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There are fundamental rights of man. Government can recognize or abrogate those rights, but cannot invent those rights.

For example, if rights were invented by the government, there would be nothing about slavery that was wrong. If we say slavery violates the right to liberty, then we are saying that the right to liberty is inherent.

wrycoder 1206 days ago

Government seems to be inventing a lot of rights lately that even contradict basic facts, and a lot of people heartily approve.

Might makes right. Liberty, free speech, facts, etc. are apparently just nice theories from a more enlightened time.

pixl97 1206 days ago

>Liberty, free speech, facts, etc. are apparently just nice theories from a more enlightened time.

*Terms and conditions may apply. Please review your wealth, race, gender, and sexual orientation before attempting to use said liberty and free speech in public. US.A does not accept liability in the case of injury or death by law enforcement officers.

tstrimple 1206 days ago

This is ascribing some sort of mythical quality to rights. Rights are simply what a society decides should be conveyed to its people. A country could decide that their people have a right to receiving a free hoodie every November and as long as the country supports that right, those people have that right. There is nothing inherently moral about rights. Countries have many times supported the immoral rights of their people. And people's rights are only as good as the society's support for those rights. There is nothing inherent or inalienable about them.

eldritch_4ier 1206 days ago

This is exactly the root of the “atheists can’t be moral” argument. Not that any individual atheist can’t be moral for the time being, but that a godless society inevitably falls into relativism where the only good is the consensus and the only morality is what you can argue.

This is one of those cases. I think we’d all be better off with an absolute basis for rights than a relativistic one.

zanellato19 1206 days ago

There is no absolute basis for rights and the good being the consensus happens on religious societies as well. What is good is constantly being argued over and over in all societies.

janalsncm 1206 days ago

Believing in an absolute basis for rights ignores the reality that every single right people have was usually fought for during a time when people did not have that right. You can lose rights and you can gain them.

It’s also how you get people arguing that the rights people have in some places (e.g. healthcare, higher education) aren’t legitimate rights even though they most certainly are.

eldritch_4ier 1205 days ago

Believing in a relative basis for rights means that slavery is ok as long as the consensus agrees on it. So slavery in the US was completely moral right up until the start of the Civil War and it's moral anywhere in the world it is fine today (as long as it is legal / consensus). I don't think that's moral at all. An absolute basis for rights is above law or human discourse - slavery was appallingly evil exactly because it was an stain against the enslaved peoples' human rights to liberty (regardless of whether the law allowed it or not).

African Americans didn't earn the right to not be enslaved. They always had the innate human right to liberty regardless of what the law said, abolitionists defeated the oppressors that suppressed their innate rights to liberty.

janalsncm 1205 days ago

I can see now why we’re talking past one another. I am making a statement about the usage of the word “rights”. When I say “you have a right to due process” it is not a statement about an abstract concept but a matter of fact statement about the legal protections you have, which depends on the jurisdiction in which you are physically located.

You’re talking about the philosophical basis for how we come to our individual beliefs about what rights we should have. Note that the conversation is teetering on the edge of an appeal to the law fallacy: what the law currently says is entirely irrelevant when considering what it should say. To say that slavery is legal is not to say that it is moral, it’s just a question of fact.

In any case, if you have an absolute basis for rights I’d like to hear it. I’m not an expert and I’m curious about people’s theories about these things.

jay_kyburz 1206 days ago

I think you should consider what life would be like for many segments of our society if we were not constantly reviewing what we consider immoral.

eldritch_4ier 1205 days ago

I certainly don't think we are always in accordance with our absolute human rights.

In a relativistic basis for rights, there is not "reviewing what we consider immoral", because morality is just "what every we consider moral". Slavery is moral (at least in 1850s America) because the consensus was that it is ok. Under an absolute basis for rights, it's clear that slavery was wrong then, and wrong now, and will always be wrong (regardless of what the law or consensus says).

Under your view, there's nothing wrong with slavery if the government legalizes it?

> There is nothing inherently moral

Morality has nothing to do with rights.

> There is nothing inherent or inalienable about them.

Oh yes there is. The proof is simple - societies that guarantee those rights thrive. Those that abrogate them, do not.

I can personally believe slavery is morally wrong but still accept that a different culture may universally consider that there is a right to own other humans as slaves.

That different culture will be wrong. (And I doubt their slaves agreed with them.)

