Rights and Duties – Page 2 – Maverick Philosopher

God and Our Rights

Conservatives regularly say that our rights come from God, not from the state. It is true that they do not come from the state. But if they come from God, then their existence is as questionable as the existence of God. Now discussions with leftists are not likely to lead anywhere; but they certainly won't lead anywhere if we invoke premises leftists are sure to reject. The Left has always been reliably anti-religion and atheist, and so there is no chance of reaching them if we insist that rights come from God. So from a practical point of view, we should not bring up God in attempts to find common ground with leftists. It suffices to say that our rights are natural, not conventional. We could say that the right to life, say, is just there, inscribed in the nature of things, and leave it at that. Why wave a red flag before a leftist bull who suspects theists of being closet theocrats?

Now I am not sanguine about the prospects of fruitful discussion with leftists, but we ought to make the effort since talking with is better than shooting at. Apart from our practical interests, the topic is theoretically fascinating.

The following aporetic tetrad is a partial map of the conceptual terrain:

1) Unalienable rights, and the duties they generate, have an absolute character incompatible with their being conferred or withheld arbitrarily by those who happen to control the state apparatus.

2) Rights and duties cannot have this absolute character unless their source is God.

3) There are unalienable rights.

4) There is no God.

Although individually plausible, the members of this foursome are collectively inconsistent. So something has to give. (1) is a conceptual truth and so is not up for rejection.

Suppose you endorse (1), (2), and (3). You would then have a valid argument for the rejection of (4) and thus for the existence of God.

But (2) is not self-evident. And so the argument to God is not rationally compelling. It is epistemically possible that moral absolutes 'hang in the air' with no need of support by an Infinite Mind. An atheist could validly argue from (1), (3), and (4) to the negation of (2).

More drastically, one could validly argue that there are no unalienable rights via the acceptance of (1), (2), and (4). Imagine a naturalist who argues that if there were unalienable rights, they would have to have the absolute character that only God could ground, but that, since there is no God, there are no unalienable rights.

From a logical point of view, that argument is as good as the other two.

I have reasons to not be a metaphysical naturalist, and I have a strong intuition that some rights are absolute and unalienable; I am therefore within my epistemic rights in accepting the argument to God, despite its not being rationally compelling. But then no argument for any substantive thesis in a subject like this is rationally compelling.

Norms in Nature? Some Doubts

Our friend Malcolm Pollack, riffing on some complaints of mine about Michael Anton's talk of natural rights, wrote the following:

Rights are normative in their essence, while Nature simply is. Therefore, I see only two possibilities:

1) “Natural” rights flow from an intrinsic source of normative authority. Since brute and indifferent Nature cannot be such a source, then for such rights to exist in themselves, as opposed to being mere conventions and intuitions, requires the existence of God. They are therefore “natural” rights in virtue of our nature qua creations of a transcendent and normatively authoritative Deity.

2) There is in fact no such authoritative source, and so natural rights are nonsense. (Upon stilts.) It may be in our nature to have the intuitions we do about possessing such rights, but it is a category error to imagine that rights themselves can originate in the material world.

In response, I pointed out that this is far too quick inasmuch as there are Aristotelians who seek to ground norms in nature herself. These thinkers do not accept what to Pollack and the modern mind seems self-evident, namely, that there is a gap between the normative and the factual that disallows any derivation of normative claims from factual ones. One prominent Aristotelian is Philippa Foot. So let's see what she has to say.

I think there are reasons to be skeptical about locating norms in nature, in particular moral norms. If these reasons are credible then we have reason to be skeptical of the notion of a natural right if a natural right is understood to be, not just a non-conventional right, but a right grounded in the natural world.

Foot Notes

Philippa Foot, following Michael Thompson, speaks of Aristotelian categoricals. "The deer is an animal whose form of defence is flight" is an example. (Natural Goodness, Oxford UP, 2001, 34) The sentence is "about a species at a given historical time . . . ." (29) Foot is not assuming the immutability of species. But species must have a "relative stability" if true Aristotelian categoricals are to be possible at all. (29) "They tell us how a kind of plant or animal , considered at a particular time, and in its natural habitat, develops, sustains itself, defends itself, and reproduces." (29)

Foot, stepping beyond Thompson, stresses the teleological aspect of Aristotelian categoricals. "There is an Aristotelian categorical about the species peacock to the effect that the male peacock displays his brilliant tail in order to attract a female during the mating season." (31) Not that the male strutting his stuff has any such telos in mind. The thought here is that there is a teleology in nature that works itself out below the level of conscious mind. The heliotropism in plants is another example of a kind of teleology in nature below the level of conscious mind. Plants 'strive' to get into the light, but not consciously. Migrating birds are not trying to get somewhere warmer with better eats; they do not have this end in view. And yet the migratory operation is teleologically directed. Why do the birds head south? In order to survive the winter, find food, and reproduce. This is an example of a teleological explanation.

The idea is that there are purposes or Aristotelian final causes at work in the natural world. They are just there for an Aristotelian naturalist like Foot. God did not put them there. Nature is not a divine artifact. If it were, then of course nature would embody divine purposes. As I read Foot, however, she is saying that there is a teleology built into nature whether or not God exists.

In a slogan: Nature is naturally teleological. To be precise, the world of living things is essentially and intrinsically goal-directed. Plants 'strive' toward the light; their roots 'seek' water and nutrients. This goal-directedness is essential to them. They wouldn't be what they are without it.

The Crucial Question

Can we say of an individual plant or animal that it is intrinsically good or bad independently of our interests or desires? This is the crucial question that Foot answers in the affirmative. Norms are ingredient in nature herself; they are not projected by us or expressive of our psychological attitudes. They are ingredient not in all of nature, but in all of living nature. Living things bear within them norms that ground the correctness of our evaluations. Evaluation occurs at "the intersection of two types of propositions: on the one hand, Aristotelian categoricals (life form descriptions relating to the species), and on the other, propositions about particular individuals that are the subject of evaluation." (33)

Foot bravely resists the fact-value and fact-norm dichotomies. (You could say she will not stand for them.) Values and norms are neither ideal nor abstract objects in a Platonic realm apart, as Continental axiologists such as Max Scheler and Nicolai Hartmann maintained, nor are they psychological projections. Nor do they come from God. They are intrinsically ingredient in natural facts.

How does the resistance to the dichotomies go? We start with an Aristotelian categorical such as 'The deer is an animal whose form of defense is flight.' The sentence is "about a species at a given historical time . . . ." (29) The individual as a member of its species is intrinsically or naturally good if it is able to serve its species by maintaining itself in existence and reproducing. The species sets a standard that the individual specimen either meets or fails to meet. Thus the species is inherently normative.

