The Declaration of Independence states that "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." Gendered language aside, the idea of the founders was clearly that rights derive from one's innate humanity, and do not derive from government largess. This was the ideal which provided America's inner light; for all of America's mis-steps, the proclamation of this core ideal fanned the flames of some sort of tendency towards goodness.
This ideal is all but gone. Today, the American government baldly proclaims that rights do not belong to human beings, but are conferred only by citizenship. the starkest example of this remains John Yoo's rationale (embraced by the Bush administration) for why the Geneva Convention does not apply to the Taliban: that the rights guaranteed by the Convention were not human rights, but rights granted to combatants of UN member states. Yoo argued that human rights did not exist, and that rights derive solely from citizenship.
To be fair, the roots of that doctrine long preceded the Bush administration, and have continue to grow since. But when I look at framing of debate about rights -- and this applies not only to the NSA spying, but also to the outrage over the fact that the US President would order the drone assassination of, gasp, American citizens (as opposed to the thousands of other non-combatants he has killed in the same way) -- when I see this, it becomes clear that the ideals which inspired the declaration of independence are long since gone.
It would, perhaps, be enlightening to quote the entire sentence from the US Declaration of Independence:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
In particular:
...deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed...
In other words, I give MY government the power to arrest, prosecute, employ various armed agents to use against ME if I violate its laws. I've made no such tacit contract with France, or Russia or Singapore or China or anywhere else. Russians spying on me may be violating a treaty, but they've made no implicit social contract with me via a constitution or other set of laws.
These "Rights" are unalienable. They are not to be given away, they are not to be taken away. Governments exist to secure these rights. To help protect these rights, the government may exist... but only by consent of the people being governed.
It may be true that the Russian government does not give these rights to it's citizens, or that these citizens yield these rights to the Russian government. Nevertheless, according to the morals listed in the DoI, the US government is founded on the belief that Russians have these rights, because they are human beings.
Therefore, the US government, when dealing with 'men' of any nationally, needs to respect the unalienable Rights which all men have been granted by their Creator. Anything else is hypocritical.
Edit: after thinking about it, it gets even better. Because foreigners have not consented to being governed by the US, the rights of foreigners not to be spied on by the US government would go even further than the rights of Americans. And yes, I know the DoI is not law. But if we Americans cannot simultaneously claim to believe in it's principles and make laws that contradict it without being hypocritical.
Backwards or forwards, my interpretation is less an oversimplification than the parent.
It may be true that the Russian government does not give these rights to it's citizens, or that these citizens yield these rights to the Russian government. Nevertheless, according to the morals listed in the DoI, the US government is founded on the belief that Russians have these rights, because they are human beings.
The distinction one must make based on my interpretation is that the US may believe that Russians have those rights, but it is not the US Government's responsibility to secure them, especially if doing so would conflict with the objective of securing the rights of its own citizens.
The Government's first duty is to its citizens, and it's the duty of citizens to hold its government accountable. It is, therefore, not the least bit surprising to see a different reaction between the idea of a government spying on others versus spying on citizens.
I also did not bother to question the relevance of bringing in Geneva convention arguments into a discussion about surveillance and privacy. If you examine carefully, you'll discover that the Geneva Convention deals with issues of life, liberty, and happiness quite directly in the sense of execution, imprisonment, and torture. Privacy, meanwhile, is a right derived from the US Constitution and not one of those alluded to in the Declaration.
Nowhere do I say that you can't argue that a Government should uphold basic rights of all humans everywhere regardless of citizenship. What you can't do is trot out the first half-phrase of the Declaration of Independence, highlight one example of a legal argument that a non-state entity had flagrantly violated terms of a convention and should not enjoy its benefits, and somehow try to connect that to Americans being really pissed off about being subject to a large surveillance program by their own Government.