I did say "universally consider". Presumably that would only be sustainable if the slaves felt it was an arrangement that suited them.

tstrimple 1206 days ago

This is inane. I explicitly said that rights are orthogonal to morals. Why are you trying to claim I said the opposite? Do you understand what words mean?

HDThoreaun 1205 days ago

How could rights be orthogonal to morals? Do you have any examples, either real or theoretical, of a right that came to be without an argument based on morality? In fact it's right there in the name. "Rights" refer to things it would be wrong to take away from people, making them right.

HDThoreaun 1206 days ago

There are absolutely no natural rights. Every right we have we fought tirelessly for, and forgetting that would be a mistake.

The fight is to recognize those rights, not invent them.

Out of curiosity, where do you propose such rights stem from? And would you argue that those same rights were still "natural"/unalienable etc. even in a society that universally didn't accept them?

> where do you propose such rights stem from?

Natural evolution. Human nature.

> would you argue that those same rights were still "natural"/unalienable etc. even in a society that universally didn't accept them?

Yes, and I did just that in this thread.

If they came about as the result of "natural evolution" then they can't be truly universal in the sense that evolution could very well have taken different paths that led to a species recognisably similar to us but whose nature and genetic make up would lead to adoption of a quite different set of rights than those you believe to be unalienable. As it is, I suspect you'd have a hard time getting many groups of humans from millennia ago to agree with you on exactly what such rights are. Or are they all wrong too?

danans 1205 days ago

> For example, if rights were invented by the government, there would be nothing about slavery that was wrong.

Slavery (or it's near equivalent: peasantry) was not considered unnatural for the vast majority of human history, really up until modern era. As horrible as it was, it was also the basis of many feudal economies the world over, and it probably powered societies through the dawn of agriculture, so at least 10k years. Prior to that, hunter gatherer groups also raised other groups and took slaves.

Industrialization had more to do with slavery's eventual decline than any idea that it was unnatural.

This is reflected in the areas where it ended earlier due to earlier industrialization (England, the Northern States of the US) vs where it ended later due to a persistent preindustrial agrarian society (Russia and the American South).

What is inherent in humans is the capacity for empathy and the ability to mentalize about another human's experience. That can lead to a belief that slavery is wrong, but that belief is in battle with the desire to exploit other humans for your own gain.

WalterBright 1205 days ago

When slave societies were faced with free societies, the free societies tend to bury them. Free societies have an inherent advantage, as they better fit human nature.

Human societies across history and prehistory have always believed in destructive and wrong things of all sorts.

danans 1205 days ago

> When slave societies were faced with free societies, the free societies tend to bury them.

> Free societies have an inherent advantage, as they better fit human nature.

What are the examples of that which are not also essentially industrial vs feudal or technologically primitive societies?

That history seems pretty thin.

What's more likely is that freer societies are better able to harness the abilities of their inhabitants, and unlike slavery/serfdom based states, they don't have to deploy as many resources to defend against their own enslaved inhabitants. It's a triumph of a better organizational structure, not something inherent to human nature.

Otherwise free societies would have become the norm far earlier in history than they did.

WalterBright 1205 days ago

> What's more likely is that freer societies are better able to harness the abilities of their inhabitants, and unlike slavery/serfdom based states, they don't have to deploy as many resources to defend against their own enslaved inhabitants. It's a triumph of a better organizational structure, not something inherent to human nature.

I.e. a structure that fits human nature better, making it inherent.

Rome's army consisted of free men, and they conquered everyone else. Slave armies have a poor track record when they come up against free men.

1. https://byustudies.byu.edu/further-study-chart/6-4-estimated...

danans 1204 days ago

> Rome's army consisted of free men, and they conquered everyone else.

Rome relied heavily on slavery. Slaves were 20-30% of the population [1]. The slaves did the labor that allowed the free men to go fight and conquer others. It's not an example of a free society in the slightest.

diordiderot 1206 days ago

> There are fundamental rights of man

Yeah, but not really.

God is dead and such.

tekla 1206 days ago

The fundamental rights of man explicitly doesn't use God as the basis for human rights.

jimbokun 1206 days ago

Historically, some conceptions of them absolutely do.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

[0] https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/...