I now note something not mentioned by Foot but which I think is true. An individual organism does not reproduce itself; it produces (usually in conjunction with an opposite sexed partner) an organism distinct from itself, the offspring. Thus an individual's 'reproduction' is quite unlike an individual's self-maintenance. It is the species that reproduces itself, strictly speaking, not the individual. A biological individual needs ancestors but it doesn't need descendants. The species needs descendants. Otherwise it becomes extinct.

Evaluation of Humans in Light of Contribution to Species?

I mention this to underscore the fact that Foot evaluates individuals and their parts, traits, and actions in the light of the species to which the individual belongs. The goodness of a living thing "depends directly on the relation of an individual to the 'life form' of its species." (27) This is said to hold for all living things including human animals. It would seem to follow that human individuals have no ultimate intrinsic value or goodness as individuals: their value and goodness is relative to the contribution they make to the health and preservation of the species. This is going to be a problem for those of us with a personalist bent. Perhaps we could say that for Foot man is a species-being in that his existence and flourishing are necessarily tied to his being a specimen of a species. (It would make an interesting post to explore how this relates, if it does, to the Marxian notion of Gattungswesen.)

For example, suppose a deer is born with deformed limbs that prevent its engaging in swift flight from predators. This fact about it makes it an intrinsically or naturally bad deer. For such a deer will not be able to serve its species by preserving itself in existence until it can reproduce. The evaluation of an individual deer is conducted solely in the light of its relation to its species. It is not evaluated as an individual in its own right.

I am not suggesting that deer be evaluated as individuals in their own right with an intrinsic moral worth that would make it wrong to treat them as means to our ends as opposed to treating them as ends in themselves. What I am doing is preparing to resist Foot's claim that human beings can be evaluated in the same way that plants and non-human animals are evaluated.

Or consider the roots of an oak tree. (46) What makes them good roots? In virtue of what do they have this evaluative/normative property? They are good because they are robust, not stunted; they go deep and wide in search of water and nutrients; they do not remain near the surface or near the tree. They are good because they are healthy. They are healthy because they preserve the oak in existence so that it can contribute to the propagation of the species. Bad roots, then, are defective roots, roots that don't serve the propagation of the species.

So evaluative properties are 'rooted in' — pun intended! — factual, empirically discernible, characteristics of living things. (The empirical detectability of normative properties makes Foot a cognitivist in meta-ethics.) The vitality of the roots and their goodness are one in reality. We can prise apart the factual from the evaluative mentally, but in reality there is no distinction. Foot does not say this in so many words, but surely this is what her position implies. Somehow, the factual and the normative are one. There is no dichotomy, split, dualism — at least not in reality outside the mind. If so, there is no problem of deriving norms from facts. The facts of nature are 'already' normative. The rabbit is already in the hat: no magic. The health of the roots and their goodness are somehow the same.

Foot would of course resist the following Moorean move: "These roots are healthy, but are they good?" You may recall that G. E. Moore famously responded to the hedonist's claim that the only goods are pleasures by asking, in effect: But is pleasure good? The point is that the sense of 'good' allows us reasonably to resist the identification of goodness and pleasure. For it remains an open question whether pleasure really is good.

Dualism in Through the Back Door

Note, however, that this monism is purchased in the coin of an extramental dualism, namely, that between species and specimen. The normative properties are 'inscribed' in the species if you will. A three-legged cat is a defective cat, but still a cat: it is is a defective specimen of its species. The generic generalization 'Cats are four-legged' cannot be refuted by adducing a three-legged cat. This is because 'cat' in the Aristotelian categorical, which is a generic generalization, is about the species, or, as Foot also writes, the life form of the species, which is distinct from any and all of its specimens. The species is normative for its specimens. The species is not identical to any one of its specimens, nor is it identical to all the specimens taken together.

In sum, the sameness or 'monism' of normative and factual properties presupposes the dualism of species and specimen. The ontological status of species, however, remains murky.

The idea, then, is that the species to which the individual organism belongs encapsulates norms of goodness for its members which the individual either meets or fails to meet. If an individual deer, say, satisfies the norms 'inscribed' in the species to which it belongs, then it is a good deer. Otherwise it is not. This allows for evaluations to be objectively either true or false.

Interim Critical Remarks

A. This naturalistic scheme strikes me as obscure because the status of species has not been sufficiently clarified. Aristotelian categoricals are generic statements about species, but what exactly are species or the "life forms of species"? The species peacock presumably exists only in individual peacocks, but is not identical to any such individual or to the whole lot of them. (The species is not an extensional entity such as a mereological sum, or a set.) It looks to be an immanent universal, a one-in-many. And this in a two-fold sense: (i) the species is in the individual as a sort of ontological constituent of it, and (ii) a species cannot exist uninstantiated. (A transcendent universal is a one-over-many.) But then species, as immanent universals, are not natural in the very same sense in which an individual peacock is natural, i.e., in space and time at a definite spatiotemporal location, and only there. (Immanent universals are multiply located.) So Foot's natural norms are not natural in the same sense in which the organisms of which they are the norms are natural.

I am tempted to say, with a certain amount of poetic excess, that Foot's natural norms are secularized Platonic Forms, Forms that that been brought down from the superlunary and installed in the sublunary.

There are two senses of 'nature' in play here as you may have noticed. In one sense, nature is just the space-time system and its contents. In this sense, nature is just the physical universe, the material world. In a second sense, a nature is an essence. Thus it is man's nature to be rational as it is God's nature to be good; but only man is a natural being, i.e., a denizen of the material world. God by contrast is a super-natural being.

One could say that for an Aristotelian, 'sublunary' natures (essences that encapsulate norms) are in nature (the space-time system). God's nature (essence), however, is not in nature (the space-time manifold).

So there still is a fact-norm distinction in the form of the distinction between a member of a living species and the species. The member is a physical individual, a particular lion for example. The species is an essence which is not a physical individual but an immanent universal. This whole scheme will remain murky until it is explained what a species is and how it is present in its members. We are entangled in the the ancient problem of universals. Foot's norms are not outside of things in a realm apart, nor are they in the mind; they are 'in' things, but not parcelled out among the things they are in. But what does this 'in' mean exactly?

My experience with Aristotelians is that they do not satisfactorily confront, let alone solve, the various problems that arise in this connection.

B. My second remark concerns an individual organism that cannot serve its species such as an infertile human male, or a human female who cannot have children and is therefore biologically defective in this respect. Does her biological defect make her a bad human being? Foot would seem to have to say yes: the defective woman does not come up to the norm for her species. She is abnormal in a normative sense and not merely in a statistical sense. She is not a good woman! How is this any different from the case of the lame deer? A lame deer is a defective deer, hence not a good deer. It is not a good deer because it cannot flee from predators thereby maintaining its life so that it can go on to procreate and serve its species by so doing. Likewise, a woman who cannot reproduce and fulfill her function in service to her species is a defective woman who fails of her purpose and is therefore a bad woman, not morally bad, of course since no free will is involved, but objectively bad nonetheless.

