
For example, a owners of a power station can claim a freedom to produce energy in any way they wish, whereas those who are affected by pollution from that power station can claim a freedom from aggression, a freedom not to have their property assailed by that pollution — their property might be the water they drink or the air they breathe. To obtain redress for this aggression by the owners of power stations — the creators of pollution — requires either civic law or physical force (the law of the gun). Of course, civic law might need to be enforced by physical force.
 
Libertarian-leaning Senator Rand Paul said in an interview with Jon Stewart, when talking about property rights and pollution, “you don’t have the right to pollute your neighbor’s property” (my emphasis, note that it is a civic right not an inherent right). We might ask: who is the enforcer of the laws that say you (as a neighbour) should not have your property polluted? Who has the power, and who creates the laws? Rand Paul is a senator from the state of Kentucky, and other states want to stop pollution from Kentucky’s power stations. Paul tried to introduce legislation in the US Congress that defined emissions from Kentucky power stations as admissible, as non-aggressive — therefore giving Kentucky a civic right to pollute.
 
The liberty (or freedom) of people outside Kentucky to be free from pollution seemed less important than commercial interests or the next election when Rand proposed a bill that "Would rein in out-of-control EPA rule that hurts Kentucky coal families" — this went down well with his constituents and those who contributed to his campaign coffers. A fellow Republican and senator from another state did not agree: Kelly Ayotte said “The reality is that air pollution does not stop at state borders, and New Hampshire should not be the tailpipe for pollutants from out-of-state power plants. It is a matter of common sense to ensure that one state’s emissions are not unduly harming another state’s air quality.”
 
Paul did not think property rights were sacrosanct, in that they were definitely civic rights that depended on the law: states’ property rights — freedom from another state’s unpleasant emissions in your state — were not sufficiently important because his (polluting) state needed the jobs. Whether tobacco smoke is a killer or not (it is a killer) does not affect the unpleasantness of having to suffer another’s cigarette smoke, and whether power-station pollution is a health risk or not (it is a health risk) does not affect the unpleasantness of having to suffer the pollution.
 
Libertarians do not really believe in liberty, when ignoring other peoples liberty is beneficial to their interests. Libertarians want the civic power to impose their own liberty even if this involves deleterious effects on other people.