Quote:
Originally Posted by Wildbore
The right to be safe and secure does exist, heres an example.
This is from the California state constitution:
"SECTION 1. All people are by nature free and independent and have
inalienable rights. Among these are enjoying and defending life and
liberty, acquiring, possessing, and protecting property, and pursuing
and obtaining safety, happiness, and privacy."
Most state constitutions have comparable sections guaranteeing individual and group safety.
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You have some very special powers of perception there . . . The government saying you have the right to pursue and obtain safety does not mean that government has made a promise to provide safety. Your example endorses rather than refutes my position.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Wildbore
Part of pursuing safety means demanding essential and emergency services. If the people demand emergency services, and the government doesn't create them, then the government is a tyranny.
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Your conception of rights is far from the founder's ideals. There are vast differences between the theory of "rights" as understood by the founders and this modern theory that it is government's job is to pick us up and dust us off when we have fallen or unwilling to stand on our own.
First generation rights, as embodied in the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, led to restrictions on the state's interference in the lives of citizens and having their natural, civil and political rights respected by law. The second generation began in 1917, with the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. As a result of that revolution, economic, social, and cultural "rights" emerged. By nature, these two generations of rights assume
very different roles for the state. Those second generation "rights" convey a romantic idea of how the state should take care of us, about how we, as an organized state can somehow provide human dignity and "help" citizens live a decent, happy and apparently safe life.
The modern rants demanding our "rights" to health care, prescription drugs, education, affordable housing, a living wage and that most basic of human rights, an abortion, and now the most impossible to provide, safety, are only demands that others provide what some are unwilling to earn, purchase or provide on their own. Statements that one has a "right" to such things creates a demand on another human to provide it. That is never the true definition of a right.
Such things are of no concern anyway of the national government, at least as far as the legitimately exercisable powers delegated to it by the Constitution.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Wildbore
Just because American law says no legal obligation exists for the government to provide for safety, doesn't mean none exists. Their sure as hell is a moral obligation, given the government is suppose to serve the people.
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Are you saying a standard of morals should be legally enforceable in the courts? Isn't that a dangerous thing to promote? Who's moral code do you think should be used? Who's standard of safety is to be used; one man's safety is another's panties wetting terror.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Wildbore
Also, the right is enforcible. If government doesn't provide emergency services, or does so incompetently, then they are either voted out or overthrown, simple as that.
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OK, an intangible, impossible to quantify right is enforceable by indirect means . . . I think I've got it now.