The concept of human rights is one of the most significant achievements of civilization. I believe I speak for liberals generally when I say that. But I also think the concept of “rights” generally has been considerably degraded.
Awhile back the the late Ronald Dworkin, who was a professor of philosophy at New York University, compared the exercise of individual rights to playing a trump card. “Individual rights are political trumps held by the individuals,” he said. “Individuals have rights when, for some reason, a collective goal is not a sufficient justification for denying them what they wish, as individuals, to have or to do, or not a sufficient justification for imposing some loss or injury upon them.”
The problem is that we seem to have assigned trump status to some rights even when a greater good would be served by denying them. And here’s an example.
Anita Sarkeesian, a feminist and gaming critic, pulled out of a speech she was going to give at the University of Utah. She had received threats of a “Montreal Massacre style attack” if her speech wasn’t canceled. The anonymous email continued, “feminists have ruined my life and I will have my revenge, for my sake and the sake of all the others they’ve wronged.”
The University and law enforcement decided the threat wasn’t serious enough to cancel the speech. Sarkeesian insisted on heavy security, including metal detectors at the doors.
But here’s the kicker: The University decided that people could carry a firearm into the auditorium as long as they had a permit for it. In other words, the right to carry trumped the safety of the speaker and the audience. Sarkeesian not unreasonably refused to give the speech.
Yesterday I ran into an argument over a right to health care. Naturally some guy trotted out his libertarian trump card, saying he had a right to not be obligated to pay for somebody else’s health care.
Where health care is concerned I am less interested in theories about rights than the practical matter that (a) getting more people insured really is controlling cost (b) providing access to health care is part of a reasonable national strategy for controlling infectious disease. In other words, somehow providing health care to most citizens is a positive for everybody. If we make it an argument about rights, however, we just have people slapping down their cards and arguing about which one trumps the other.
And a “right” to liberty doesn’t mean much if you are incapacitated with untreated medical problems.
Lately we’ve had some disagreements over the “right” of individuals to keep loaded assault weapons strapped to themselves everywhere they go. You’ll remember there was an episode in which restaurant staff and patrons hid in the cooler because they couldn’t tell if the men with guns were criminals or just gun nuts. In Georgia awhile back, a man waving a firearm around in a public park caused Little League parents to hide their children in a dugout while the parents stood guard and called the police. But the police didn’t arrest the guy, because he had a “right” to wave his gun around in a public park. Guns trump children.
Around the country the Fetus People are still pushing “personhood amendments” which amounts to assigning trump cards to fertilized eggs. In Alabama, a pregnant minor who can’t get permission for an abortion from her parents must go to court, where the fetus (but not the minor) may be represented by a court-appointed lawyer. A fetus trumps the minor child.
Our assignments of “trump” values increasingly is just about which interest groups are most persistently belligerent and whose lobbyists get the ears of politicians; any sense of “greater good” is left out of the conversation.
Human rights are rights that benefit ALL humans – regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, country of origin, and religion.
Carrying a gun with you wherever you go is not a human right, because doing that can be perceived as an aggressive act, causing others to want to arm themselves.
What these ammo-sexuals fail to realize is that, even in their beloved Wild West, most towns had you check-in your guns until you left.
Sure, you might have needed one on the range, or your way to town, but once in town, you were expected to follow the norm, and be weaponless.
Today, thanks to brilliant marketing, the 2nd Amendment is the only one people acknowledge.
Pity, that.
The rest of us should have a right to walk around, unthreatened by ammo-sexuals who we have to hope are “the good guys.”
And if we guess wrong, we pay with our right to live.
Here’s an interesting story that explains why Anita, amongst many others at this point, is getting death threats, and generalizes to the possible future of the old culture wars playing out in the new media, …. at least I was interested 🙂 http://deadspin.com/the-future-of-the-culture-wars-is-here-and-its-gamerga-1646145844
Today, thanks to brilliant marketing, the 2nd Amendment is the only one people acknowledge.
Yes, constitutions are weird that way. They can have all kinds of unintended consequences. Americans would probably be violent people regardless, but I don’t see how the right to bear arms would be understood in quite the same way if it wasn’t for the 2nd Amendment.