Foot wants to bring normativity down to earth from Plato's heaven; at the same time she wants to extrude it from the mind and install it in natural things outside the mind. This makes plenty of sense with respect to plants and non-human animals. But of course she wants to extend her scheme to humans as well. This is where trouble starts.

Foot sees the individual organism in the light of the species: as a specimen of the species and not as an individual in its own right. This is not a problem for plants and non-human animals, with the possible exception of our pets. But Foot wants to extend her natural normativity scheme to humans as well. But how can what I ought to do, and what I ought not to do, and what I should be and how I should be be dictated by my species membership? Am I just an animal, a bit of the world's fauna? I am an animal, but I am also a person: not just a material object in a material world, but a conscious and self-conscious subject for whom there is a world.

The personalist approach I take does not sit well within an Aristotelian naturalism.

Is Life the Ultimate Principle of Evaluation?

C. For Foot, as for Nietzsche, life is the ultimate principle of evaluation, physical life, natural life, the life of material beings in space and time, mortal life, life that inevitably loses in the battle against death. So the goodness of a human action or disposition is "simply a fact about a given feature of a certain kind of living thing." (5) Badness, then, is natural defect and this goes for humans too: "moral defect is a form of natural defect." (27) Dwell on that for a moment: MORAL defect is a form of natural defect. A morally bad man, however, is not morally bad qua animal, but qua person where personhood includes free agency. How then can moral defect be a form of natural defect? If I am wholly natural, just a highly evolved animal, then I am subject to nature's determinism which is arguably incompatible with moral responsibility and freedom of the will.

If Foot is right, then a moral defect in a person is never a spiritual defect, but in every case a natural defect. The good man is the healthy man, the well-functioning man, where moral health is just a kind of natural health. But the health of a healthy specimen derives from its exercise of its proper function which is dictated by its species. A healthy specimen is one that serves its species. A good tiger is a good predator, and woe unto you if you a member of a species that is prey to such a predator. The tiger's job is to eat you and to be a good tiger he must do his job well. And so it seems that a good Aryan man would then be a man who serves the Aryan race by developing all his faculties so that he can most effectively secure the Lebensraum and such that he needs, not just to survive, but to flourish, and above all to procreate and propagate, and woe unto you if you are a member of weaker race, a Slavic race, say, fit to be slaves of a master race. As a member of a race incapable of exercising to the full the virtues (powers) of a characteristic member of a master race, one is then, naturally, sub-human, an Untermensch. A Mensch, to be sure, but a defective Mensch, and because naturally defective, or at least naturally inferior, then naturally bad and thus morally bad.

This appears to be a consequence of taking life to the the ultimate principle of evaluation.

At this point the fans of Foot are beginning to scream in protest. But my point here is not to smear Foot, but to explore her kind of meta-ethical naturalism. Actually, I am just trying to understand it. But to understand a position you have to understand what it entails. There is philosophy-as-worldview and philosophy-as-inquiry. This is the latter. My intent is not polemical.

Anti-Individualist and Anti-Personalist?

Foot's naturalism seems to imply a sort of anti-individualism and anti-personalism. Foot views the individual human being as an organism in nature, objectivistically, biologically, from an external, third-person point of view. She sees a man, not as a person, a subject, but as a specimen of a species, an instance of a type, whose value it tied necessarily to fulfilling the demands of the type. She also seems to be suggesting that one's fulfillment as a human being necessarily involves living in and through and for the species, like a good Gattungswesen.

So even if a position like Foot's has the resources to prevent a slide into eugenics, or into the sort of racism that would justify slavery and the exploitation of the naturally inferior, there is still the troubling anti-personalism of it.

A Denial of Transcendence?

How then could a monk's choice of celibacy for himself be a morally good choice? Presumably only if it contributes to the flourishing of the human species. But suppose our monk is not a scientist, or any other benefactor of humanity, but a hermit wholly devoted to seeking union with God. Could Foot's framework accommodate the goodness of such a life choice? It is not clear to me how. It would seem that the choice to become a celibate monk or nun who lives solely for union with God would have to be evaluated on a Footian meta-ethics as morally bad, as a defective life choice. The implication would seem to be that such a person has thrown his life away.

Now of course that would be the case if there is no God. But suppose that God and the soul are real. Could a Footian stance accommodate the moral choiceworthiness of the eremitic monk's choice on that assumption? It is not clear to me how.

In What Sense are We Equal? Equality, Natural Rights, and Propositionism

Michael Anton (Publius Decius Mus), in a review of Thomas G. West, The Political Theory of the American Founding speaks of an "error,"

. . . from a certain quarter of the contemporary Right, which holds that any appeal to equal natural rights amounts to “propositionism”—as in, the “proposition that all men are created equal”—which in turn inevitably leads to the twin evils of statist leveling and the explicit or tacit denial that there is anything distinct[ive] about the American nation. In this telling, “all men are created equal” is dangerous nonsense that means “all men are exactly the same.” Among other dismal policies we are allegedly compelled to enact if we recognize the existence of equal natural rights are redistribution, racial quotas, and open borders.

Refuting this is easy, and well-trodden, ground.

[. . .]

West does so, in perhaps the clearest articulation of natural human equality penned since the founding itself. The idea is elegantly simple: all men are by nature equally free and independent. Nature has not—as she has, for example, in the case of certain social insects— delineated some members of the human species as natural rulers and others as natural workers or slaves. (If you doubt this, ask yourself why—unlike in the case of, say, bees—workers and rulers are not clearly delineated in ways that both groups acknowledge and accept. Why is it that no man—even of the meanest capacities—ever consents to slavery, which can be maintained only with frequent recourse to the lash?) No man may therefore justly rule any other without that other’s consent. And no man may injure any other or infringe on his rights, except in the just defense of his own rights. The existence of equal natural rights requires an equally natural and obligatory duty of all men to respect the identical rights of others.

I find this articulation of human equality far from clear. What bothers me is the sudden inferential move in the passage quoted from the factual to the normative. I agree arguendo that it is a fact about human beings that

1) No man ever consents to slavery

but I don't see how we can validly infer from (1) the normative claim that

2) No man may justly rule any other without that other's consent.

I maintain that slavery is a grave moral evil and a violation of a basic human right, one possessed by all humans and possessed by all equally. My point, however, is that the moral impermissibility of slavery does not immediately follow from the fact, if it is a fact, that no human ever consents to be enslaved. If I don't consent to your enslaving me, how does that make it morally wrong for you to enslave me?

