Society will eventually devolve into a totalitarian regime

Rebuttal If you and I are arguing about something and I reply, "It is obvious that I am right," I have added nothing to our dialog. I may as well have said, "I declare victory." If Jefferson in the Decleration of Independence--so often a golden-tongued hypocrite--was not consciously engaging in a debater's trick, he was taking an intellectual short-cut, using a tautology: "It is true because....it is true." How can there be "self evident" rights? Had Jefferson written, "We want the following rights," he would have been making a simple, clear statement easy to understand. Language allows us to construct phrases which are grammatically correct but which do not mean anything (or do not mean what they appear to). Does the statement "We hold these rights to be self-evident" in fact mean anything more profound than "we want them?" Jefferson's and the other framers' views on natural rights were derived from John Locke's highly influential Second Treatise of Government, first published anonymously in 1690. In Chapter 2, "Of the state of nature", Locke describes the "state of nature" in which men exist before forming governments: ....a state of perfect freedom to order their actions and dispose of their possessions and persons as they see fit, within the bounds of the laws of nature, without asking leave or depending upon the will of any other man. A state also of equality, wherein all the power and jurisdiction is reciprocal, no one having more than another; there being nothing more evident than that creatures of the same species and rank, promiscuously born to all the same advantages of nature and the use of the same faculties, should also be equal one amongst another without subordination or subjection.... The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges every one; and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind who will but consult it that, being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions.... Permit me an "aha!" Is not this prose exactly the kind Hume was thinking of in his famous condemnation of deriving an "ought" from an "is"? In every system of morality which I have hitherto met with, I have always remarked that the author proceeds for some time in the ordinary way of reasoning, and establishes the being of a god, or makes observations concerning human affairs; when of a sudden I am surprised to find that instead of the usual copulation of propositions is and is not, I meet with no proposition that is not connected with an ought or an ought not. This change is imperceptible, but is, however, of the last consequence. For as this ought or ought not expresses some new relation or affirmation, it is necessary that it should be observed and explained; and at the same time that a reason ought to be given for what seems altogether inconceivable, how this new relation can be a deduction from others which are entirely different from it. Now note what Locke did: In the state of nature, "all the power and jurisdiction is reciprocal" and therefore all men "should also be equal one amongst another without subordination or subjection...." And he does it again: "The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it" which teaches that "no one ought to harm another". Locke's view of the state of nature is more placid than that of Thomas Hobbes, who believed that all men begin in a state of war of "every man, against every man." Locke by contrast could imagine men living together "according to reason", that is, peacefully, "but without a common superior on earth with authority to judge between them." OK, lets watch Hobbes conjugate an ought from an is. To this war of every man against every man, this also is consequent, that nothing can be Unjust. The notions of Right and Wrong, Justice and Injustice, have there no place. Leviathan, ch. 13 Seeming to say that there are no natural rights, just a state of chaos before government. In the state of nature, "Force and Fraud" are the two cardinal virtues; "there be no Propriety, no Dominion, no Mine and Thine distinct." But then we make the rough transition to Chapter 14, "Of the first and second Natural Lawes, and of Contracts": The Right of Nature, which Writers commonly call Jus Naturale, is the Liberty each man hath, to use his own power, as he will himselfe, for the preservation of his own Nature; that is, of his own Life; and consequently, of doing any thing, which in his own Judgement, and Reason, hee shall conceive to be the aptest means thereto. Hobbes starts by saying that in a state of nature, there is no Justice, no property, etc., therefore no possible founding of "rights"; but in his next chapter he appears to say that without human rulebooks we each should have the right to do whatever preserves our life and our enjoyment. Hobbes (and many others) seems to me to confound three concepts: what we physically can do; what we desire, which may be different; and what we ought to do, which again may be entirely distinct from the first two categories. Looked at this way, Locke and Hobbes commit very different versions of Hume's fallacy. Locke reverse engineers the way things are from the way he believes they ought to be: people should be peaceful and respectful of one another, and therefore are this way in a state of nature, which exists only because they lack a common judge. Hobbes goes in the other direction and elevates the way he believes things are (nasty and brutish, constant war of all against all) to a moral imperative, that we (ought to) have a right of mutual destruction until we adopt rules which say otherwise. What we physically can do This seems to me to be the single most dangerous foundation for a claimed "right", as we have the physical ability to do all the things we make rules against (there would be no point in banning them if we couldn't do them.) If we regard rights as a human-generated rulebook, not engraven in the fabric of the universe, we can analyze many circumstances in which the rule-makers must mediate between conflicting interpretations. For example, our courts answer questions like the following every day: Does your right of free speech trump my right of privacy? In this scheme of things, rights are a binary switch, and the rulemakers simply decide which way to set the switch. If you have a right to do something, I have an obligation to respect it and not to interfere with it. It would be illogical to say you have a "right" to do something which I have a "right" to prevent. But this is exactly the case in the Hobbesian state of nature. I have a right to kill you if you get in my way, but you have an equal right to kill me. If I am stronger and I succeed, your family nonetheless has a right to take revenge, and so forth. ("An eye for an eye," said Gandhi, "makes the whole world blind.") But if we think strictly in terms of language, what do we add by speaking of rights in this context? When we are speaking of human rulebooks, it is much easier to answer that question. A right can be defined as a rule which protects you in taking an action and prevents me from interfering with it. But in a Hobbesian state of nature, the word "right" seems to be stripped of any content not already contained in the word "can". Compare these two statements: In a Hobbesian state of nature, I can kill you. In a Hobbesian state of nature, I have a right to kill you. I have a pet dog named Daisy, who lives in my home and eats a kibble and wet food mixture. I walk her about 3 times a day. Does it make any sense to you, if instead of saying that Daisy eats food, I say "Daisy has a right to food"? Does she have a "right" to be walked? If "Daisy has a right to food" has no more meaning than the statement "Daisy eats food", why does "man has a right to self defense" mean anything more than "men defend themselves"? The answer can only be in a tautology, a prejudgment of our conclusion: that there is something special about man which dictates that natural rights exist (essentially because we want them to.) This is why rights language is not only fuzzy but dangerous; for many of us the word "rights" communicates an imprimatur of moral authority, causing us to behave respectfully even in contexts where it is completely meaningless. Like an automobile, we should never buy a right until we have looked beneath the hood. In a debate with gun rights people several years ago, I rapidly discovered that they all believed that the right to bear arms was a natural right, engraved in the fabric of the universe, and merely affirmed, not created by their beloved Second Amendment. For these people, Locke and Hobbes are living philosophers (and more particularly Hobbes, I think.) The concept of natural rights was used by many of my gun rights correspondents both as a club and a credit card on which to charge up selfishness. Club: "I have a natural right to self defense, so therefore I win this argument," was the gist of many of the messages I received. Credit card: When I proposed that we sit at a table together to make a rulebook about guns, accomodating the interests of those who do not want them along with those who do, many people responded: "My natural right to bear arms trumps your desire not to have guns around. Therefore there is no basis for discussion." You hear in such debates not only that it is "natural" for us to defend ourselves but that animals are equipped with claws, horns and teeth to do so. Somehow this fact, that people and other animals defend themselves when endangered, is extrapolated into a "right." Here is the answer: We believe there is a natural right to do anything which we think should be permitted (or mandated) under a human rulebook. Anything which should be forbidden under a human rulebook therefore cannot be a natural right, even if it is physically possible and can be justified by the same arguments used to support the idea of natural rights.For the above reasons, inalienable rights don't exist. I would write more but have run out of characters.