The Paul File

[786]

@quad

We basically disagree on what 'rights' are. So even if I respond to you, it will not be sufficient and I don't want to go on forever.

But I'll give one example that you used:

The ability of people of the 'wrong' race to purchase and consume food in said town - you know, food? That stuff you have to consume regularly in order to remain alive? You know, "life?" That thing that all humans have a basic right to?

Life is a right. But food is not. You have the right to acquire food in any legal manner. But you don't have a right to 'food'. If you say 'food is a right' then you are saying I can walk up to any restaurant and eat, and walk out without paying. Because you don't 'pay for rights'. Rights are exactly that 'rights'.

And then your discussion about property rights and so forth. Public facilities are PAID for by the PUBLIC and they are there for the support of voluntary interactions. Hiring may be a legal contract, but that doesn't make it 'public'. The judicial system is there to enforce contract, not to define its terms.

Government is there to protect rights of the people. Any and all infrastructure built for that reason is to protect the private entity's rights. Not to make those rights 'public'. Your understanding thus that since you use public facilities makes your action as 'public' is stupid.

Marriage is a legal contract too. Does that mean if I don't want to marry blacks because I'm racist that I would be liable to go to jail for not marrying a black? Do I become 'public property' myself.

Your constant private to public conversion is absolute nonsense. Everything public is there to protect the private individual rights not the other way around.

 

[786]

You're wasting my time.

You are too. You are comparing apples and oranges. Racism as practiced by an individual is not the same thing as applied by the government. There is a HUGE difference.

 

[quadraphonics]

Point being that it wasn't really intended to delegitamize anything.

Sure it was - otherwise, why's that a salient difference in comparing competing claims to some territory?

And you use exactly the language of "legitimizing claims" in your subsequent response.

Only if the interruptions themselves are legitimate :shrugs:.

And so, since the Roman interruption of the Jewish national claim was at least as illegitimate as anything Israel has done, we find that the Jewish claim remains legitimate. So now we have to separate groups, each with a legitimate claim to the same territory. What to do?

Thus, it seems that this putative framework for assigning national territorial rights doesn't work so well - it doesn't divide the world up into non-overlapping areas with a single nation having a legitimate right to each piece. Rather, it goes in a circle - leads us right back to the basic problem of incompatible claims with no clear way to decide, other than warfare. Does this offer anything that naked power politics wouldn't? Or is it just so much rhetorical puffery?

I imagine it has something to do with how international law on how one nation can claim sovereignty over another has evolved since the fall of the Roman Empire.

But you can see why that adds up to an unacceptable double-standard, no? It isn't as if the Jews regarded Rome's actions as perfectly legitimate at the time (even if other nations might have), or this conflict never would have arisen.

Meanwhile, the current status of international law is exactly that Israel's claim to (at least some) territory there is legitimate. Which is to say that it does not agree with the position that Palestine is entitled to the territory of its ancestors, as that would include all of Mandatory Palestine. But, again - is said international law anything more than an expression of power politics to begin with?

 

[Trippy]

You are too. You are comparing apples and oranges. Racism as practiced by an individual is not the same thing as applied by the government. There is a HUGE difference.

That you're still banging on that just demonstrates that you haven't understood what I have said.

Besides which, racism practiced by the government is, at it's most basic level racism practiced by individuals, after all, the government is a collection of individuals convened to represent the interests of a larger collection of individuals, so if a government institutes a racist policy it's because a sufficient number of sufficiently racist individuals support the policy enough to see it passed into law, and those individuals believe that there are a plurality of racist individuals amongst those they have been selected to represent, to ensure their individual self interest (for example, getting re-elected).

In short, racism at the government level reflects racism at the individual level, and can not exist without it. If it attempts to, you get riots, demonstrations and such. So no, the two are not distinct, and you can not accept one and condem the other, anymore than you can like bell peppers and dislike capsicum.