The problem is that the notion of a natural right is less than perspicuous. Part of what it means to say that a right is natural is that it is not conventional. We don't have rights to life, liberty, and property because some body of men has decided to grant them to us. We have them inherently or intrinsically. We don't get them from the State; we have them whether or not any state exists to secure them as a good state must, or to deprive us of them as a bad state will.

Rights are logically antecedent to contingent social and political arrangements, and thus logically antecedent to the positive law (the law enacted by a legislature). One can express this by saying that rights are not conventional but natural. But then 'natural' just means 'not conventional.'

Suppose our rights as individual persons come not from nature but from God. Then their non-conventionality would be secured. Now it would be good if we could proceed in political philosophy without bringing God into it. But then we face the problem of explaining how norms could be ingredient in nature.

Perhaps someone can explain to me how my right not to be enslaved could be grounded in my being an animal in the material world. How could any of my rights as an individual person be grounded in my being an animal in nature? I am open for instruction.

One could just insist that rights and norms are grounded in nature herself. But that would be metaphysical bluster and not an explanation.

To put it another way, I would like someone to explain how 'natural right' is not a contradictio in adiecto, provided, of course, that by a natural right we mean more than a non-conventional right, but a right that is non-conventional and somehow ingredient in or grounded in nature.

And let's never forget the obvious: as natural beings, as part of the fauna of the space-time system, we are manifestly not equal either as individuals or as groups.

So I say that if you want to uphold intrinsic and unalienable rights, rights that do not have their origin in human decisions and conventions, and if you want to uphold rights for all humans regardless of their empirical strengths and weaknesses, and the same rights for all, then you must move beyond nature to nature's God who is the source of the personhood of each one of us human animals, and the ground of equality of persons. No God, no equality of persons and no equality of rights.

It seems clear that something like this is what the second paragraph of the Declaration means with its talk of men being CREATED equal and being ENDOWED by their CREATOR with certain unalienable rights. The rights come from above (God) and not from below (nature).

This is why it is either stupid or highly uncharitable when neo-reactionary conservatives read the plain words of the Declaration as meaning that all humans are empirically equal as animals in nature. It can't mean that for the simple reason that no one in his right mind, and certainly not the great men of the Founding, could believe that all humans are empirically equal either actually or potentially.

Suppose there is no God. Then talk of equal rights is empty. We may continue to talk in those vacuous terms, somehow hiding the vacuity from ourselves, but then we would be 'running on fumes.' People may continue to believe in equal rights, but their belief would be groundless.

The trouble with the view I am recommending is that it requires a lot of heavy-duty metaphysics of God and Man. This metaphysics is widely contested and certainly not obvious. But the same goes for the naturalism that denies God and puts man back among the animals. It too is widely and very reasonably contested and certainly not obvious.

Welcome to the doxastic-epistemic side of the human predicament.

Now I would like you to surf on over to Malcolm Pollack's place and read this and the posts immediately subsequent to it, i. e., scroll up.

P. S. I didn't get around to propositionism/propositionalism. This discussion of Paul Gottfried will have to do for now.

John Locke on the Right to Self-Defense

Let's go through the drill one more time.

You have a natural right to life. This right to life entails in others a moral obligation not to harm you. Should anyone attempt to do so, you yourself have a right, directly and not via the invocation of the help of a police agency, to defend your life. But if so, then you have a right to the adequate means of self-defense. Having the right entails the right, though not the obligation, to exercise the right. This implies that the law-abiding citizen has a right to keep and bear appropriate arms for personal and home defense.

It follows that no one and no government has the right to infringe your gun rights.

Much more could be said, but as some wit once observed, and then kept repeating, "Brevity is the soul of blog."

Now what about this right to self-defense? If you were to deny that we possess it, I would pronounce you benighted and not worth ten seconds of a rational man's time. But it is always nice to be able to back up one's assertions by invocation of the views of great philosophers. So we turn to John Locke (1632-1704), a great influence on our Founding Fathers, and The Second Treatise of Government (1690). Chapter III is entitled "Of the State of War." The first paragraph, #16, is as follows:

Sec. 16. THE state of war is a state of enmity and destruction: and therefore declaring by word or action, not a passionate and hasty, but a sedate settled design upon another man’s life, puts him in a state of war with him against whom he has declared such an intention, and so has exposed his life to the other’s power to be taken away by him, or any one that joins with him in his defence, and espouses his quarrel; it being reasonable and just, I should have a right to destroy that which threatens me with destruction: for, by the fundamental law of nature, man being to be preserved as much as possible, when all cannot be preserved, the safety of the innocent is to be preferred: and one may destroy a man who makes war upon him, or has discovered an enmity to his being, for the same reason that he may kill a wolf or a lion; because such men are not under the ties of the common law of reason, have no other rule, but that of force and violence, and so may be treated as beasts of prey, those dangerous and noxious creatures, that will be sure to destroy him whenever he falls into their power [emphasis added].

Benatar on Suicide: Is Suicide Murder?

This is the eleventh entry in a series on David Benatar's The Human Predicament (Oxford UP, 2017). I have decided to skip ahead to Chapter 7, "Suicide," and leave Chapter 6, "Immortality," for later. This episode discusses pp. 163-172.

We have seen that for Benatar death, being a part of the human predicament, contra Epicurus, is no solution to it. Suicide is no escape. Mortality is a "brute and ugly feature of the human predicament" (161), but death "does not solve the problem of one's mortality." (163) Nor does death, which includes death by one's own hand, solve the problem of meaninglessness. At most it eliminates the felt meaninglessness of a particular person's life. The only way to avoid the human predicament is by not being born.

Nevertheless, suicide is a reasonable response to one's condition if it has become bad enough. This raises the question whether suicide is ever morally acceptable. Benatar argues that there are cases in which suicide is both reasonable and morally acceptable.

He makes an important linguistic point. To say that one 'commits' suicide "presupposes the wrongfulness of suicide." (168). So he prefers the verb 'carry out' instead.

Is Suicide Murder?

One who understands the concept of murder understands that while killing a human being may or may not be wrong, murdering a human being is always and indeed necessarily wrong inasmuch as murder, by definition, is wrongful killing. But what makes murder wrong? One answer is that it is wrong because it violates the victim's right to life. So one might argue as follows (my formulation, not Benatar's):

If a person has a right to life, then it is morally wrong for anyone to violate it.
The suicide, by killing himself, violates his own right to life.
Ergo
The suicide does something morally wrong.