> it is not the US Government's responsibility to secure them
no-one is asking the USG to secure anything (though it seems happy to jump in and do so when it suits other objectives) - the issue is direct, willful, and secret violation of human rights considered inalienable by the USG itself.
They are in alienable. That is to say, incapable of being separated from the individual possessing them. Literally, they cannot be alienated (separated) from the person possessing them.
Your real property (home, money, possessions, even spouse, children, or other family) may be taken from you and given to someone else.
The word inalienable refers not to rights which may not be taken, but which can not be taken.
You may be deprived of these rights, but nobody else can take possession of them.
It's a subtle difference, and one few people understand, particularly in the context of natural, civil, or universal human rights, which can be argued to have a moral or socially beneficial basis, but may still be alienable.
There's also a fair amount of debate over the self-evidence, alienability, and/or naturalness of these rights. Of of their status should they become so (say, through technology).
> It may be true that the Russian government does not give these rights to it's citizens, or that these citizens yield these rights to the Russian government.
That isn't what the parent is talking about. He's asserting that only citizens of the US have granted the US the power to enforce the granting or ceding of rights. Non-US citizens must look to their own governments for such protection.
But, this is more like it:
> Because foreigners have not consented to being governed by the US, the rights of foreigners not to be spied on by the US government would go even further than the rights of Americans
Thank you - this is the most sensible comment I've seen in this thread.
Many thinkers throughout history have noted that states and criminal gangs are effectively the same. They are both inherently violent organisations. Criminal gangs are tiny states; states are large, settled criminal gangs.
The Yakuza in Japan or the Cray family (when they ruled half of London) are examples of intermediate forms: criminal gangs that have taken on some of the role of the state. Rather than arbitrarily robbing people, they instead ask for protection money. This is more than just a polite form of robbery: they legitimately protect you from other criminal gangs. Though I doubt anyone here has had to make the decision, I think everyone would prefer to deal with one predictable criminal gang than many competing unpredictable gangs.
Eventually the gang leaders realise that it's in their own interest to build a stable, prosperous society: its better to be a Caesar than a barbarian warlord. If nothing else, the wine is nicer. Passing laws and promising that even the leaders will abide by them makes the citizens comfortable dealing with one another and makes everyone richer. Once everyone is comfortable with the idea of the law being supreme, the mob might realise they can do away with kings and bring in constitutions and parliaments and so on. Democracy works (and only works) because the mob agrees that these are the set of rules they will live by, and that therefore it's not wise to ignore them.
Still, rights and laws remain contingent on power. Human rights only extend as far as the military reach of states that support human rights. Until we build a world government, the only universal law over humanity is the same as it was in 10000 BC: raw power, physical force, violence. The world as a whole is essentially a lawless realm consisting of about 200 gangs; the only thing that stops everything turning into bloods vs crips is a shaky system of alliances, treaties and, ultimately, mutually assured destruction.
One obvious counterpoint is that France no longer needs to fear Germany because the Germans and French are suddenly BFFs and neither will vote to go to war with the other. The "international community" is slowly coming to resemble a federated state, with one set of laws. But this community is not truly international. Russia and China can violate your right to privacy all they want. Ultimately, this is because they have H-bombs. Likewise, we can violate Sharia Law as much as we like and Iran can't stop us.
My point is this: most of these complaints would make sense if America truly was a world government, achieving legitimacy via just consent of the 7 billion governed. But it's not, and it can limit its citizenship however it pleases. The fact that America was historically built on immigration doesn't give me, a foreigner, the "right" to live there. The very concept is nonsensical - the USG has more guns than me, and so they can decide who's in and who's out. The idea that people should be able to live wherever they want is a beautiful dream but is entirely counter to the way the world is going, and is also horrendously impractical.
I've travelled to China a few times over the last few years and each time the visa requirements have gotten stricter. They've decided they don't need any more foreigners, and I can't contest the morality of this with the CPC because again, they have more guns than me. As the world gets more crowded, other middle income countries will follow suit. The walls are going up everywhere. As much as I, personally, would benefit from the US tearing down its borders and letting me live there without restriction, it doesn't make a lot of sense if they do so and other countries don't.