 

[786]

Yet rights don't come from governments so it wouldn't matter how many 'people were racist'-

The government has to protect all the tax payers rights. If they do, then a racist government is fine. But you will never find a homogeneous population who is racist thus the government should not be racist either. That is why a neutral position is the only position government can take to protect the rights of all people.

You need to read the Federalist Papers and what 'factions' are. US is not a democracy. Even if 99% of the people want to vote for something that affects the right of people in public or private places. It doesn't count. This is a Republic. If you create a law that does so, then America has failed itself.

 

[Trippy]

And so, since the Roman interruption of the Jewish national claim was at least as illegitimate as anything Israel has done, we find that the Jewish claim remains legitimate. So now we have to separate groups, each with a legitimate claim to the same territory. What to do?

We draw and arbitrary line that is equally acceptable, or equally offensive to both parties and say "Until this point" or "After this point".

Thus, it seems that this putative framework for assigning national territorial rights doesn't work so well - it doesn't divide the world up into non-overlapping areas with a single nation having a legitimate right to each piece. Rather, it goes in a circle - leads us right back to the basic problem of incompatible claims with no clear way to decide, other than warfare. Does this offer anything that naked power politics wouldn't? Or is it just so much rhetorical puffery?

:shrugs: good question. At worst, it at least provides a start point for negotiation.

But you can see why that adds up to an unacceptable double-standard, no? It isn't as if the Jews regarded Rome's actions as perfectly legitimate at the time (even if other nations might have), or this conflict never would have arisen.

Absolutely, however any resolution to the status quo must neccessarily invoke an arbitrary double standard at some level, the trick is to find the double standard that is the least morally reprehensible to the greatest number of people.

Meanwhile, the current status of international law is exactly that Israel's claim to (at least some) territory there is legitimate. Which is to say that it does not agree with the position that Palestine is entitled to the territory of its ancestors, as that would include all of Mandatory Palestine. But, again - is said international law anything more than an expression of power politics to begin with?

Quite.

 

[Trippy]

Yet rights don't come from governments so it wouldn't matter how many 'people were racist'-

The government has to protect all the tax payers rights. If they do, then a racist government is fine. But you will never find a homogeneous population who is racist thus the government should not be racist either. That is why a neutral position is the only position government can take to protect the rights of all people.

You need to read the Federalist Papers and what 'factions' are. US is not a democracy. Even if 99% of the people want to vote for something that affects the right of people in public or private places. It doesn't count. This is a Republic. If you create a law that does so, then America has failed itself.

So when a group of, let's say, New Yorkers, gets together and decides that they don't want, let's say, a Mosque, at let's say, Ground zero, because 9/11 was caused by muslims in the first place, you'd be fine with that?

 

[quadraphonics]

We basically disagree on what 'rights' are.

We have pointedly disagreed on the specific rights at issue here, enough for me to question what your basic conception of "rights" even is, and what is the basis for it. If you don't want to answer, or don't have an answer, then your program of rights advocacy has no credibility - nobody can even tell what you're really saying.

Life is a right. But food is not. You have the right to acquire food in any legal manner. But you don't have a right to 'food'. If you say 'food is a right' then you are saying I can walk up to any restaurant and eat, and walk out without paying. Because you don't 'pay for rights'. Rights are exactly that 'rights'.

That's a particularly cheap way of missing the point. The issue is proprietors refusing to sell food to people, on the basis of their race. If life is a right, then it can't be justified to deprive people of the opportunity to buy food on the basis of their race. Nobody is demanding that anyone give away free food to black people. The demand made by the Civil Rights Act is that black people not be prevented from buying food at market rates just like everyone else.

Are you aware that, before the Civil Rights Act that you want to do away with, blacks who wanted to travel in the USA would have to buy a "Green Book" that listed which restaurants, stores, gas stations and hotels would serve them? Because, otherwise, they'd risk ending up stuck in a town where they could not obtain food, shelter or fuel to leave? How can you claim to respect a person's right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness while permitting entire municipalities to become places where that person is forcibly prevented from obtaining food, water and shelter?