You can compare it to the libertarian’s belief that he has a right to let strangers die for lack of medical care. That one can be traced to general principles, however perverse, but the right to carry assault weapons everywhere has a specific genealogy. Take away the 2nd Amendment, and what justification can you offer for waving around guns at little league games?
The series of Star Trek movies had far more sophisticated debates of rights and “the good of” than we generally get in the USA. It seems as though Gene Roddenberry’s timeline was more or less right, but I wish we didn’t have to wait until the 23rd century to become a saner society.
I was talking to a Mormon at work – he was having a hard time understanding why people resented the role of his church in trying to make law out of his church precepts. This was a few years ago – there was a backlash developing nationally against Mormon businesses because of the role of the church in sponsoring the California ban on same-sex marriage. I explained to him,
“Your church is YOUR club – you joined voluntarily and you agreed to abide by the ‘rules’ of the club. I have no problem with that. I never joined your club – and I have no desire to have you inflict your beliefs on me.”
As a former member of the military, one thing I wanted to defend was freedom of religion – including religions I have no inclination to join. Society – or America is a ‘club’ – and the rules of a state or the country apply to all the people of all religions or no religion. Allowing same-sex marriage with the same rights and obligations of traditional marriage does not diminish the rights of straight people. The courts have come around, and so have the attitudes of the majority.
Personhood legislation is an attempt to impose a religious standard on when life begins. Voters have consistently rejected it and the fetus people keep trying. Who is funding the advocacy groups is enough to prove it’s a move to legislate religious principles – and that should be enough to strike down the law. (if passed)
Gun rights, as interpreted by the court, are not absolute. I don’t know of any judge in any court at any time who has ever suggested gun rights are unlimited and any restrictions are a violation of the Second. (The question has always been – when are restrictions excessive.) The power of the law to regulate how and where guns are allowed still stands. Many organizations, including law enforcement are timid about the hassle of a legal showdown with the NRA. Please, NRA – test the absolute right to keep and bear arms by taking assault weapons into a bank. Wall Street and the economic powers will line up in opposition.
This is not a move to strike down the Second. The courts have affirmed the individual right to own a gun – for defense, hunting or target shooting. You can have a gun in your home or car and any property where you and the owner of that property allow you to have a gun. A school is not allowed, nor is a bank and any business that posts a ‘No Guns’ sign should be able to prosecute a patron who defies the ban. How much the public has the right to limit weapons in public places – is up to the public, but I venture to say it can’t prohibit ownership or place excessive limits on transport. The police and the university Maha mentioned need to stand up to NRA intimidation. It’s not an erosion of rights – it’s an erosion of spine.
Back in the eighties, a friend of mine was breaking into a career in journalism. Since he grew up in Central America and was fluent in Spanish and Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua were hotspots at the time, he went on a tour to dig into the situations.
In Guatemala, he was meeting with a priest and a woman who worked in an embassy. They were in a restaurant. There was a shabby drunk looking on. When they went out to their jeep, he appeared suddenly with a semi-automatic pistol drawn and pointed at the priest’s temple, point blank. The situation was a little dicey, but, they were able to talk their way out of it after a various warnings and a lecture from the drunk.
My friend found out that the government “authorized” certain loyal thugs to carry weapons and to keep people in line.”
This is how the “open carry” crowd strikes me. They are loyal right wing loons who intimidate the political opposition, they know it and they take pleasure in it. They are thugs and wannabee thugs.
It seems that one way we could approach this is through clarification and extension of laws against “brandishing,” and of course, any breach of safety that results in the accidental discharge of a weapon or of it being left unsupervised, as in cases where a loaded gun is found in a public restroom. Certain ways of carrying a a gun are inherently threatening because they indicate a readiness for immediate use. Accidental discharge or “forgetting” a gun in a public place is evidence that the gun owner is neither responsible or competent.
But, alas, this is the NRA’s America. What was I thinking?
Maha – The school Anita Sarkeesian was to speak at is Utah State University (USU), not the University of Utah. The problem was that Utah permits open carry and the school didn’t think they could do anything against that standard, such as check bags or have metal detectors. I agree with Ms. Sarkeesian that she (and the audience) was safest by cancelling the speech.
The threat to Sarkeesian mentions not merely guns but ‘pipe bombs.’ So since when could open carry laws apply to pipe bombs also?
I bet they would sing a very different turn if the threats were coming from scary Muslim-brown-people-terrorists…..