I think we need to pause and make a distinction between Universal Human Rights and the other kind of rights that we get because we live in a certain country or under a certain government. The reason is this- I've been hearing and reading lately that Healthcare is a Universal Human Right. I don't think it qualifies as such for the following reason:
Universal Human Rights are rights that should be inherent to all people, regardless of who they are, where they live, or even when they live. If something is truly a Human Right, then it would stand to reason that it should apply to people living today as well as a million years ago and those living down the street from us as well as anyone living in the deepest parts of the most secluded jungle.
I don't think we can say this of Healthcare.
Modern medicine and sanitation are relatively new to the human experience and completely unequal in st, so for us to say that people are entitled, as humans, to healthcare is a pretty ridiculous claim. It's the same thing I'd say of voting rights or a trial by jury. These are important things that may be rights and privileges bestowed on those living under our system of government, here in the United States of America, but they're not Universal to the Human Condition.
If you live under a dictator, you don't get the right to vote.
You'd have to actually be able to vote in order to claim the right to it.
This doesn't mean that Healthcare isn't important. I think it is. But it's not important in the same way as the right to life, liberty, and property. These are fundamental Human Rights that aren't contigent upon a person's place in the world or their station in history. That's what separates them out as the big ideals that must be defended for ALL people.
Based on some of the comments from the other posts (here and here) I wanted to address something that should clarify my position a bit and also add to the discussion.
Comment: All laws spring from some sort of morality.
True.
And on the State and Local level, where the government is more in tune with the morality of the community, I believe that governments should have the ability to legislate freely. It's with the Central Government that I'm a little wary.
Here in the United States, we originally limited the powers of the Federal Government to the protection and unification of our people under a select number of rights- springing from a common sense of morality.
What I was trying to argue- and failed at- was this: as we've allowed the Federal Government to gain more and more power and influence over its citizens, the end result has been laws that don't always land squarely on a shared vision of morality.
Let's face it, not all people or religions share a common idea of right and wrong.
Those ideals that gain nearly unanimous consensus probably belong at the Federal Level. But the rest of the laws should be saved for the local level, where they will remain coherent with the will of the people closest to them. This is why we've got the tenth amendment. And I think we need to look into re-emphasizing it a bit more.
Continued from last Thursday.
I am almost tempted to side with the "moral majority" on this issue because of a few I remember reading from Jefferson and Adams where they basically came out and said- this system of limited government isn't going to work if people abandon God. But then I remember what happens when religions feel like people are abandoning "the faith." Things get ugly. Sometimes bloody.
Which is why I'm glad that Churches aren't in control of the army here in our country.
But this isn't to say that governments are better at dictating morality. I don't believe that at all. In fact, I think they're pretty terrible at it. Now, there's nothing particularly "wrong" with governments dictating morals. Most of world history is full of this sort of thing. In fact, Liberty and Limited Government are relatively new ideas compared to dictatorship and tyranny. But it's only very rarely that a benevolent leader was in charge and things ran rather smoothly and peacefully because the morality that was dictated came from a good heart.
The trouble is, leaders aren't always good. And inevitably a lot of them make terrible, selfish choices that actually hurt their people rather than help them. And when evil men are in charge of dictating morality- you have the Inquisition and the Holocaust. You get persecution and genocide.
Interestingly enough, I think part of the problem we have today here in the US isn't that we're too immoral. I think there is plenty of morality. The problem is that we've slipped into a government system where too much power is in the hands of the President and Legislator. Both Republicans and Democrats bring their "morality" into Congress and pass laws based on restraining or enabling the morality of the people.
We've heard the term culture war quite often over the past 10 years and I think the reason liberals and conservatives are so wary of each other isn't the political, but rather religious and moral ideas that each party holds.
Liberals are concerned with the environment for moral reasons. The same is true for systemic poverty and education. These aren't simply political issues for them, they are very religious and moral.
The same can be said of Conservatives who are concerned with unborn babies and upholding their own ideal of what marriage should look like. These aren't simply political issues, either- they speak to the very core of their being and spring from a moral/religious code within them.