The argument is not compelling inasmuch as the correlativity of rights and duties can be upheld while denying that one has duties toward oneself:

On this view my having a negative right to life implies that others have correlative duties not to kill me. It does not imply that I have a duty not to kill myself. Thus, when a person rationally kills himself, he has not violated his own rights. (170)

Waiving the Right to Life

But suppose I do bear duties to myself, duties entailed by the rights I possess. Benatar maintains that, even so, "a competent right-bearer has the moral power either to assert or waive a right' (170) For example, I waive my right to bodily integrity when I grant a surgeon permission to operate on me. Why then can't I waive my right to life? If do, then, by the same stroke, I nullify my duty not to kill myself.

Reflexive duties are different from non-reflexive ones. As a rights-bearer with the power to waive my rights, I may release myself from my reflexive duties.

One naturally wonders, however, how a right so fundamental as the right to life itself could be waived. If any right is inalienable, it is the right to life, I should think.

Is the Right to Life Inalienable?

Some will indeed maintain that a basic negative right such as the right to life is inalienable. If my right to life is inalienable, then I cannot waive it. Nevertheless, Benatar maintains that one can hold both that suicide is sometimes morally permissible and that rights are inalienable. How? By distinguishing between "the inalienability of a right and its waivability." (171) Waivability, unlike alienability, is typically limited. If I waive my right to bodily integrity and give a surgeon permission to cut into me, the waiver is for a limited period of time, for a specific purpose, and is granted to a specific person and no one else. So far, so good.

But how does this show that the inalienable right to life can be waived for a time by the person whose life it is is so as to permit the person to kill himself during that time? If my right to life is inalienable, then no one may kill me at any time. From this it follows that I may not kill myself at any time. Either I do not understand what Benatar is saying on p. 172, or he has fallen into confusion.

Contra Benatar

Benatar maintains that suicide is sometimes morally permissible. The follow argument, however, sees to show that it is never morally permissible:

1) The right to life is inalienable.
2) An inalienable right is one that it is morally impermissible for anyone at any time to violate.
Therefore
3) It is morally impermissible for any one at any time to violate his own right to life.
Therefore
4) Suicide is always morally impermissible.

We shall have to return to the aporetics of the situation. For the argument just given either proves too much in that it could be modified to show that killing in just war, self-defense, and in capital punishment are morally impermissible, or else shows in effect that there are no inalienable rights.

Guns and Rights

Do you have a right to life? Yes. If you have a right to life, do you have a right to defend your life? Yes. If you have a right to defend your life, do you have the right to acquire adequate means to self-defense? Yes. Do you understand that this implies that the law-abiding citizen has a right to keep and bear arms for personal and home defense? Yes. Does this include the right to keep and bear tactical nukes? No.

Very good. You passed the test. You are worth talking to about this issue.

I go into details here.

The Gun Issue in a Few Sentences

Do you have a right to life? Yes. If you have a right to life, do you have a right to defend your life? Yes. If you have a right to defend your life, do you have the right to acquire the means to self-defense? Yes. Do you understand that this implies that the citizen has a right to keep and bear arms? Yes.

Very good. All the rest is commentary.

I go into detail here.

Dreher contra Buchanan on “All men are created equal”

Rod Dreher quotes Patrick J. Buchanan:

“All men are created equal” is an ideological statement. Where is the scientific or historic proof for it? Are we building our utopia on a sandpile of ideology and hope?

Dreher responds:

With that, Buchanan repudiates not only the founding principle of our Constitutional order, but also a core teaching of the Christian faith, which holds that all men are created in the image of God.

I am with Dreher on this without sharing quite the level of high dudgeon that he expresses in his piece.

I am always surprised when people do not grasp the plain sense of the "that all Men are created equal" clause embedded in the opening sentence of the second paragraph of the American Declaration of Independence. It cannot be charitably interpreted as a statement of empirical fact. If it were so interpreted, it would be false. For we all know, and certainly the Founders knew, that human beings are NOT equal as a matter of empirical fact either as individuals or as groups.

Suppose a statement can be interpreted in two ways. One way it comes out plainly false; the other way it comes out either true or plausible or not obviously untrue. Then what I understand the Principle of Charity to require is that we go the second way.

For Buchanan to demand "scientific or historic proof" shows deep misunderstanding. For again, the claim is not empirical. Is it then a normative claim as Mona Charen (quoted by Dreher) seems to suggest? It implies normative propositions, but it is not itself a normative proposition. It is a metaphysical statement. It is like the statement that God exists or that the physical universe is a divine creation. Both of the latter statements are non-empirical. No natural science can either prove them or disprove them. But neither of them are normative.

Note that the Declaration's claim is not that all men are equal but that all men are created equal. In such a carefully crafted document, the word 'created' must be doing some work. What might that be?

There cannot be creatures (created items) without a Creator. That's a conceptual truth, what Kant calls an analytic proposition. So if man is created equal, then he is created by a Creator. The Creator the founders had in mind was the Christian God, and these gentlemen had, of course, read the Book of Genesis wherein we read that God made man in his image and likeness. That implies that man is not a mere animal in nature, but a spiritual being, a god-like being, possessing free will and an eternal destiny. Essential to the Judeo-Christian worldview is the notion that man is toto caelo different from the rest of the animals. He is an animal all right, but a very special one. This idea is preserved even in Heidegger who speaks of an Abgrund zwischen Mensch und Tier. The difference between man and animal is abysmal or, if you prefer, abyssal. Man alone is Da-Sein, the 'There' of Being; man alone is endowed with Seinsverstaendnis, an understanding (of) Being. But I digress onto a Black Forest path.

Now if all men, whether male or female, black or white, are created equal by God, and this equality is a metaphysical determination (Bestimmung in the sense of both a distinctive determination and a vocation) then we have here the metaphysical basis for the normative claim that all men ought to be treated equally, that all men ought to enjoy equally the same unalienable rights, among them, Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. (We note en passant that these are negative rights!)

All men are normatively equal because they are metaphysically equal. They are the latter because they are spiritual beings deriving from one and the same spiritual source. Each one of us is a person just as God is a person. We are equal as persons even though we are highly unequal as animals.

Without this theological basis it is difficult to see how there could be any serious talk of equality of persons. As the alt-righties and the neoreactionaries like to say, we are not (empirically) equal either as individuals or as groups. They are absolutely right about that.

Dreher is also right that the theologically-grounded equality of persons is "the founding principle of our Constitutional order," and thus of our political order. Repudiate it, as Buchanan seems to be doing, and you undermine our political order.

What then does our political order rest on if the equality of persons is denied?

The Right to Free Speech is Unalienable

This important point is explained clearly here:

We do not derive our right to freedom of speech from the Constitution. More specifically, it does not “come from” the First Amendment.

[. . .]