Americans can constrain their intelligence agencies and open their borders as much as they like. They can't force other countries to do the same, which means that these policy proposals are equivalent to "we should make our intelligence gathering less capable than that of China and Russia" and "we should import Latin Americans until our quality of life is equal to that of Honduras". If America wants to reenact the fall of Rome, that's their prerogative, but as a foreigner I wish other foreigners would not cheerlead them as they do so. No America means no "international community" (what can the EU do against China and Russia?), and good luck petitioning China to respect your human rights as a global citizen.
Although you might not believe it, I'm not actually a cynic about human nature or pessimistic about our future. We built stable, peaceful societies in a violent world. Go humanity! But we have to remember that this was not achieved by the divine intervention of the Great God Human Rights, but by working within the universal laws of power. Good can triumph over evil, but as even Jesus said, it needs the "cunning of snakes" to succeed.
I very much agree that the rest of the world is being a bit two-faced, on the one hand enjoying immensely the pax americana which we have wrought and on the other decrying the evils of American imperialism--despite doing damned little to act in a similarly noble fashion.
As much as we may, for example, decry the surveillance of foreigners by the .gov and bemoan the lack of open immigration policies, we cannot do so without also acknowledging that the US is still very much better in these regards than many of the other first-world nations.
The failure of the US is perhaps a sadness, but the failure of the American Dream--were it to come to pass--is far, far worse.
To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace.
Your apologia is as old as the Roman Empire, and made as little sense then - as Tacitus points out using Calcagus above.
The concept of a 'Pax Americana' is an absurdity given the wars instigated by the US just in the last few decades and manipulation of client states, and while other nation states are no different in many ways in being run for the benefit of those in power, I certainly wouldn't say the US is better in these regards than the majority of western states.
I'd condemn this sort of widespread surveillance no matter who the actor is (and in fact it seems the UK has been just as cavalier in their actions, to take one example). It's a very dangerous centralisation of power and will lead to the growth of a secret state, inimical to the values you appear to find admirable (though the American dream is a rather vague concept and could really mean anything).
Empires are not forces for good, on the contrary normally they civilise the world by subjugating it to their will. In our increasingly connected and mobile world, we should try to see past the concept of a nation state or empire building to universal values of human rights to basic needs, among which I'd place individual privacy fom state intrusion.
And once the Empire was gone, I believe a great many people missed it.
We've seen the people voluntarily subject themselves to cataloging and surveillance on an unprecedented scale--Facebook, Twitter, Google, and so forth.
So, honestly, to hell with "the people". You claim that this information gathering is an outrage, that this invasion of privacy is an affront to all things decent.
Fact is, amigo, that fully a sixth of the human race has voluntarily given up their privacy to Facebook and the like in exchange for a cute little garden to play in and communicate with. Sadly, we seem to have forfeited the right that we otherwise would've claimed.
I disagree about nostalgia for Empire - that tends to be connected with apologies for contemporary empire building, while ignoring the constant warfare, massive slavery, brutal subjugation of conquered peoples, venality and corruption of Ancient Rome. It's a fascinating period, but hardly one to feel nostalgia for.
I agree that frequent and public sharing of information via twitter etc will in future be considered dangerous, and some people are sharing far too much, much of it out in public. That has no bearing on my individual right to privacy though - just because lots of people engage in public sharing of trivia, news, and opinions doesn't mean they are abdicating the right to privacy on more substantial matters - not many would agree to sharing all their email publicly for example.
The more important point for me is that there is a big difference between me sharing some info publicly, some info semi-anonymously, and then separately private financial info with my bank, numbers called with my phone company, email with google etc, and intel agencies of my country demanding access to all this information in aggregate for everyone, in perpetuity, and sharing it with other agencies and countries, with no effective oversight or even permission.