Whenever one side or the other makes it into the White House or takes a majority in Congress, fear grips the other side. There's a sense of impending DOOM that the Republicans or Democrats are going to ruin the world with their ideals. I firmly believe that is evidence that we've actually given TOO much moral and religious power over to the government rather than the reverse. These are ideals and values that are at war. And if they were left to the community and churches to decide (as they were originally intended to be), I think our nation would be much better off.
Most of you were probably too busy wonder why Michael Jackson died to notice the incredibly important piece of legislation that was ramrodded through the House of Representatives on Friday. It was a bill that outlines the US's response to Climate Change- a CAP & TRADE regulation that will limit the amount of supposedly harmful emissions produced by our country and progressively tax our current resources until someone comes up with an energy efficient alternative to Oil and other energies that are supposedly going to kill us all (I say supposedly because there hasn't actually been consensus in the scientific community as to whether or not humans are actually causing climate change- Al Gore would have you believe otherwise, but there's plenty of evidence on both sides, and this isn't really a forum for debating whether or not people are causing it- let's save that for a different site).
Now, I'm actually really excited about competition in the energy industry.
I just don't feel that the right way to achieve competing energy sources is by jacking up the price of our current solutions so much that someone simply HAS to come up with an alternative in order to remain viable and economically stable. That's just silly.
That's like students who put off their term papers until the last minute because they "work best under pressure." Sometimes it works and they scrape by with an A- but often it results in a sloppy effort that doesn't really meet the expectations of the professor and results in a terrible grade.
The market doesn't react very well to this sort of force, either. It doesn't like to be manipulated under threat. And what I'm afraid is going to happen is something unexpected- something terrible that we can't plan for or predict or react to effectively.
Hopefully, it won't be market failure- but if it is...
You can be sure that the government will blame the market rather than their own manipulation. And when that happens, they'll be quick to put their own restraints and regulations in place so that the market doesn't "continue to fail." This will lead to further failure and more government. Eventually, if things get too bad, we'll be facing total government control of the energy market and we'll be rationed what they think we need.
I don't want to live here when that happens.
This week, I'm exploring our own American Revolution, largely due to the Iranian Revolution that's unfolding as we speak. I want to address the ideals that the founding father's laid out and determine whether they actually fit with the current state of affairs in our country. * * *
Yesterday, I decided that the size of a population shouldn't be the determining factor in whether or not the size of the central government grows- in fact, the idea of limited, representative democracy should work with populations no matter how large they grow (score one big point for Jefferson, Adams, and their crew).
Today, I want to address concern number two- are we TOO secular for Representative Democracy and Limited Government.
The argument goes something like this: The founding father may not have been "Christians" and may have wanted a separation of Church/State, but they assumed that people would be receiving moral guidance from some sort of religious entity. Since more and more people are abandoning the church or ignoring their precepts, can we really continue to live under the assumption that the people can make good, moral choices unless we legislating and enforce it?
Thank you "Moral Majority" for bringing this issue to the table...
Actually, this issue is equally a part of the Left and Right. Conservatives have a set of values that cannot stand for two individuals getting married unless they are a man and a woman- they want to legislate this morality. But on the Left, liberals see systemic poverty and climate change as moral issues- and they want to regulate it. Everyone, it seems, is hoping that Washington will legislate morality because as far as they are concerned, no one is doing "the right thing."
If I'm honest with myself, this is the issue that almost throws me over the fence. I've seen the evils that religion can perpetuate, sure- but for the most part, churchgoing folk of all religions are pretty moral people. Now, I'm not saying that my friends who don't attend church aren't good people- in fact, I know more than a few of them that put Christians to shame with their good works- but at the same time, I know that religion is one of the primary sources of morality and therefore abandoning a primary source of morality means that the people either become amoral or end up getting their morality from somewhere else.
That somewhere else often ends up being The State.
Of course, when The State dictates morality- they usually need to expand their influence (and their armed forces) in order to enforce the morality they've legislated. While the church has definitely done this in the past (Crusades, Inquisition), our friends in government almost ALWAYS do. Governments never let go of power- especially not the power to tell people what to do.