The Constitution is not the source of our right to freedom of speech because freedom of speech is an unalienable right. What the First Amendment can do is recognize that already existing unalienable right by forbidding the government from abridging it. And that is precisely what it does.

We could put it as follows. The First Amendment does not confer, but protects, the right to free speech, a natural right that is logically antecedent to anything conventional such as a human document or the collective decision of a legislative body. It protects this right against government infringement.

There are two points here that ought to be separately noted. One is that the right is protected, not conferred, by the Constitution. The other is that the right is protected against government infringement. The government may not infringe your right to free speech, but that is not to say that I may not.

Suppose you leave an offensive comment on my weblog. I delete your comment and block you from my site. You protest and cite the First Amendment. I point out that said amendment protects your speech against government infringement only, and that I am no part of the government.

If you insist that you nevertheless have a right to express yourself, I will agree, but add that your right to free expression does not entail any obligation on my part to give you a forum.

Finally, to speak of the right to free speech as a 'constitutional right' or as a 'First Amendment right' can be misleading inasmuch as someone might be led by these words to suppose that the right derives from the Constitution. So it is best to speak of it as an unalienable or natural right.

Deriving Gun Rights From the Right to Life: Short Version

This is a summary of a much longer and more carefully articulated 2009 entry.

Humans possess a natural right to life. This right entails the right to defend one's life. The right to defend one's life entails the right to acquire and possess the appropriate means to the defense of one's life. Appropriate means are means commensurate with one's situation. For example, if the criminal element with which one is likely to come into contact has at its disposal semi-automatic weapons with large capacity magazines, then such weapons figure among the appropriate means to the defense of one's life. So given the right to life, one can easily derive the right to the means of self-defense. Among these means will be various types of hand gun and long gun. Not all types, perhaps, but some. In this way gun rights are derivable from the right to life.

Is There a Duty to Stay Politically Informed?

Seldom Seen Slim offers:

I see you're paying attention to current affairs. Very hard on the nerves. I can't do it. I tried to watch one Rep "debate": the most vulgar public display I've ever seen. Do you remember the saying "he who slings mud loses ground"? I think the "contestants" dug themselves mineshaft-deep holes that night. Shameful. Didn't try to watch the Dems, but I can imagine. I'll ask you a question: as citizens do you think people deeply offended by the mudslinging nevertheless have a duty to attend to the political debate and eventually try to make an educated choice (even if it's another egregiously malum minus choice)? Unlike some countries which legally mandate voting (Australia), US citizens have no statutory obligation to vote, but I'll guess you don't see that as exhausting the duties of a citizen.

That is a wonderful saying, "He who slings mud loses ground." I had never heard it before. I shall remember it. A variant occurs to me, "He who digs up dirt loses ground."

An interesting logico-linguistic point that should interest Slim: Constructions of the form He who Fs Gs, while featuring what is grammatically the third-person singular masculine pronoun, are not logically pronominal at all. The use of 'he' in such constructions is quantificational. Thus "he who slings mud loses ground" is replaceable both salva veritate and salva significatione by

For any x, if x slings mud, then x loses ground.

Now on to to Slim's question:

As citizens do you think people deeply offended by the mudslinging nevertheless have a duty to attend to the political debate and eventually try to make an educated choice (even if it's another egregiously malum minus choice)?

After Trump referred to his phallus, praising its size and efficacy, I turned off the TV. So there is no duty to listen to all the mud slung from side to side. But yes, one does have a civic duty to "attend to the debate" in the sense of informing oneself of both (i) what the candidates represent and (ii) their character as individuals. Why? Well, since we have benefited from civil order, we have a moral responsibility to help maintain it and pass it on. It is a question of gratitude, a good conservative virtue.

One ought to attend to both (i) and (ii). I am puzzled but also appalled at the number of Trump supporters who are blind partisans who are either unaware of or dismissive of the man's obvious negatives. They are so enamored of his populism that they are willing to ignore the man's character as if that has no bearing on his fitness for high office.

Mandatory Voting?

There is a reason not to go the way of the Aussies and make voting mandatory. As it is here in the USA, roughly only half of the eligible voters actually vote. This is arguably good inasmuch as voters filter themselves. If I were a liberal, I would say that eligible voters who stay home 'disenfranchise' themselves, and often to the benefit of the rest of us. (But of course I am not a liberal and I don't misuse words like 'disenfranchise.')

What I mean is that, generally speaking, the people who can vote but do not are precisely the people one would not want voting in the first place. To vote takes time, energy, and a bit of commitment. Careless, lazy, and uninformed people are not likely to do it. And that is good. I don't want my thoughtful vote neutralized by the vote of some dolt who is merely at the polling place to avoid a fine. And if you force a man to vote, he may rebel and vote randomly or in other ways that subvert the process.

Of course, many refuse to vote out of disgust at their choices. My advice for them would be to hold their noses and vote for the least or the lesser of the evils. Politics is always about choosing the least or the lesser of evils. The very fact that we need government at all shows that we live in an imperfect world, one in which a perfect candidate is not to be found. Government itself is a necessary evil: it would be better if we didn't need it, but we do need it.

I support the right of those who think the system irremediably corrupt to protest by refusing to vote. Government is coercive by its very nature, and mandatory voting is a form of coercion that belongs in a police state rather than in a free republic.

If you think that a higher voter turnout is a good thing, that is happening anyway as divisions deepen and our politics become more polarized. The nastier our politics, the higher the turnout. And it will get nastier still. So why do we need mandatory voting?

Fact is, we are awash in unnecessary laws. We don't need more laws and more government interference in our lives. And will a mandatory voting law be enforced? How? At what expense? Isn't it perfectly obvious to everyone with commonsense that we need to move toward less government rather than more, toward more liberty rather than less? (You may infer from this that Hillary and Bernie lack common sense.)

If you think about it, 'One man, one vote' is a very dubious principle. I think about it here. Voluntary voting is one way of balancing the ill effects of 'One man, one vote.' But isn't voting a civic duty? I would say that it is. But not every duty should be legally mandated.

Seldom Seen Slim has correctly guessed my position: the duties of a citizen are not exhausted by what is legally mandated. One has a moral obligation to stay politically informed, to do one's best to form correct political opinions, and to vote.

Observations on Free Speech

1. One's right to express an opinion brings with it an obligation to form correct opinions, or at least the obligation to make a sincere effort in that direction. The right to free speech brings with it an obligation to exercise the right responsibly.¹

2. Free speech is rightly valued, not as a means to making the world safe for pornography, but as a means to open inquiry and the pursuit of truth.

3. Although free speech and free expression generally are correctly valued mainly as means to open inquiry and the pursuit, acquisition, and dissemination of truth, it does not follow that some free expression is not a value in itself.

