Rites About Rights

Sure, voting is a right. But it’s not the source of our rights.

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Dear Reader (unless you’re waiting for a subpoena, like Kevin McCarthy),

So I had a long rant in the Wednesday G-File about Biden’s voting right’s speech (actually, in fairness to me, only the end of it was ranty). While I could go on for another couple thousand words, the thing is already a dead letter. Kyrsten Sinema announced she won’t nuke the filibuster to pass the Democrats’ election “reforms,” and Joe Manchin backed her up, so the whole speech was a pointless exercise.

Some think the idea was to pressure Sinema and Manchin into caving on a filibuster “carve out.” If so, that sounds great as a plot device for The West Wing.

I was going to make the—now clichéd—point that the Biden White House lives in the Veep timeline. But then I stopped myself because the truth is that it actually exists in the real world, the meatspace where things don’t unfold according to preconceived storylines.

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  1. David M Johnson

    "There’s a strong case that security—basic personal safety—is the fons et origo of all other rights. This is why some argue that the right to life is the source of all other rights."

    Jonah, honest question, then: when does the right to life attach? When is basic personal safety to be protected?

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    Ben Connelly

    “ Protecting their property rights from all theft—save taxation—yields greater prosperity.”

    Taxation is theft!

    “ My apologies to all of the anarchists out there, but Hobbes, Locke, Weber, et al., were right that without the state and its monopoly on violence, no other rights are secure.”

    Then, like Lucy with the football, you rip it away from us with an apology and some boilerplate…

    Just kidding. I agree with you (although this pandemic thing’s making the whole anarchist thing sound more enticing). The state does have a monopoly on violence - and a duty to use that to protect the rights that we have simply by virtue of being human beings. It doesn’t grant rights - if someone has to give you a right it’s not a right. In fact the sole purpose of the state is to protect preexisting rights.

    “ I thank God every day I live in a culture that operationally believes they do.”

    Do you actually? You don’t strike me as a praying man. I’d love to know your thoughts on the big man since I think you’ve said that it’s complicated. Do you pray to the Hebrew God? Maybe a question for a Solo Remnant…

    “ But far more important is liberal culture. Americans like our freedoms because we’re Americans, damn it.”

    As dumb as we sometimes are, it can be our saving grace. We may not understand our rights in any meaningful sense of the term, but we’ve got a stubborn and unruly streak. That might be the last thing left standing in the way of totalitarianism.

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  3. Walt Paulson

    Sometimes, in fact many times, Jonah’s deep study of intellectual history leads to his getting it right. This is one of those times.

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    GREG BROWN

    If you know so little about how government is organized (as I said originally, a THIRD of the electorate can't answer the question correctly), if you don't know the first thing about our political system, then how in hell are you going to accurately judge the candidates? By their looks? By demagogic patently false claims?

    Ideally you would know that much and a good deal more. I propose that specific question as a way of trimming some of the riff-raff off the voter roles (I'm open to other specific questions)

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  5. Carter B

    When Jonah writes about rites about rights I get all warm and fuzzy inside.

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    Handsome Tony

    Amen, brother

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  7. Mary Stine

    Let's contemplate for a moment if ending slavery had been left up to just the states...Or if the desegregation of public schools had been left up to the Southern state houses.
    Why did Dwight Eisenhower feel we needed an interstate federally managed highway? Dwight was a pragmatist and a successful general..he knew the states could not be relied upon to build highways that might allow successful transport of soldiers, both from a financial and cultural standpoint.
    That is why we sometimes have to have federal government interference.
    Do we need a lot of federal interference in voting? No, but we obviously need some, if only to have a minimal agreed upon standard for fair voting practices.
    However, even the best, fairest voting practices won't work without a majority of fair-minded, educated, ethical voters. Jonah is 100% right in this regard that we cannot make voting alone the sole foundation of our democratic republic...the founders obviously fearing a populist uprising sweeping an autocrat into power. Hence the Senate and the electoral college.

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    Mudskipper

    It is interesting to me that Jonah doesn't start his anthropological explanation with the villagers themselves.

    The villagers are human beings--that is, social animals who come into the world with a complex, pre-wired set of rules for functioning as an animal in a group. They were born with a innate grasp of social hierarchy and behaviors for navigating that social hierarchy. They were born with an innate sense of fairness and reciprocity: I'll spend some time picking the lice out of your hair if you return the favor. They were born with the ability to form strong emotional ties with family members and to favor blood relatives.

    And they were born with the ability create culture. The details of culture might vary, but it will inevitably include notions of how a "good" member of the community behaves and how to punish bad behavior. This includes concepts of rights, which are usually are based on some sort of balance between social hierarchy privileges and fairness. (Interestingly enough, many tribal cultures have a very different concept of property rights than we have. Open-handed sharing is good behavior and refusal to share property is bad behavior.)

    Finally, the villagers had a group of leaders. Social animals always have leaders. The leaders are responsible for organizing the activities of the group--for example, we are now all going to the next watering hole.) In human villages, these leaders would also adjudicate disputes, because there will always be disputes that need to be resolved. Keeping the peace is absolutely vital to the villagers' success as a community. And in adjudicating disputes, the elders would be enforcing the cultural norms of individual rights.

    THIS is the beginning of government. Not the stationary bandit.

