Is there ever a time when personal liberties should be suspended?

The freedoms we take for granted (and are baked into law) are freely operable during times of relative political and social calm when there is no serious emergency that affects a country or more than one country.
These could include war, climate emergencies resulting in hunger, migration, deaths, and disease.
Such emergencies require combined effort to overcome economic disaster, personal early loss and devastating longer term problems which could be softened if individuals "loaned" their freedoms to the community.
When does "the greater good" become the overriding concern for both curent and future benefit (given that you live in a western democracy and trust the government to return your freedoms once the crisis is over)? Does any situation merit your "loaning" your freedoms and rights to the government?

 

The only exception I would make is when an individual forfeits his or her rights by denying them to others, through murder, rape, battery, theft, etc.

I have always been opposed to "emergency powers", such as Wilson suspending freedom of speech during WWI, Lincoln suspending habeas corpus during the Civil War, or FDR putting hundreds of thousands of Americans into internment camps in WWII.

I recognize that this position does not always lead to the most desirable consequences. Tyranny is much better suited to obtaining desirable consequences because there is no inconsistency in allowing liberty if required (the Soviets during the NEP is a good example).

I'm willing to go down with the ship if necessary.

 

When they infringe directly upon another's. I've seen protestors interfere with a loaded ambulance for example.

 

i have a right to peaceably assemble. i have a responsibility not to impede an emergency vehicle. iuf an ambulance needs to get rgrough, i'd try to clear a path.

 

I'm not sure it's that simple. I don't think there is any fundamental right or freedom which applies entirely unconditionally, even in normal circumstances. There are always practical limitations or situations where multiple rights conflict and so need to be balanced. The only real difference in the case of a specific emergency situation is scale and scope, but the underlying principles are exactly the same, as are the disagreements, contradictions and abuses.

 

thanks for this post, pixie. of course we have rights, and they should be respected as far as possible.

but, we each have responsibilities as well. rationing in time of war. cooperating during natural disaster. wearing your mask during a pandemic. you hit on many of them.

 

Only emergency vehicles though? You have a right to assembly but I have a right to free movement. Should your protest restrict or block my journey to work?

 

I'm Statistikhengst and the posting I am quoting could have been written by me, it has my 100% support and approval.

I would add that freedoms are not absolute, that there are boundaries to what an individual may do.

I do not have the freedom to murder another person. If I do that, then I lose my other freedoms, for instance.

 

pedestrians have the right of way, and you have a right to close a different route. by the way, probably the greatest number of protests fit into a category designed to block access to a work site. strikes.

solidarity had a right to block access to the gdansk shipyard, did they not?

 

I could not agree more.

 

Most Americans today have no idea what it's like to give up things "for the benefit of the community". Very few of us were around in the days of WW2. Our parents had ration books limiting the amount of gas they could buy. We were rationed in everything we bought, groceries even shoes. Everyone bought War Bonds and stamps. My god, we saved cooking oil and grease for manufacturing bombs. Our parents turned in the spare tire on their car for the war effort. That's probably why I have such a hard time with people today like the anti-vaxxers. I come from a time when everyone did what was best for the 'community'. Today the only thing people care to do is what's best for them. They don't even care if it has an impact on your freedom.

 

But I wouldn't have the free right to choose my route if one of the options was being blocked by protestors (incidentally, this could be on foot, driving or on public transport, all of which can and have been blocked by protestors in various ways). The protestors could choose to protest without blocking any routes of course. Generally they quite intentionally impact other people's rights to attack more attention to their campaign. That's the kind of difficult conflict in rights that makes the wider OP question more difficult than it might first appear.

I'm not familiar with that specific incident and it seems complex and political so I'm not getting in to it. In general principle, workplace strikes is a good example of this though - should a minority of workers (or eve a majority) at a location have the right to prevent anyone from going to work on that site if they want to? Should they have the right to threaten or attack anyone who tries to break the strike? What about people who work for entirely different companies at the same site or in the same area (I've experienced this first-hand, including the threats and attacks)?

 

Generally speaking, save for the exceptions Steady Pie pointed out in Post #2, my response is no.

I will also submit, in my estimation, that you are approaching this matter from the wrong perspective.

It is the government's obligation to uphold the individual rights/personal liberties of the individual in the execution of its duties - the burden does not fall on the individual to surrender his/her rights. When the government fails to to uphold the individual rights/personal liberties of the individual in the execution of its duties, it violates the social contract.

Finally, permit me to quote a short but important point expressed in the Preamble of the Declaration of Independence:

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. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it...

I cite this not only to reinforce my point about the social contract, but to remind you that rights are unalienable - they are not things that can be "loaned" to government, nor are they things that the government can take away from us for the sake of expedience.

 

It's OK when a Repub prez does it. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/apr/03/september11.georgebush

 

If you do- you will never get them back. The government is not the solution- it's being the problem. That is not what it is supposed to do- but it's what it IS doing.

 

Your first full paragraph, which is also very well written: fascinating and I agree with a great deal of it.

I am surprised that you, as an avowed Conservative, mention a social contract. Please describe for me exactly how you see that term.

 

"Is there ever a time when personal liberties should be suspended?"

Isn't that the definition of jail and prison?

"Does any situation merit your "loaning" your freedoms and rights to the government?"

Well it's not exactly 100% but, you pretty much do that when you join the military.

 

ANTIFA shouldn't do that.

 

ANTIFA didn't do that:

Who caused the violence at protests? It wasn’t antifa.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/06/22/who-caused-violence-protests-its-not-antifa/

AP finds most arrested in protests aren’t leftist radicals
https://apnews.com/article/virus-ou...al-injustice-7edf9027af1878283f3818d96c54f748

Protesters Swarm Michigan Capitol Amid Showdown Over Governor's Emergency Powers
https://www.npr.org/sections/corona...amid-showdown-over-governors-emergency-powers

These guys weren't with ANTIFA ...



A Great America is an America that makes the most AmeriCANs Great!

 

Yeah, rights are not inalienable. However, only you can forefeit them, either through aggression or consent.

 

I dont trust any government.

 

I remember when the conservatives howled bloody murder when Obama let one American citizen into the country who was infected
with Ebola.

It's not about freedom - it's about politics and complete dedication to a "team". If a "freedom" is denied, then whether it is justified or not
seems to be about which "team" they belong to.

We really, really need a viable third party in this country - the two we have are completely dysfunctional.

 

I trust no government to return freedoms once a crisis is over. They tend not to.

"Two weeks to flatten the curve."

 

Your rights are unlimited right up and until you impede on somebody else's rights. You don't have the right to obstruct somebody else's free movement in a protest. That's wrong.

 

Isn't that what I said ... at least implied?