This is one reason that the founding fathers set out to create the least amount of government possible- they knew that the government wouldn't "let go" if they were ever in a position of dictating the actions of their citizens.
Part Two- coming to you live this evening!
This week, I'm exploring our own American Revolution, largely due to the Iranian Revolution that's unfolding as we speak. I want to address the ideals that the founding father's laid out and determine whether they actually fit with the current state of affairs in our country.
* * *
The first argument I've head launched against Representative Democracy and Limited Central Government is that our country has outgrown a viable "small representative government" model. The idea is presented in a fashion such as this: "Limited government may have worked well when our country was a mere 13 colonies and a million people, but today it's just not feasible given the amount of people who live in the country. 300-400 million people cannot be governed the same way that a few million would have been governed 200 years ago."
The biggest problem I have with the "Too Big" argument is that it ignores the primary thrust of what the founding fathers were getting at when they set up a limited central/federal government in the first place. The original idea was that people are governed best at the most local and personal levels- primarily the home but also the community, the city, and the state. IF this is true, then it would follow that no matter how big a country grows in size and citizens, the best place for government is still within the smallest common denominator.
One of the real dangers of perpetual growth within the central/federal government is that centralized systems tend to legislate "one size fits none" mandates that don't generally meet the needs of the people they represent. When we couple these rather narrow set of laws with the growing population, eventually we find that more and more people are left either unprotected or overprotected (depending on the law that's passed).
For instance, our friends out West have very different needs that what we see here in Florida. So if policies heralding from Florida were passed carte blanch (perhaps regarding how people should react in a Natural Disaster) the fact that our primary concern is Hurricanes may mean that those in California who are dealing with wildfires and earthquakes would be required to abide by policies that were ineffective or harmful to their own situation.
That said, I wonder if those who argue that we've grown too big for our current system of government are mistaken in the route we should take to remedy the situation. They think it takes MORE Federal Government to control more people, while the reality is it takes more community efforts. It takes local rights and State rights to accurately govern to the needs of the people.
This is the reason that the 10th amendment exists (although it's ignored completely by our Federal Government). It was intended to keep power closest to the people. It was intended to keep government and regulation relevant to the people. It was a check and balance that was intended to limit the size and scope of the Central Government so that "one size fits none" legislation would be cut down before it had a chance to ruin the country.
Using the most simple terms, The United States emerged from a rejection of tyranny.
Our founding fathers beheld, firsthand, what happened when power was left only in the hands of the few. And in reaction to this, they formed a system of government that would be held at bay by the people it governed. They created a nation that was supposed to run from the bottom-up rather than from the top-down. It was one that was supposed to provide a mere infrastructure of cohesion rather than a dictating force that informed its citizens how they should act in every situation.
They gave most of the governing authority over to the local and state communities and it was hoped that most decisions regarding behavior would spring forth from the community itself. This decision was probably due to the fact that most citizens of these States United were churchgoing folk who valued community and religious structures- there wasn't as much need for the heavy hand of government when a "higher Power" was instructing the lives of the people.
I've heard a lot of folks say that things are just too different now to maintain a limited role of Federal Government. They say that times have changed and the ideals of the founding father's aren't right for what we're dealing with now. And in three primary regards, they're right:
1. There are a lot more people living in the United States.
2. Less people are "religious."
3. Technology has changed the way we live.
I'd like to explore each of these different ideas for the rest of the week to see whether or not these changes should legitimately change the way government works. When times change, sometimes we need to change with them, so let's see if we need an overhaul of our system or a return to the original intent of our founders.
"I know, marriage is about legal rights, recognitions, etc. too. But it makes me sick to think that people are actually waiting for the government’s permission to even name their relationships with each other. When you give the government that much power over yourself . . . . It’s staggering. I can’t even finish the sentence."
He wrote this paragraph about gay marriage, but I think it's a big enough statement to extend beyond the gay marriage debate and into all marriages. Why does anyone, gay or straight, allow the government to decide what their relationship is going to be?
