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Comment by zapdrive | Hacker News Reader

Don't forget the attacks on the first and the second amendment.

Without the 1st and 2nd, it’s pretty hard to stop attacks on the 4th or 6th.

One of the issues that has emerged is a strange fixation (which the Anti-Federalists warned of) on the Bill of Rights as the source of these rights. But the Bill of Rights is merely a non-exhaustive index, not a grantor, of our natural rights. These rights do not depend on a document, they exist regardless.

It's frustrating because unless it's written in stone Americans won't even pretend to agree on it, we're a very chaotic culture that craves the predictability of rules and laws (unless they impact me specifically). There's no concept in American society of a universal ethical standard at even the most fundamental level, probably stemming from how much inequality exists.

I think the reason for this is because natural law assumes individual responsibility, and things have gotten far too comfy for most people to want that. So they outsource it to text and there are many experts at manipulating text.

That's an incredibly good way of putting it. As long as you can justify your comfort over someone else's, you golden.

Do you have some alternative in mind? If you don't communicate an idea, you don't even have the chance to agree on it because many people may not even consider it.

I really fail to imagine how a society can arrive at a universal ethical standard without writing a couple ideas down here and there. You're asking for a utopian society of mind readers, which hits me as just a touch unreasonable.

I'm not convinced a society can arrive at a universal ethical standard, period.

I was about to say, "we can at least agree that murder is bad", but I'm not sure that's even the case, given that it seems like some people would think it's ok to murder their political opponents if given the chance.

The standard used to be the concept of Imago Dei. Regardless of one’s individual beliefs it sets up an axiomatic basis for the worth of every individual and balancing that with the needs of a society.

I'm sure that'll work well in a polytheistic world. Oh wait, we've already tried that.

> There's no concept in American society of a universal ethical standard at even the most fundamental level

When I grew up, which was not long ago, we viewed America as that curiously Christian country of the West. Everyone else was very secular, but those American? They're all Christians, they're crazily religious.

Maybe this has become less true over the last decade or so, but I think that you'll find that the percentage of Americans that describe themselves as Christian is still very high. It seems that there is a pretty universal ethical standard at the most fundamental level. It just turns out that, like all things in life, people disagree about how to translate broad, abstract moral claims into concrete policies. You might agree on a 'separation of church and state' or 'free speech' but that doesn't mean you agree on what that means in practice. Does it mean that public officials shouldn't be allowed to display religious symbols, like it does in France? Does it mean that Islamic headscarves on women and crucifix necklaces are banned in schools? Does the UK have separate religion and state? Certainly its political process is less influenced by religious voting blocs than America's. But its head of state is Supreme Governor of the Church of England. These things are complicated.

> These rights do not depend on a document, they exist regardless.

Damn straight!

One approach I’ve tried in the past is to explain that the people start with all rights, the government starts with zero privileges, and the explicit examples codified in the Constitution are simply bare minimum examples of lines that shall never be crossed.

The militia prefatory clause of the 2nd amendment is a great example of this as explained by Scalia in Heller. It’s not that that the right to bear arms is solely for members of a militia. It’s simply one example of how the individual freedom (that innately exists!) may be exercised.

yes it would be difficult to succeed when one rounds up a militia of torches and pitchforks, vs an opposor equipped with muskets.

an inherent right to defend ones self includes ability to equip to do so effectively

That's meaningless. 'Rights' are a legal concept. They exist in law, nowhere else. You cannot just assert that they 'exist'. Where do they exist? Where are they enumerated? Who decides what is and isn't a 'right'? If I say I have a right, is that determinative? Is it based on what people thought in the 18th century, or what we think today? Much of what we think today is influenced by how people have interpreted those documents, so basing it on people's views today means it's essentially circular.

People assert they have all sorts of rights all the time. Most of them conflict with other rights that other people assert exist, and even other rights that they themselves assert exist. What do we do about this?

I actually think 'rights' legislation is pretty stupid. It's a lot easier to write an Act that says 'Every one has the right to a free, public and comprehensive secular education' than it is to write an Act that provides a free, public and comprehensive secular education system. The latter requires sorting out what all of those things actually mean in practice. What level of education do you provide for free? What level of choice do people have about their children's education, vs the view that as a society we should protect children from the 'bad' decisions of their parents? That also means protecting them from their parents' good decisions. Are we okay with that? What does it mean for education to be secular. Are they allowed to learn about religion? Are they allowed to close the school at lunchtime and teach religion in the afternoon, unofficially, as often happens? Concrete systems are much more important and much more effective than any abstract statement of 'rights'.

Say what you want about the second, the fastest growing groups to embrace it are black communities and the LGBTQ community and they as a whole take it fast more seriously, borderline professionally, than any other group I've ever seen. I used to be a skeptic but seeing that has really been eye opening.

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