And speaking of "life, liberty and pursuit of happiness," the original phrase (from Locke) was "life, liberty and property." Yet the Founding Fathers - authors of these rights you trumpet - decided not to cite "property," and instead use "the pursuit of happiness." All of which is to suggest that your narrow emphasis on "property rights" is missing the bigger picture of what rights are, and how they operate.

But unless you'll actually advance some definition of such and cite justifications for it, we don't even have confidence that what you're invoking is even basically self-consistent or meaningful. It's starting to sound like empty rhetoric.

And then your discussion about property rights and so forth. Public facilities are PAID for by the PUBLIC and they are there for the support of voluntary interactions.

Right - and that implies that those who want their voluntary interactions so supported, have an obligation not to discriminate against different sectors of the public. Black people pay taxes that support that infrastructure, so you can't use the infrastructure to oppress black people.

As I've said, I'm happy enough to let people discriminate so long as they aren't utilizing any public goods in doing so. And since it's impossible to run a business without doing that, we're right back to the Civil Rights Act.

Hiring may be a legal contract, but that doesn't make it 'public'. The judicial system is there to enforce contract, not to define its terms.

You are missing the point - again - which is that a contract is totally meaningless without a (public!) court system there to enforce it. Without enforceable contracts, you can't meaningfully "hire" someone or run a business in general. There is no such thing as "property rights" without a public court system there to enforce them. Otherwise, it's just the Law of the Jungle.

Government is there to protect rights of the people. Any and all infrastructure built for that reason is to protect the private entity's rights.

Well, then, we shouldn't have roads or water systems or sewege treatment or any number of other things. Where is your advocacy against those? Or do you just invoke all these putative principles when you need to avoid looking like a racist?

Your understanding thus that since you use public facilities makes your action as 'public' is stupid.

Any action that uses public facilities, cannot be credibly construed as strictly "private." How could it?

But I haven't gone so far as to insist that everything is strictly "public" either. The point is that the line between the two is anything but bright and clear. Rather, there is a continuum, with explicit, organized government on one end, and an individual picking his nose out in the woods on the other. Everything else falls in between - and operating a business, in particular, has a considerable number of public aspects. This is why business licenses and various insurance are required to operate one. Corporations are entities created and empowered by the government - without public support and participation, corporations cannot even exist.

Marriage is a legal contract too. Does that mean if I don't want to marry blacks because I'm racist that I would be liable to go to jail for not marrying a black?

No. The Civil Rights Act only applies to hiring and operation of businesses. Nobody has a right to marry you, in the way that people have a right to free access to the free market, regardless of their race.

Your constant private to public conversion is absolute nonsense. Everything public is there to protect the private individual rights not the other way around.

That's silly - much of it is there to serve the public interest. We don't build libraries or roads or parks to protect "individual rights."

 

[786]

So when a group of, let's say, New Yorkers, gets together and decides that they don't want, let's say, a Mosque, at let's say, Ground zero, because 9/11 was caused by muslims in the first place, you'd be fine with that?

The group can come together and say whatever they want. I don't care. They have a right to peaceful assembly and freedom of speech. The only thing that matters is the buyers and the sellers of that property- if they agree to the deal then that is what should happen.

In that specific case: the property owners agreed to sell the property to the Muslims, who wanted to buy it, to build a mosque. End of story. Voluntary interaction.

It doesn't matter what the rest of the people want because its not their property to make a decision.

If the owner doesn't want to sell the property for reasons that they are Muslim then he shouldn't sell it. If the Muslims want to buy it but the seller is Islamophobic then they need to try to convince the seller that they are wrong about Muslims and Islam so that they can come to common terms to initiate of voluntary contract. If they can't, the Muslims need to look for a property somewhere else. Only the buyer and seller matter

 

[quadraphonics]

The government has to protect all the tax payers citizens' rights.

FTFY

If they do, then a racist government is fine.

Ill-posed - a racist government cannot, by definition, be protecting the rights of all its citizens. It would be impeding the rights of certain citizens of the "wrong" race.