What do Terminator and Matrix have in common with Hotel Rwanda? Namely, they all deal with power struggles. OK, it may seem rather strange that I’m drawing a correlation between these films, but bear with me for a moment while I explain my position. It seems to me that most conflicts eventually rest on one of the following two areas: Values and Resources
Value conflicts are wars and battles that spring from a clash of ethnic, ethic, or moral disagreement. While there isn’t anything particularly wrong about an individual defining themselves by their nationality, religion, or ethics, once they take a stand on these things it inevitably causes small conflicts. Even at the most basic level, when one assesses themselves by a certain criteria; he tends to assess other people by these criteria as well. So if I’m proud of my American, Christian, and Pacifist ways I may hold myself in an elevated position over someone who doesn’t share the same beliefs. Even subtle criticism like this lead to bigger conflicts as I interact with those I disagree with. The outworking of my own pride can eventually become war if it’s not tended well.
Watch the Terminator series with this sort of idea in the back of your mind, and you’ll see the direct correlation between Skynet’s decision to wipe out humanity with this value conflict. The self-aware AI, of course, makes the jump from criticism to war much faster than humans would, but the principle seen in the film is very similar to what we can read into historical events like the Inquisition, the Holocaust, and Hotel Rwanda.
Each of these are value-based conflicts where the self-proclaimed superior/powerful group does its best to eliminate or convert those who don’t meet their standard.
Resource conflicts are any kind of disagreement or battle that deals with scarcity. When resources are unlimited and there is plenty of land, food, etc to go around for everyone, competition isn’t nearly as fierce and normally doesn’t result in war or death. But as soon as there are limits in place, humans always try to get as much as they can- even at the cost of others.
When we watch ads from two politicians, trading jabs, it’s basically the same thing. There can only be one President of the United States and so anyone running who wants to win will do whatever they can to grab the most votes. Votes are the limited resource.
I used to work for Universal Orlando Resort where our theme parks were continually “at war” with Disney for market share. We wanted as many tourists as possible to visit our park- rather than Disney. Time was the resources we were fighting over.
If you read into the history of Matrix movies, they basically boil down to a war based on resource problems. Robots need power and after humans nuke the sky- crippling the machines’ ability to gather solar power- their only source of fuel is the humans themselves. Humans are only enslaved because the robots want to continue functioning.
So as we watch movies like Terminator, Matrix, and Hotel Rwanda, I think it’s important to get to the bottom of conflict if we really want to avoid the violence depicted within each film. The bottom line is, we still need to answer these questions if we’re going to do anything about wars and interpersonal conflicts:
What can we do to lessen the value and resource conflicts before they grow out of control and threaten our very lives?
I love Robots and so I'm pleased to announce that Robots are the topic for this week.
Background. I watched Terminator: Salvation on Saturday with my good friend Seth and it got me thinking about AI and robots and whether or not what’s presented in Terminator, Matrix, and a number of other ‘Robots as Frankenstein’s Monster’ movies could actually happen. As it stands, I’m not really sure- but in an effort to fully explore the possibilities, I want to break this week into four different parts so that we can discuss the topic fluidly.
1. Today will be an introduction with some questions to get your reaction.
2. Wednesday will be a religious/philosophical discussion about whether AI can actually become self-aware and what it means to be human.
3. Thursday will be a religious/philosophical discussion about whether or not technology needs to begin killing us off with guns before we decide that it’s enslaved us.
4. Friday will be a political discussion about whether or not governments have the right to target ethnic groups through profiling (and even genocide?).
I can’t do an exhaustive study on robots because there are literally too many religious, philosophical, and political issues at steak in movies like these in order to sum them up in a few days. But I’m pretty sure that in one sense, all of these stories are a reiteration of the Tower of Babel- they’re all about what happens when humans place their faith, hope, and love into technology rather than on God (or even their fellow man).
You might want to read up on the Tower here and here if you’re not familiar with it. In preparation for this week, you may also want to read up on Asimov’s theories about what humans would/should do to prevent a Frankenstein’s Monster occurrence.
Questions to consider today and this week:
Do you think AI (artificial intelligence) will ever become self-aware?
Could we already be enslaved to technology/robots?
Why (in fiction at least) do the things we create always rise up against us?
Do the oppressed have the right to overthrow their oppressors?
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