Tag: Rights

  • Permission is one thing, a right is another

    Wait, what are we saying here?

    https://twitter.com/jahimes/status/1101599891430797312

    Does he? Does Trump have “an absolute right” (Conway’s term) to launch a nuclear attack? No matter what? According to whom?

    No he doesn’t. He doesn’t have a “right” to launch an unprovoked nuclear attack on, say, Kenya, just because he feels like it or is grumpy or wants to distract people long enough for him to escape.

    It may be that US rules are written in such a way that he is technically permitted to launch a nuclear attack [end of story, no further specific required], but that doesn’t translate to a “right.” The US president isn’t king of the planet, and no he does not have a “right” to drop nukes any time he feels like it. It’s not just that it’s not a wise idea, it’s that the Allies hanged people at Nuremberg for less. It would be a gross crime against humanity and he does not have anything that can be called a “right” to do it.

  • Inalienable

    There’s an issue here; a crux, an aporia, a conundrum, a fork.

    On the one hand, yes, of course, you have to ground all your claims in something. Reasons don’t just fall out of the sky; we have to think about them, and criticize them, and back them up.

    On the other hand, you don’t want all questions to be permanently open. That would lead to a war of all against all.

    How do you reconcile those two items?

    Beats the hell out of me.

    I’m seeing some philosophy types who are annoyed by this idea that some questions should be treated as closed, because hey, there are arguments for abortion rights, and it’s philosophy types who can make them.

    Yes, ok, but does the discussion have to go on forever? And what do we do in the meantime? And what about all those places where it is in fact treated as closed? The US teems with new attacks on abortion rights and women’s right to be treated as human beings with human rights of their own; Ireland doesn’t even have abortion rights apart from the extremely minimal ones voted in last summer in the wake of the death of Savita Halappanavar; but in the UK and many other European countries abortion rights are just there – the question is treated as closed. It’s not clear why we have to start over again from scratch every day.

    Also: philosophy types should not act like Spocks. They should not get all surprised and miffed when women who have an investment in abortion rights get pissed off by dispassionate discussion of whether women in fact should have abortion rights. This is a human thing. It’s human to get upset about controversies that are close to home. There’s something…reptilian about pointing disdainfully at people who get angry about controversies of that kind.

    The reality is that rights were invented as a way to treat certain questions as closed for practical purposes. That’s why they’re rights as opposed to laws. That’s why they are called “inalienable” in the Declaration of Independence. “Inalienable” can be translated as “you can talk until you’re blue in the face but you still can’t take away our rights.”

    Update: actually unalienable, not inalienable. My mistake.