4. The more the populace is addicted to pornography, the less the need for the government to censor political speech. A tyrant is therefore well advised to keep the people well supplied with bread, circuses, and that 'freedom of expression' that allows them to sink, and remain, in the basest depths of the merely private where they will pose no threat to the powers that be.

5. One who defends the right to free speech by identifying with adolescent porno-punks and nihilists of the Charlie Hebdo ilk only succeeds in advertising the fact that he doesn't understand why this right is accorded the status of a right.

6. The free speech clause of the First Amendment to the United States constitution protects the citizen's right to free expression from infringement by the government, not from infringement by any old entity. My home is my castle; you have no First Amendment rights here, or at my cybercastle, my weblog. So it is no violation of your First Amendment rights if I order you off of my property because of your offensive speech or block you from leaving stupid or vile comments at my website. It is impossible in principle for me to violate your First Amendment rights: I am not the government or an agent thereof. And the same holds at your (private) place of work: you have no First Amendment rights there.

7. The First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and of the press — call them collectively the First Amendment right to free expression — is not the same as the right to free expression. If the latter is a natural right, as I claim that it is, then one has it whether or not there is any First Amendment. The First Amendment is a codicil to a document crafted by human beings. It has a conventional nature. The right to free speech, however, is natural. Therefore, the First Amendment right to free expression is not the same as the right to free expression. Second, the right to free expression, if a natural right, is had by persons everywhere. The FA, however, protects citizens of the U.S. against the U. S. government. Third, the First Amendment in its third clause affords legal protection to the natural moral right to free expression. A right by law is not a natural right. Ergo, etc.

8. The right of free expression is a natural right. Can I prove it? No. Can you prove the negation? No. But we are better off assuming it than not assuming it.

9. To say that the right to free expression is a natural right is not to say that it is absolute. For the exercise of this right is subject to various reasonable and perhaps even morally obligatory restrictions, both in public and in private. There are limits on the exercise of the right in both spheres, but one has the right in both spheres. To have an (exercisable) right is one thing, to exercise it another, and from the fact that one has the right it does not follow that one has the right to its exercise in every actual and possible circumstance. If you say something I deem offensive in my house, on my blog, or while in my employ, then I can justifiably throw you out, or shut you up, or fire you and you cannot justify your bad behavior by invocation of the natural right to free speech. And similarly in public: the government is justified in preventing you from from shouting 'fire' in a crowded theater, to use the hackneyed example. You are not thereby deprived of the right; you are deprived of the right to exercise the right in certain circumstances.

10. The restraint and thoughtfulness exhibited in a responsible exercise of one's right to free speech is not well described as 'self-censorship' given the pejorative connotations of 'censorship.'

11. To suppose that government censorship can never be justified is as extreme as the view that the right to free speech is absolute.

12. It is silly to say, as many do, that speech is 'only speech.' Lying speech that incites violence is not 'just' speech' or 'only words.'

_______________

¹If one cannot be obliged to do that which one is unable to do, then there cannot be a general obligation to form correct opinions.

“I disapprove of what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it.”

Misattributed to Voltaire, the above saying yet captures his attitude. The parroting of the saying in the wake of the terrorist attack by Muslim fanatics on Charlie Hebdo is becoming tiresome. It is high time we take a squinty-eyed look at it. I will be arguing that it does not bear up well under examination.

Suppose you are talking with someone who publically asserts with a straight face, "No Jews were killed at Auschwitz by the Nazis." Will you defend your interlocutor's right to say it? And will you defend it to the death? I hope not. The right to free speech cannot reasonably be taken to include the right to state what is false, known to be false, and such that its broadcasting or public expression could be expected to cause social harm. (The characteristic claim of the Flat Earthers is false and known to be false, but not such that its broadcasting or public expression could be expected to cause social harm, and this for a couple of reasons: whether or not the earth is flat is not a 'hot button' issue; the vast majority consider Flat Earthers to be utter loons.)

Generalizing, will you defend to the death anyone's right to say, seriously and publically, whatever he wants to say? If you answer in the affirmative, then I will label you a free speech extremist, that is, one who holds that the right to free (public) speech is absolute. But what is it for a right to be absolute? And could the right to free speech be an absolute right?

There is a distinction between moral and legal rights. I will consider only whether there is an absolute moral right to free speech. Some rights are exercisable, other are not. The right to free speech is exercisable whereas the rights not to be killed and not to be spied upon are non-exercisable. Some rights are general, others are specific. The right to free speech is general: if any person has it, then every person has it.

To say that an exercisable right is absolute is to say that its exercise is not subject to any restriction or limitation or exception. This implies that an absolute right cannot be infringed under any circumstances. And if an absolute right is general, then it cannot be restricted to some persons only. So if the right to free speech is absolute, then everyone always in every circumstance has a right to free speech.

I believe I have clarified sufficiently — for the purposes of a weblog entry — the sense of ' The right of free speech is absolute.'

My thesis is that the right of free speech is not absolute. It is no more absolute than the other rights mentioned in (but not thereby granted to us in or by) the First and Second and other Amendments to the U. S. Constitution.

Consider gun rights. Is the right to keep and bear arms reasonably regarded as absolute, i.e., subject to no limitations or restrictions? No. I would put you down as a fool if you said otherwise. Felons are not allowed to own guns, and for good reason. Ditto for children and the mentally incomeptent. The right to keep and bear arms does not extend to nuclear arms or biological weapons. The firing of guns is subject to various restrictions, etc. In this case it should be perfectly obvious that the right to keep and bear arms cannot be an absolute right.

Is the right to own real property absolute? If it were, no use of eminent domain would ever be justified, when surely some uses are. Eminent domain laws are sometimes abused to benefit special interest. We cnservatives protest that absue. But the abuse of eminent domain is no argument against its judicious and limited use for purposes that truly serve the common good. Suppose there is a dangerous mountain road on which hundreds of people have lost their lives. The state engineers propose a bypass, but building it would involve the coercive taking, albeit with monetary compensation, of a little land from a fat cat who owns a parcel the size of Rhode Island, the coercive taking of a strip of land occupied only by a few prarie dogs. A rational and morally decent person would say that here the right to property must be limited for the common good. (And let's assume that the good really is common: the owner of the land himself must travel the dangerous mountain road.)

Third example. Congress shall make no law prohibiting the free exercise of religion. That is a near-quotation from the First Amendment to the U. S. Constitution. But what if the free exercise of some religion includes not having one's children immunized for measles or other highly infectious diseases? Would a reasonable person maintain that under no conceivable circmustances would the government ever be justified in forcing a parent to have a child immunized in contravention of a religious precept? I don't think so. There are some truly loony 'religions' out there.