JenrHywy 1206 days ago

I'm not sure if many people realize the the UNHCR has the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights[0], ratified by ~180 countries. Unlike the First Amendment, the preamble the the ICCPR makes it clear that it is concerned with the responsibilities of States and citizens:

    Recognizing that, in accordance with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the ideal of free human beings enjoying civil and political freedom and freedom from fear and want can only be achieved if conditions are created whereby everyone may enjoy his civil and political rights, as well as his economic, social and cultural rights,

    Considering the obligation of States under the Charter of the United Nations to promote universal respect for, and observance of, human rights and freedoms

    Realizing that the individual, having duties to other individuals and to the community to which he belongs, is under a responsibility to strive for the promotion and observance of the rights recognized in the present Covenant

Article 19 of the ICCPR deals with freedom of expression, and states:

    1. Everyone shall have the right to hold opinions without interference.
    2. Everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of his choice.
    3. The exercise of the rights provided for in paragraph 2 of this article carries with it special duties and responsibilities. It may therefore be subject to certain restrictions, but these shall only be such as are provided by law and are necessary:
    (a) For respect of the rights or reputations of others;
    (b) For the protection of national security or of public order (ordre public), or of public health or morals.

This frames freedom of expression as a positive right, whereas the First Amendment is about negative rights. Also in contrast to the First Amendment, the power to curtail these rights is explicitly given to law-makers, in a limited fashion. Non-legal restrictions on free expression constitute a violation of rights.

colonCapitalDee 1206 days ago

Freedom of speech as defined by the ICCPR is so limited as to be effectively meaningless (which is why ~180 countries have ratified it). It wouldn't protect your ability to report on military misconduct, not wear a hijab, or criticize politicians, for example.

JenrHywy 1206 days ago

The "public health or morals" clause certainly leaves the door open for abuse. But it's still more useful than talking about the First Amendment as if it applies to the whole world.

I also think it's useful to frame rights both positively and negatively, and to focus on more than just the government's responsibilities.

jimbokun 1206 days ago

Are there any courts capable of enforcing these rights and overturning laws that violate them?

sabarn01 1206 days ago

This is a fish don't know they are wet phenomena. Government protected free speech is taken for granted here that people cannot contemplate what it means for the rest of the world.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_power

cscurmudgeon 1206 days ago

> has no interest in US constitutional rights

Not sure about that. I know friends outside the US who know more about US laws than their own countries' laws.

Sorry, but this is just the kind of narrow parochialism I'm complaining about. I said "the vast majority of the world", and I stand by that - the idea that ordinary people in China, India, Africa, the Pacific and so on give one iota of a damn about US law is completely absurd. Furthermore, this attitude is a fantasy even within the Anglosphere - I live in New Zealand, and I bet not one person in 100 could give me a clear statement of what rights the 1st amendment guarantees and what its limits are, beyond the barest outline.

int_19h 1206 days ago

It's a fantasy even in US. Witness all the people demanding that e.g. Facebook "respects their First Amendment rights".

cscurmudgeon 1206 days ago

I am Indian, and I give a damn about US law.

> Furthermore, this attitude is a fantasy even within the Anglosphere - I live in New Zealand, and I bet not one person in 100 could give me a clear statement of what rights the 1st amendment guarantees and what its limits are, beyond the barest outline.

They don't have to. Popular culture is saturated with a low res version of 1st amendment.

What is more annoying about parochialism is every thing turning into mud slinging on the US.

sneak 1206 days ago

The assertion of the US' founders is that such rights are inherent to all people, natural rights, and inalienable.

The fact that it was codified into law in a specific country is an implementation detail. The concepts of liberty in the US documents are philosophical assertions and not related to any nation.

They also happen to be law in the US, but even there they don't really hold force; such "rights" are violated constantly.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_United_States

nautilius 1206 days ago

> The assertion of the US' founders is that such rights are inherent to all people, natural rights, and inalienable.

It very obviously wasn't [1].

sneak 1206 days ago

Nothing of the ideology seemingly professed by the famous US founding set were ever actually implemented. Slavery is just the big obvious one but there are a million other examples of their failure to actually implement their espoused philosophy.

It seems like more of an aspirational/marketing meme than anything.

“As a nation, we began by declaring that 'all men are created equal.' We now practically read it 'all men are created equal, except negroes.' When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read 'all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and Catholics.' When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty – to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.” -Lincoln

s1artibartfast 1206 days ago

The framework applies equally turn on US country so I'm not sure what you are objecting to. If you read the link they provided it provides definitions for different types of free speech ranging from those that are legally enshrined (or not depending on your country), to how individuals socially react and common custom.

judge2020 1206 days ago

The reason is because the audience is likely majority US-based, US-adjacent, or their work focuses on compliance with US laws and customers more than other laws.