I see no justifiable excuse for that, not the mirage of a Pax Americana, Islamist terrorists, or any future threat.
| the US is still very much better in these
| regards than many of the other first-world
| nations.
Should the USG continue to push the envelope until such a point as this is no longer true? How far should the envelope be pushed before it is 'too close' to the edge?
Just to reinforce this point and the fact that it is not going away: this is literally natural law.
Our weapons are no different than bacterial antibiotic resistances and all the other genetic mutations that have led to what life is today. It does not matter if all seven billion people consented, all it would take is one willing person with a weapon strong enough to subdue the rest of civilization to take power. That weapon doesn't even need to be technology, it could be as simple as blackmailing the people holding the power.
The struggle for life, let alone liberty and privacy, has always been an arms race and it always will be.
For anyone interested, Norbert Elias (1897-1990) wrote a very enlightening book "The Civilizing Process" describing how these small social structures evolved into States as we know them in Occident [1]. Excerpted from a summary [2]:
According to Elias, monopolization, and especially the monopolization of physical force and violence warranted more self-restraint from both the government and the individual. In "The civilizing Process" Elias talks about "a chain of mutual dependence" which makes people dependent upon each other in order to perform various tasks and achieve their goals. This, according to Elias, explains why societies required more stability, regularity and supervision. Transportation and the development of markets increased human interactions between people who found themselves dependent on each other even without direct contact. This according to Elias has led for the need to coordinate actions and establish the "rules of the game". Playing by the rules meant a growing demand for self restraint.
I addressed your us-versus-them mindset in my reply to Goladus, but I couldn't help but point out how disingenuous this is:
Good can triumph over evil, but as even Jesus said, it needs the "cunning of snakes" to succeed.
The whole quote is:
"I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves."
You conveniently forgot the "innocent as doves" part, obviously because it doesn't fit in with the rest of your argument that America must act like a cirminal gang to secure peace. I feel unfortunate to live in a world filled with others who feel the same as you.
You misunderstand my argument. Obviously Jesus says that you should do good. Apparently that was a big part of his shtick. But if you want to actually do good you need to have a pretty fucking clear idea of how the world works. Because, y'know, wolves. It's not that America must act like a criminal gang, it's that it lives in a neighbourhood patrolled by a number of criminal gangs, so even if its ultimate goal is to kumbayah the world into submission it should probably keep a few guns in reserve, just in case.
"I feel unfortunate to live in a world filled with others who feel the same as you."
Judging by the comments here, I think its filled more with people who feel the same as you. It's not since the 19th century that people like me have been common, though the ideas I'm riffing on were already old during the Roman Empire, who succesfully implemented the only known formula for world peace discovered to date (si vis pacem, para bellum). The 20th century was full of idealistic visionaries who tried flipping this ancient wisdom, with predictable results.
You should feel unfortunate in about two or three decades though: that's when I forecast the West's technological and economic boons peter out and its various infringements of natural law finally catch up with it, and the east Asian nations bring back the old order: national sovereignty over world policing, mercantilism over outsourcing, savings over debt, and good governance over democracy.
I agree with abraininavat; your perspective is an unfortunate one. Or you're being disingenuous. Roman empire and world peace? The Roman empire a) was at constant war, and b) governed over a tiny sliver of the world. And "keep a few guns in reserve just in case" != more military spending than next 20 countries combined; massive spying on allies, enemies, and citizens alike; etc.
But to follow that completely, you've also made no contract by your consent to give your government the power to arrest, prosecute, or employ various armed agents to use against another who has not so consented to your government.
Treaties are an implicit social contract. The parties to a treaty are contracting binding social obligations and permissible and expected behaviors. If they were not a social contract, they would have no binding power. They may usefully be understood as a constitution of sorts between foreign powers.
Violating a treaty is violating a social contract. A social contract does not equal a constitution alone.
