[lit-ideas] Re: Paying taxes for months on end

Phil Enns writes:

Robert Paul suggests that one can have an inalienable right to something 
but have no need for it.  I can make no sense of this.  Take for 
instance the right to life as protection from violence.  This right does 
not depend on whether at any particular moment I need the police because 
the right
pertains to my personhood as opposed to any contingency.  Inalienable 
rights arise from who we are as persons, not from circumstances.  It may 
be that government grants rights, such as to healthcare and education, 
rights which people like Melinda Gates have no need for, but these are 
not inalienable rights and would be better off not being referred to as 
rights.  If one doesn't need a right, it can't be an inalienable right.

*Since there are obviously circumstances in which (a) my rights are not 
infringed, so that I have no reason to appeal to, or to exercise them, 
and (b) such rights as the right to ‘Liberty,’ which is said to be 
inalienable, may never be needed by some happy fellow in some happy 
place, I think that it is false that if one doesn’t need (the protection 
afforded by) a right here and now, one hasn’t really got that right, or 
that if one does, it can’t be inalienable. I do not give up my right to 
liberty or to life merely because I’m so lucky that in my case these are 
never threatened. Perhaps I should have spoken of the need to exercise a 
right.

[Quoting me]: "One could reasonably say that I have a right to free 
speech even though as a matter of fact nothing I say offends anybody or 
goes counter to anyone else’s beliefs."

However, the right to free speech, which isn't an inalienable right, 
does not depend on the content of one's speech.  Rather, it is a right 
that arises out of a particular politics which can only function when 
people are largely free to say what they like, even when what they say 
is banal or inane.  While the right to free speech is not an inalienable 
right, it has the form of one in that it is a right one has even if one 
doesn't bother speaking out.

*I think we agree, so I’m not sure what the ‘however’ is doing here.

[Quoting me again]: "I’m not even saying that everyone does have a right 
to an education, although I would like to bring it about that something 
like that were true."

But this is precisely the state of affairs that cannot be true of an
inalienable right.  One has these rights regardless of what government 
is in place or the state of that government.

*I think we pretty much agree, although with respect to whether one has 
an inalienable right no matter which government is in power and shape a 
government’s in, I should note once more that this discussion began with 
my response to a claim that a certain right was not in the US Constitution.

Inalienable rights derive from personhood, not contingent circumstances. 
  Inalienable rights do not depend on whether one wants to exercise them 
or not because they are not dependent on one's volition or desire.  We 
do not ask whether potential victims want to be harmed before stopping a 
potential murderer.

*I think that if one is lost in the swamp of ‘rights talk,’ one should 
not try to find one’s way out by following the will-o’-the-wisp of talk 
about ‘personhood.’

[Quoting me]: "I’m not talking about how it is or ought to be in other 
times and places but about rights in the US only."

Fine.  But if these rights are to be derived from the notion of an
inalienable right, then the issue is necessarily a universal one.

*This seems right, but again I was talking about their express 
articulation in the US  Constitution. The issue Phil refers to would 
perhaps belong to a different discussion.

[Quoting me]: "I doubt [the conditions under which the government 
satisfies its duty to the right of maintenance of life] can be decided 
by sitting in a room with the shades drawn."

And what do you suppose the Supremes are doing when they decide?  Of 
course 'sitting in a room with the shades drawn' is an important part of 
working these issues out, though not all that is needed.

*I had in mind a method which would consist only of trading intuitions 
and appealing to alleged a priori truths (or perhaps to ‘common sense’). 
But one might hope that instead of merely doing this they are looking at 
precedent, decisions the same court, if not the same people, made in 
similar cases, and at various empirical facts.

In overturning Plessy v. Ferguson (in Brown v. Board of Education), Earl 
Warren did not say that 'separate but equal' was unconstitutional, but 
to support his decision, cited the works of the sociologist Gunnar 
Myrdahl; and recently when SCOTUS said that the execution of persons 
below a certain age was unconstitutional, Ruth Ginsberg (I think) noted 
that such a decision would bring the US up to the moral standards of the 
rest of the civilized world, and that that was a reason for making it 
(for which she, if it was she, was harshly criticized by the Right).

[Quoting me]: "That a right is universal, absolute, or inalienable 
doesn’t mean that it applies only to goods and conditions that cannot be 
described, lest the right suddenly become itself contingent."

Of course not.  What makes it contingent is its application.  How does 
one determine that a right bears on a situation without reference to goods?

*Maybe one can’t, but why is this a difficulty? The application of a 
rule, law, principle, algorithm, or Constitutional pronouncement is 
always going to be to a particular case (or to a class of identifiable 
things or persons) and thus contingent. And that one must appeal to 
goods, to aspiring to or to having or to creating goods, this would not 
make talk of rights nonsensical.

I resist attempts to reduce ethics to talk of rights, duties, and 
obligations—that is what I find absurd—but I don't find the sentence 
'The police have no right to enter one's home without a search warrant,' 
incomprehensible. An Aristotelian account of why this makes sense (or 
not) would be welcome.

Thanks again.

Robert Paul
Reed College

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