Unless you mean the source piece by Ken White itself, which is a specifically about the first amendment and not human rights in general.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Revolution

hodgesrm 1206 days ago

This is a fair point but any discussion of free speech should be grounded with examples of systems that help maintain it, of which the US constitutional regime is one. Not all such regimes have worked, as the French Revolution demonstrated starting 2 months after the adoption of the US constitution. [0, 1]

So my question would be, what other practical examples would you introduce to the discussion?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_United_Sta...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Press_Freedom_Index

Oh? How successful do you think the US constitutional mechanism has really been in protecting free speech? And by "free speech" here, I mean exactly the broader sense, not constrained by a narrow constitutionalist view. To take one facet of the question, consider the World Press Freedom Index:

The country I live in (New Zealand) has no constitutional free speech guarantees, and ranks 11th. The US ranks 42nd, behind East Timor, Jamaica, Slovakia, South Africa, and many other places I imagine your average American would not associate with free speech. Now, I have quibbles with the way the Press Freedom Index is assembled, and it only captures one narrow (but important) aspect of what we care about when we speak about free speech. That notwithstanding, my question to you is this: scanning down that list of countries, does it perhaps occur to you that the US may have something to learn from us, rather than the other way round?

int_19h 1206 days ago

I lived in Russia, New Zealand, Canada, and US. Of the four, US undoubtedly is the best at protecting controversial political speech, which to me feels like exactly what you want to prioritize if you want to maintain a free society.

The US constitution protects controversial speech, in the sense that government punishment is not meted out to people who step out of line. The limits of this are immediately apparent when you ask if people functionally have the ability to speak freely from within US institutions of academia, journalism, or large corporations. I work with colleagues in all of these from all over the world, and nobody is more afraid of saying the wrong thing and having their lives ruined than Americans. The fear is palpable and ever-present. So again, how successful has the first amendment really been here? The frequent response to this is "freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences", which is exactly the kind of legalistic attitude we have to get away from. Real freedom of speech means exactly the ability to say controversial things without suffering disproportionate harm, and I just don't think the US is doing markedly better than the rest of the free world on this front.

tstrimple 1206 days ago

I'm not sure where this perverted view on the freedom of speech comes from. It has never meant freedom of consequences or criticism which is what "free speech absolutists" of today are seeking. To say otherwise would be to force people to associate with others. You're going to force a business to keep an employee who is damaging their reputation or hurting team morale. You're elevating the rights of trolls to the point where it infringes on the rights of others specifically the freedom of association. Free speech absolutists want a captive audiences who cannot disassociate with them and force companies to host content that is damaging to their brand. They have no respect for the speech of others in the form of protests which they label as "cancelling" and rail against despite it also being free speech.

https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/planet-of-cops

I'm not talking about free speech absolutism. What I'm describing here is a specific US-centered cultural phenomenon - thin-skinned, hypocritical tribalism that has turned people against each other, where every conversation that strays outside of narrow doctrinaire bounds, however innocuous or well-intentioned, might be reported on by a remorseless army of cruel snitches ever hungry to find some way to elevate themselves by destroying others. It's the very opposite of being kind or considerate, and, having seen its effects on colleagues, I can't imagine anything more damaging to "team morale". Freddie De Boer has a pungent phrase for this - "planet of cops" - and his essay is worth reading:

I feel focus on the first amendment gives people of this bent cover: it lets them exert incredible power over speech in every practical way, while claiming that free speech is intact because there's no violation of the constitution. The fact that we need to clearly rebut people like this is exactly one of the reasons why I feel over-indexing on the constitution is unhelpful.

erosenbe0 1206 days ago

Businesses don't have freedom of association. For example, in California, the "ban the box" law means that FANG must hire convicted domestic abusers even if it is bad for morale. This of course pertains only to past actions of the applicant though.

[0] https://www.npr.org/2020/03/31/823865329/das-coronavirus-pod...

hodgesrm 1206 days ago

> Oh? How successful do you think the US constitutional mechanism has really been in protecting free speech? And by "free speech" here, I mean exactly the broader sense, not constrained by a narrow constitutionalist view.

