Go check out William Penn here. The only thing I really knew about him before was what Macauley said. Apparently Macauley's been refuted. Penn was a hero! A true libertarian icon!
And check this out from Quaker.org.
Anyway, TF was talking about the foundation of rights the other day. I wanted to see what he thinks of de Jasay's piece, which says, basically (as they intro it there):
Nineteenth-century utilitarians introduced into liberalism ideas incompatible with its essence, thus giving rise to a contemporary “liberalism” that discounts the value of liberty. For genuine liberalism to resist the penetration of alien elements, it must affirm vigorously two basic principles: the presumption of freedom, and the rejection of the rules of submission to political authority.
He also says that rights are crap and should be replaced by those principles.
Richman says, after quoting Jasay's paragraph, which says approximately what I just said:
When some Americans in the late eighteenth century demanded that a bill of rights be added to the newly proposed Constitution (in fact the second U.S. constitution), defenders of the Constitutional Convention's handiwork responded that a list of rights, although necessarily incomplete, would be taken to be exhaustive. Advocates of a bill of rights countered by proposing what became the Ninth Amendment:The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
That seemed to solve the problem. Except that it didn't. The courts have not used the amendment to defend unenumerated rights. Conservative legal scholars claim not to know what it means. Robert Bork famously said it was as if the framers had obscured the text with an ink blot. So despite that language, the Bill of Rights has been regarded as exhaustive. Conservatives glibly parry privacy claims by noting that the word privacy appears nowhere in the list.
Things, then, have worked out pretty much as Mr. de Jasay suggests. Rights are seen as a few islands in a sea of prohibitions. But pushing for recognition of the Ninth Amendment has its risks. Once people start excavating that mine, they are liable to dig up all sorts of "rights" no libertarian would like. Most Americans already think they have a right to a minimum wage, health care, and education. Be careful what you ask for.
For this reason, I am drawn to Mr. de Jasay's simpler approach, although it will be hard to kick the rights habit. Instead of defensively proving that we have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, let's start demanding that those who would interfere with freedom prove their case beyond a reasonable doubt. Let them be on the defensive for a change.
It's one of those articles I have a hard top not quoting all of. [Yeah, yeah...grammar...preposition...mutter...] Right at the moment, I'm having trouble summarizing the rest. Probably too much sugar.
Richman's disappointed, however in de Jasay's prescription for action, "It is worth the effort, however, constantly to challenge the state's legitimacy. The pious lie of a social contract must not be allowed to let the state complacently take its subjects' obedience too much for granted.... The best that strict liberalism can do is to combat this [democratic] state intrusion step by step at the margins, where some private ground may yet be preserved and where perhaps some ground may even be regained."
Richman's response, "Observing today's dismal political-economic landscape, it is easy to think that this modest, though by no means easily achieved, agenda is all that strict liberals can hope to win. But if that's all we aim for, we'll never know if we could have gotten more."
Maybe he'd be heartened by Paul Goodman's assertion that anarchy works whenever it's tried, and [I think it's in The Black Flag of Anarchism] he shows examples.
BTW: Anarchy links.
No comments:
Post a Comment