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      Jean-Christophe Jouffrey

      Dear Mudskipper,

      welcome to the real conservative side😉: "They were born with a innate..." sense of order, they were social/political animals, and government is inherently good, not a necessary evil.

      All the rest is fantasy from those who think that they are wolves among sheep, who can be ruled by fear, be they "progressives" (à la Rousseau), reactionary autocrats (à la Hobbes), or anarcho-libertarians (à la fake "conservatives" in the USA, which allows them to become reactionary autocrats by turning on a dime, as soon as they feel threatened).

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        Mudskipper

        Actually, Jean, I am on the liberal side. Like all good liberals, I base my concept of rights pretty much purely on fairness. Conservatives, in my experience, base rights on a combination of social hierarchy and fairness.

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    Gerald Arcuri

    "invincible confidence in the rightness of what he’s doing even as he walks from one smack in the face to another like... Mr. Magoo. ( "Oh, Magoo!, he says in a self-congratulatory tone, "you've done it again!" )

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    EricRemcon@gmail

    I agree with most of this G-File edition, but I think the last half is rather poorly argued.

    I AGREE --> Liberty requires more than voting

    The right to vote is vital in a democracy, but it is too simplistic to argue that all rights flow from the right to vote. The hot-tempered voting of a mob can get a society in trouble. That is why an agreed upon set of rules is necessary to hold everyone to the plan. In our case that is the constitution.

    I AM NOT CONVINCED

    “It’s pretty straightforward. We are created by God. Our rights derive from this fact, and it is the job of the state to protect those rights. Someone could respond – “It’s pretty straightforward. Our planet was seeded by aliens. Our rights derive from this fact, and it is the job of the state to protect those rights.” There is no argument, accept God, I’m done here. ??

    If you don’t subscribe to God given rights, you are in your words “standing on the shoulders of the people who made the case for rights as God-given”. It is also too simplistic to say that because humans have an innate need for higher meaning (often used as a tool to control early civilizations either by ruler worship or God worship), we must attribute what we call natural rights to God.

    I think it can be made simpler. We all have a selfish interest to exist (live). For consistency, it must follow that my neighbor has a right to exist. The early pillage plunder cycle forced a need for what I call “dedicated compromise” The raiders see value in staying put and the villagers see value in being protected. It evolves from there. It does not take a leap to “God given rights” for this compromise to evolve further empowering the individual; the villager to realizing he can have more control of his destiny. It takes believing in his right to exist and establishing dedicated compromise among a large enough group to displace the Raider Ruler.

    In short, our rights stem from our belief in the right to exist as individuals and the lesson learned (over millennia) that dedicated compromise is the best way to achieve survival. It does not require a belief in God to be seriously dedicated to working together (compromise).

    I would like to have faith in your statement – “I am open to the idea that our rights don’t come from God, but I thank God every day I live in a culture that operationally believes they do. Because that is the best bulwark against the machinations of populists and politicians who set out to inflame passions for short-term gain at the long-term expense of our rights.” – but I think there are many examples in history that show invoking God is not always a good thing; even as a bulwark against populists. For example, I think there is a pretty good case that a certain Florida Man would not have become president if he was not embraced by a certain group of Christians.

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      Mudskipper

      As a woman, I tend to have a somewhat jaded reaction to the claim that belief in God secures my rights. From what I can see looking around the world at the present time and looking back in history, belief in God just as often provided rationale for suppression of my rights and dignity as a woman. After all, when Jonah's male ancestors thanked God "who has not created me a woman," they had good reason to be thankful.

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        Jean-Christophe Jouffrey

        Dear Mudskipper,

        there is a distinction to be made between what the theological argument is and what each society is making of it, as when David French speaks of the current White Evangelicals in the USA.

        The theological argument is expressed in its concentrated form in Galatians 3:28: "There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus".

        In this extract from Lactantius, which I quoted in my main comment, if he seems to ignore the argument regarding men and women, it is only a sociological not theological bias: "The other part of justice is equity. I do not speak of the equity of judging well, which is itself laudable in a just man, but I mean that of equalizing self with fellow-men, which Cicero calls equability. God who creates and inspires men wished them all to be fair, that is, equal. He set the same condition of living for all; He begot all unto wisdom; He promised immortality to all. No one is segregated from His heavenly benefits. Just as He divides His one light equally for all, lets His showers fall upon all, supplies food, grants the sweetest rest of sleep, so He bestows the virtue of equity upon all. With Him, no one is master, no one slave. For if He is the same Father to all, we are all free by equal right. No one is a pauper with God except him who is in need of justice; no one rich, but him who is filled with the virtues; no one, finally, is distinguished except the one who has been good and innocent; no one very illustrious, unless he has done the works of mercy with largesse; no one quite perfect, unless he has completed all the steps of virtue. Wherefore, neither the Romans nor the Greeks could hold justice, because they had men distinguished by many grades, from the poor to the rich, from the lowly to the powerful, from private citizens even to the most sublime heights of kings. For when all are not equal, there is no equity, and inequality itself excludes justice, whose whole power is in this, that it makes equal those who came to the condition of this life by an equal lot."

        Already by the time of Constantine, when Lactantius wrote, the condition of the woman in Roman society was much different than what it was in the first century BCE, in terms of emancipation. The social revolutions which are the most effective are the ones which happen silently.

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