A government that protects all of the citizens' rights, necessarily cannot be racist.

But you will never find a homogeneous population who is racist

? Doesn't seem to be particularly hard to find such populations. They're the norm, throughout the entirety of human history.

You need to read the Federalist Papers and what 'factions' are. US is not a democracy. Even if 99% of the people want to vote for something that affects the right of people in public or private places. It doesn't count. This is a Republic. If you create a law that does so, then America has failed itself.

Dude, it took us hundreds of years just to get rid of all of the (majority-approved!) laws that trampled the rights of black Americans. Why you insist that we have to roll that back or face the "failure of America" is mysterious...

 

[Trippy]

Yet rights don't come from governments so it wouldn't matter how many 'people were racist'-

Yes they do.

Without the government there would be no rights for anyone, save those you could enforce by naked aggression.

 

[quadraphonics]

Absolutely, however any resolution to the status quo must neccessarily invoke an arbitrary double standard at some level, the trick is to find the double standard that is the least morally reprehensible to the greatest number of people.

Isn't that what created the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? I.e., the masses of Europe, North America and the Middle East all collectively did what was convenient for themselves, and didn't care that it left a few million people down in some postage-stamp of the Eastern Mediterranean in a pickle. After all, what's that conflict compared to global concerns like superpower conflict, etc.?

I mean, it's true even in the more specific case of the system of national territorialism. That set of principles was selected and empowered because it mapped well onto the post-War European (and North American) geopolitical order. In other places, it didn't map so well, and the tension has led to crazy conflict - Partition; the rise, stagnation and failure of Arab Nationalism (which did massive collateral damage to Palestine in the process); etc.

All of which is to say that I don't think this principle applies to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the way you present it. If the premise is that we should opt for set-ups that works for most of the people, and then just live with the remaining edge cases where it doesn't, then we should just shrug and forget about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It's a small price to pay for stable geopolitical arrangements on the basis of nationalism pretty much everywhere else in the world. Let a few million people suffer - we've got billions to worry about. Conversely, there's the old adage that hard cases make bad law - you can maybe come up with some revision of the basic system of national territorial rights that would correspond to a reasonable solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But if you actually adopted that framework and empowered it, it might well result in much bigger, worse problems in other parts of the world. How much of the world order are you willing to risk overturning, to fix what is actually a relatively small, isolated problem?

 

[786]

We have pointedly disagreed on the specific rights at issue here, enough for me to question what your basic conception of "rights" even is, and what is the basis for it. If you don't want to answer, or don't have an answer, then your program of rights advocacy has no credibility - nobody can even tell what you're really saying.

I feel others who support Ron Paul understand what I'm saying.

That's a particularly cheap way of missing the point. The issue is proprietors refusing to sell food to people, on the basis of their race. If life is a right, then it can't be justified to deprive people of the opportunity to buy food on the basis of their race. Nobody is demanding that anyone give away free food to black people. The demand made by the Civil Rights Act is that black people not be prevented from buying food at market rates just like everyone else.

They can buy the food wherever someone is willing to sell them. Again voluntary interaction. If the government is forcing people to sell something to someone they don't want to sell it to, they are in fact taking away their right to choose their customer.

Are you aware that, before the Civil Rights Act that you want to do away with, blacks who wanted to travel in the USA would have to buy a "Green Book" that listed which restaurants, stores, gas stations and hotels would serve them? Because, otherwise, they'd risk ending up stuck in a town where they could not obtain food, shelter or fuel to leave?

So they would go to a place that was more accommodating to them. Government instituted racism should have ended which is also part of the Civil Rights Act so like I said no one is talking about repealing the whole bill.

How can you claim to respect a person's right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness while permitting entire municipalities to become places where that person is forcibly prevented from obtaining food, water and shelter?

They will obtain all of that from somewhere else, or they will find all of that themselves. They are not 'prevented' to pursue it.