Overall quite successful, especially measured by longevity. It has not always been pretty. Politics in the US is a blood sport--sometimes quite literally. And the right to free speech has not been evenly distributed. But there aren't a lot of nations that have offered the level of protection from government suppression offered by the US since the late 1700s. Many of the nations you cite have not enjoyed these freedoms for very long. Nations like Japan and many in Europe also developed their current rights regime under the protection of the US during the post-war period. It's premature to conclude they have done better.

> That notwithstanding, my question to you is this: scanning down that list of countries, does it perhaps occur to you that the US may have something to learn from us, rather than the other way round?

Of course. Just as one example I'm impressed that many European nations do a better job of balancing free speech vs. harms than the US does. For example Germany does not permit Nazi speech, which seems reasonable. They also did a vastly better job of maintaining a civil dialogue about COVID at least early on. [0]

I'm not in any way arguing the US is perfect. You would have to be pretty blind to do that.

https://rsf.org/en/country/united-states

bentley 1206 days ago

I always find it instructive to view these reports at the source. I developed this habit in 2018, when Reporters Without Borders (who maintain the Press Freedom Index you linked) published a report of the six most dangerous countries for journalists: India, Yemen, Mexico, Syria, Afghanistan, and of course the United States. When I read the report, it described how in Mexico journalists are executed by cartels and organized crime, how journalists in Yemen die in prison due to mistreatment, how in Syria journalists were killed in airstrikes and taken hostage by Islamic militants, how in India Hindu nationalist mobs would run down journalists with trucks… and how in the US, six journalists were killed in one year: four murdered by a stalker angry at a 2011 story the newspaper had published (subsequently tried and found guilty of mass murder), and two killed by a falling tree.

Being the midst of Donald Trump’s presidency, of course, there were headlines all over the United States: “Reporters Without Borders ranks US among most dangerous countries for journalists!”. The story was perfect clickbait, especially in that political environment.

I’m not saying Reporters Without Borders is untrustworthy. But I’m skeptical of their rankings by default, because being overly pessimistic about the US is an easy way to get lots of attention.

Here’s their report on the US’s ranking in the Press Freedom Index:

Issues it lists:

• Many media outlets are owned by the wealthy

• Donald Trump denigrated the press

• Local news outlets are declining

• Polarization of media

• Section 230 debates

• Julian Assange

• Citizens don’t trust the media

• Online harassment can harm journalists

• Journalists face “an unprecedented climate of animosity and aggression during protests”

I invite readers to compare these issues to the entries for other countries and judge whether they justify the US’s ranking in this list.

heavyset_go 1206 days ago

The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker lists nearly 300 journalist arrests, nearly 1,000 assaults, 160 court orders, 80 cases of equipment seizure, nearly 50 instances of chilling effects and hundreds of other types of suppression of journalists since 2017[1].

[1] https://pressfreedomtracker.us/

bentley 1206 days ago

That’s a much more interesting source since it aggregates objective facts and statistics. Do you know of a comparative analysis of these stats with equivalents in other countries?

heavyset_go 1206 days ago

I don't unfortunately. I coincidentally came across that source recently while doing some research.

> Donald Trump denigrated the press

He absolutely did do that. But what he didn't do was suppress the press, jail the reporters, etc.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/jan/24/journalists-ch...

heavyset_go 1206 days ago

> But what he didn't do was suppress the press, jail the reporters, etc.

See "Four more journalists get felony charges after covering inauguration unrest"[1]. PEN America, Protect Democracy and the Yale Law School Media Freedom and Information Clinic also sued the government because of press suppression[2][3].

[2] https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/10/16/trumps-at...

[3] https://pen.org/pen-america-v-trump/

Thank you, I did not know that.

bentley 1206 days ago

I don’t think any of those bullets are strictly untrue. The question is whether in combination they actually demonstrate a serious threat to press freedom relative to other countries.

https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/2022/jacinda-ardern-ru...

kurthr 1206 days ago

Wait until Rupert Murdoch sells "News" there.

s1artibartfast 1206 days ago

The parent post that you're objecting to is advocating exactly what you are. Talking about different measures of free speech and how it relates to society. There are both legal and social Dimensions to the issue

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Convention_on_Human_R...

M2Ys4U 1206 days ago

How about the European Convention on Human Rights?

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/European_Convention_for_the_P...

jimbokun 1206 days ago

US companies power to enable free speech culture is strongly proscribed by the laws of the countries where the content is being accessed. I don't see how US tech companies could over come China's Great Firewall, for example, without the cooperation of the Chinese government.