I could go on, and you hope I won't. In the three cases just mentioned it ought to be clear that the rights in question cannot be absolute. Now is there something about the right to free speech that makes it different from the ones mentioned above in a way that justifies saying that free speech is an absolute right when the others are not? Not that I can see.

I have heard it said that speech is just speech; it not like discharging a firearm in a residential area or seizing a man's property or forcing parents to immunize a child. But this is a lame response because speech is not 'just speech.' Not only does public speaking and publishing involve all sorts of actions, it can and does reliably lead to actions both good and evil. People are susceptible of exhortation. One can fire up a lynch mob with well-chosen words. I don't need to belabor this: it is obvious. Speech is not 'just speech.'

The right to free speech meets a limit in the moral obligation to not inflame murderous passions. There is no absolute moral right to free speech. Whether certain forms of speech should be legally prohibited is of course a further question.

On the Putative Right to Health Care

John e-mails and I comment in blue:

I found your most recent post on a right to health care very interesting. It seems to me that much of the discussion of rights, not only about putative rights to health care, but about rights in general, depends on a certain controversial principle, namely:

If x has a right to y, and if z is a means of achieving y, then x has a right to z.

BV: We should distinguish between weaker and stronger versions of the principle:

P1. If x has a right to y, and if z is a means of achieving y, then x has a right to seek to acquire z.

P2. If x has a right to y, and if z is a means of achieving y, then x has a right to be given z.

Consider the following straightforward argument in support of gun rights:

(1) I have a right to life and security of my person. (2) If I have a right to life and security of my person, then I have a right to the means whereby these rights may be secured and protected. (3) Guns may be used to secure and protect my right to life and security of my person. (4) Therefore, I have a right to own a gun.

BV: On 10 November 2009 I gave a more careful detailed argument along the same lines. See Deriving Gun Rights from the Right to Life.

This seems to me very plausible, but of course (2) relies on the controversial principle identified above.

BV: I would say that the argument relies on (P1) but not (P2).

In similar fashion, any argument for the claim that each of us has a right to health care will probably have to rely on a similar premise. I can imagine an argument going something like this:

(1) I have a right to life and security of my person. (2) If I have a right to life and security of my person, then I have a right to the means whereby these rights may be secured and protected. (3) Affordable health care may be used to secure and protect my right to life and security of my person. (4) Therefore, I have a right to affordable health care.

As before, premise (2) relies on the controversial principle identified earlier. And, as you point out in your post, similar arguments could be run to establish that each of us has a right to food, shelter, and clothing.

BV: But again, all one needs is the weaker principle, (P1). If I have a right to life, then I have a right to sustain my life. A necessary means to that end is food. So I have a right to food. But all that means is that I have a right to seek to acquire food (by hunting, fishing, foraging, growing, buying, bartering, begging, etc.) It does not mean that I have a right to be supplied with food by others. I have no positive right to be fed. What I have is a negative right not to be impeded in my quest for food and other vital necessities. (Adults are under discussion, not young children.)

Here, then, is my question: what ought we to think about the controversial principle?

BV: The first thing we should think about it is that it is ambiguous as between (P1) and (P2). I would say that (P1) is very plausible if not obviously true. But it needs qualification. Do I have a right to biological or chemical weapons? I have the right to repel a home invasion using a shotgun, but presumably not the right to repel such an invasion using biological agents that are likely to spread throughout the neighborhood. So consider

P1*. If x has a (negative) right to y, and z is a minimally efficacious means of achieving y,then x has a (negative) right to acquire z.

By 'minimally efficacious' I mean a means to an end that is an efficient and effective means to the end in view but not so powerful or extensive as to bring with it negative consequences for others. My right to buy food would then not be a right to buy all the food in the supermarket. My right to repel home invaders does not translate into a right to lay waste to the entire neighborhood in so doing. No doubt further refinements are needed, but (P1) strikes me as on the right track.

Although I am inclined to think that the principle is false, what is of interest to me is a more troublesome question. Any false general claim may have true instances. Are there true instances of this false general principle? How do we go about deciding which instances of the principle are true and which not? Can the principle be used to establish gun rights but not rights to health care or food/shelter/clothing?

BV: I should think that guns and butter are on a par. More fully, guns, food, shelter, clothing, certain medicines, bandages, certain medical appliances, e. g. sphygmomanometers for the hypertense, etc. are all on a par. Given that I have the natural negative right to life, then surely I have the right to pursue and acquire those things that I need to defend and sustain my life. What I don't have is the positive right to be given them by others or by the government, especially given the fact that the government produces no wealth but gets its wealth by coercive taking. (Not that I am opposed to governmental coercion, within limits. There simply cannot be a government that is not coercive. I am very pleased that the government has forced Bernie Madoff into prison, thereby doing to him what it would be a crime for me to do to him.)

So I don't think my gun argument suffers from probative overkill, 'proving too much.' The pattern of argument extends to food, shelter, and clothing, etc. But contemporary liberals are in the same boat: their pattern of argument extends to food, shelter, clothing, etc. But their extension does amount to probative overkill and a reductio ad absurdum of their original argument. If there is a positive right to health care services and health insurance (these are of course not the same), then a fortiori, there is a positive right to food, shelter, and clothing. But this is absurd, ergo, etc.

A Right to Health Care?

Food, shelter, and clothing are more important than health care in that one can get along for substantial periods of time without health care services but one cannot survive for long without food, shelter, and clothing. Given this plain fact, why don’t the proponents of ‘free’ universal health care demand ‘free’ food, shelter, and clothing? In other words, if a citizen, just in virtue of being a citizen, has a right to health care, why doesn’t the same citizen have the right to what is more fundamental, namely, food, shelter, and clothing?

I mean this as a reductio ad absurdum. I fear that liberals, being liberals, may just bite the bullet and embrace rights to food, shelter, and clothing.

Why isn't health care a commodity in the way that automotive care is? If I want my car to run well, I must service it periodically. I can either do this myself or hire someone to do it for me. But surely I have no right to the free services of an auto mechanic. Of course, once I contract with a mechanic to do a specified job for a specified sum of money, then I have a right to his services and to his services being performed correctly. But that right is contingent upon our contract. Call it a contractually acquired right. But I have no right to free automotive services just in virtue of the fact that I own a car. So why is it any different with my body? Do I have a right to a colonoscopy just in virtue of my possession of a gastrointestinal tract?

Of course, I have a right to life, and I cannot live without health care most of which, by the way, I provide for myself via proper diet, exercise, and all the rest. But the negative right to life does not entail the positive right to be given the services of doctors and dentists.

If you insist that people do have a right to medical and dental services, then you owe us an explanation of why they do not also have a right to food, shelter, and clothing, as well as to a vast array of other things that they 'need' such as cars and cell phones.