And speaking of "life, liberty and pursuit of happiness," the original phrase (from Locke) was "life, liberty and property." Yet the Founding Fathers - authors of these rights you trumpet - decided not to cite "property," and instead use "the pursuit of happiness." All of which is to suggest that your narrow emphasis on "property rights" is missing the bigger picture of what rights are, and how they operate.

Because 'pursuit of happiness' shows the point even clearly. It is a much freer term, not bound to any location or thing.

But unless you'll actually advance some definition of such and cite justifications for it, we don't even have confidence that what you're invoking is even basically self-consistent or meaningful. It's starting to sound like empty rhetoric.

I didn't know that 'food is not a right' was something that I need to define. 'Life', 'liberty' and 'pursuit of happiness' doesn't include anything 'material'. Life, Liberty and 'pursuit of happiness' gives you the right to PURSUE material things.

Right - and that implies that those who want their voluntary interactions so supported, have an obligation not to discriminate against different sectors of the public. Black people pay taxes that support that infrastructure, so you can't use the infrastructure to oppress black people.

You aren't using the 'infrastructure' to oppress black people. Courts have to give the same treatment to everyone, the roads should be available for all. Everything public is for everyone.

As I've said, I'm happy enough to let people discriminate so long as they aren't utilizing any public goods in doing so. And since it's impossible to run a business without doing that, we're right back to the Civil Rights Act.

So why can I refuse blacks from coming into my home, when my home was built through the use of those 'public' facilities?

You are missing the point - again - which is that a contract is totally meaningless without a (public!) court system there to enforce it. Without enforceable contracts, you can't meaningfully "hire" someone or run a business in general. There is no such thing as "property rights" without a public court system there to enforce them. Otherwise, it's just the Law of the Jungle.

Property rights don't come from anyone. See we see them as inalienable.

Well, then, we shouldn't have roads or water systems or sewege treatment or any number of other things. Where is your advocacy against those? Or do you just invoke all these putative principles when you need to avoid looking like a racist?

? People paid for those things. Why would I advocate against it?

Any action that uses public facilities, cannot be credibly construed as strictly "private." How could it?

All those public facilities were paid by private citizenry. How can then anything be public? Everything that is created by by your own resources is private, everything that involves resources of others is public. This is why I can't place a bomb in the sewerage pipe that runs to my home. Because its not my property. Only the 'public' things remain public. Everything 'private' remains 'private'. Business is built by private resources and it is private, anything public it uses remains public. Its quite simple. The business might have sewerage running through it, but then the public has decided that if the the private entity pays for it so that they get that 'service' - in which case it becomes private. This is why you can't 'steal' other peoples water or electricity because that is THEIRS even though it is coming from public wells. Public has created the infrastructure but when it receives money for its use then it becomes private.

Everything that is public though like roads remain public. And anyone can use it

This is why business licenses and various insurance are required to operate one. Corporations are entities created and empowered by the government - without public support and participation, corporations cannot even exist.

I don't believe in license to start a business. For me the license is only a recognition of registration to help the government with book keeping. It doesn't make it public property. If license is meant to be government giving permission to people that 'go ahead'- then I don't support it.

No. The Civil Rights Act only applies to hiring and operation of businesses. Nobody has a right to marry you, in the way that people have a right to free access to the free market, regardless of their race.

Do you even know what a 'free market' is? A free market is where people buy and sell, and interact VOLUNTARILY. If a street chooses to not sell their goods to blacks- that is a choice made by FREE MARKET. People have 'access' to it, but they can't get anything from it because no one is willing to sell to them.

That's silly - much of it is there to serve the public interest. We don't build libraries or roads or parks to protect "individual rights."

Some things people have decided to allow its government to build so that everyone can use it. Since these are 'public' things like public libraries then everyone enjoys them. Everything else that government does is to protect the individual's private rights.

 

[786]

FTFY

Yeah citizen is better.

Ill-posed - a racist government cannot, by definition, be protecting the rights of all its citizens. It would be impeding the rights of certain citizens of the "wrong" race.

Why did you separate this when I go on to say the very same thing? Pathetic.

A government that protects all of the citizens' rights, necessarily cannot be racist.

Yes it can given if 100% of the population was racist itself.

? Doesn't seem to be particularly hard to find such populations. They're the norm, throughout the entirety of human history.

Nope.

Dude, it took us hundreds of years just to get rid of all of the (majority-approved!) laws that trampled the rights of black Americans. Why you insist that we have to roll that back or face the "failure of America" is mysterious...

I don't believe in 'majority rule'. You didn't understand anything I said.

 

[Trippy]

Isn't that what created the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? I.e., the masses of Europe, North America and the Middle East all collectively did what was convenient for themselves, and didn't care that it left a few million people down in some postage-stamp of the Eastern Mediterranean in a pickle. After all, what's that conflict compared to global concerns like superpower conflict, etc.?

Quite.

I mean, it's true even in the more specific case of the system of national territorialism. That set of principles was selected and empowered because it mapped well onto the post-War European (and North American) geopolitical order. In other places, it didn't map so well, and the tension has led to crazy conflict - Partition; the rise, stagnation and failure of Arab Nationalism (which did massive collateral damage to Palestine in the process); etc.

Agreed.

All of which is to say that I don't think this principle applies to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the way you present it. If the premise is that we should opt for set-ups that works for most of the people, and then just live with the remaining edge cases where it doesn't, then we should just shrug and forget about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

If you apply it on the global scale, sure, but that's not quite what I intended.

It's a small price to pay for stable geopolitical arrangements on the basis of nationalism pretty much everywhere else in the world. Let a few million people suffer - we've got billions to worry about. Conversely, there's the old adage that hard cases make bad law - you can maybe come up with some revision of the basic system of national territorial rights that would correspond to a reasonable solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But if you actually adopted that framework and empowered it, it might well result in much bigger, worse problems in other parts of the world. How much of the world order are you willing to risk overturning, to fix what is actually a relatively small, isolated problem?

My solution is pretty straightforward - draw a line - a paralell, through Israel at the same latitude as Jereusalem, have the UN enforce a DMZ, move the Palestinians north of the line, and the Israelies south of it, and have joint oversight of a UN administered Jereusalem - or something. :shrug:

But yeah, I'm in broad agreement with you, bad decisions made the mess, however, unmaking those bad decisions isn't going to unmake the mess.

 

[786]

Yes they do.

Without the government there would be no rights for anyone, save those you could enforce by naked aggression.

They don't. Government is only there to 'protect' them, not to 'give' them.

 

[Trippy]

They don't. Government is only there to 'protect' them, not to 'give' them.

No.

You only have constituional rights (eg the right to assembly, freedom of speech) because the government chooses to give them to you by adhering to the constitution.

 

[786]

No.

You only have constituional rights (eg the right to assembly, freedom of speech) because the government chooses to give them to you by adhering to the constitution.

Rights come from my own being, when a government refuses to accept them as rights or to abuse them, it is simply breaking my rights not 'redefining' them.

I hold that rights come from my very existence. They are the same everywhere on this world whether someone or some government acknowledges them or not. Anyone that infringes upon my rights does not deserve to rule and should be fought against peacefully, and with violence if need be.

I can understand that this is a subjective point so there is no reason to continue this debate.

 

[Trippy]

Rights come from my own being, when a government refuses to accept them as rights or to abuse them, it is simply breaking my rights not 'redefining' them.

Now go back and re-read what I actually said:

Yes they do.

Without the government there would be no rights for anyone, save those you could enforce by naked aggression.

And stop wasting my time.

There's a key qualifier in there that you have chosen to ignore, which is disingenous.

 

[786]

Now go back and re-read what I actually said:

And stop wasting my time.

There's a key qualifier in there that you have chosen to ignore, which is disingenous.

Now go back and re-read what I actually said

They don't. Government is only there to 'protect' them, not to 'give' them.

And stop wasting my time

There is a key difference between where rights come from and the role of government to protect them that you have chosen to ignore, which is disingenuous.