But to follow that completely, you've also made no contract by your consent to give your government the power to arrest, prosecute, or employ various armed agents to use against another who has not so consented to your government.
It's true that's outside the scope of my comment. However, once again referring to the Declaration of Independence, the concluding paragraph includes comments that the notion of statehood includes these rights[1]:
as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do.
Specifically, that's the role of the Head of State (The President) and the State Department.
====
Violating a treaty is violating a social contract. A social contract does not equal a constitution alone.
My intent was to draw a distinction between the relationship between the US government and its own people and the relationship between the the US government and non-citizens. My use of the term "social contract" was a reference to the specific Enlightenment concept.
The distinction was drawn in order to help explain to people why reactions to domestic spying are different than reactions to, say, the CIA spying in Pakistan. Domestic spying gets a more visceral, widespread negative reaction because the social contract a between government and its own citizens is highly sensitive. It's the only thing preventing oppression and tyranny-- violations should always result in an immediate flurry of public discourse, political consequences, and push to address the breach. This is not to say that treaty violations and other interaction with foreign actors is not serious-- there was no shortage of outrage about for Abu Ghraib-- but people are one step removed in any such interaction in a way that they are not when the government has offended its own.
[1] Selective quote, yes. But most relevant to the point. The "Supreme Judge of the World" part is interesting and relevant to the discussion in general but I didn't have time to address it.
I'm pretty sure nkoren's point has just flown over your head.
You're talking about the obligations of the US Government. The US Government clearly only has the obligation to secure the rights of its own citizens.
nkoren is talking about the rights of the US Government. Just look at the language of the very first clause. All men are guaranteed these rights. It makes no mention of citizenship. That the US Government has the obligation to protect the rights of only US citizens does not mean that it has the right to violate the rights of non-US citizens. I don't buy the bullshit that the government can only protect my rights by violating the rights of others. That's small-minded thinking.
I agree with 4891 that nations act like criminal gangs. I seem to be one of very few who believe they shouldn't, though.
nkoren is talking about the rights of the US Government.
No, he is talking about the behavior of the US Government and the behavior of its citizens, and inferring motivating principles from that. Nkoren appears to have concluded that the US and its people have abandoned the founding enlightenment ideals in favor of utter selfishness.
I don't buy the bullshit that the government can only protect my rights by violating the rights of others.
Sorry, but that's just the way life is. Maybe someday we can live in a world without prisons, without police, without armies, and without weapons but until that utopia comes people will infringe the rights of others, and the only way to stop them is return violation. That is not to say that every time a government claims it is acting to protect the rights of its citizens it is actually doing so, or that the violations it commits are justified. Or even worth the monetary cost. Small-minded thinking is not being able to make distinctions between John Yoo, Drone Strikes, and PRISM because you think universal human equality is the only enlightenment ideal that matters.
Small minded thinking is being unable to step out from behind the 'protection' offered by authority figures because the world just seems too scary to you.
If the cost of belief in the rights of humanity to freedom, dignity and self determination is high, that is because the rewards are great.
Stop being cynical, and stop being scared. Look up. The sun is shining :)
Can I just say, I wouldn't say the Enlightenment Ideal is all but gone. It's not even near death.
We, the people, chose leaders and were betrayed. That doesn't just apply to the US, but I'll start there. I believe the people were half-awake...but not completely unaware of who they were electing or what they would lose.
The idealist's battle against tyranny on one side and anarchy on the other is strewn all across the pages of history. Some idealists lost their way. But the ideals, "Safety and Happiness" – really, the entire Declaration of Independence or the UN Declaration of Human Rights – the ideals don't die.
We, the people, chose leaders and were betrayed. That doesn't just apply to the US...
Absolutely true. Unfortunately, in my opinion, one of the things that simply does not work in modern democracy is the election system, two-party death march or otherwise: Candidates play to emotion and often outright lie or intentionally overpromise solely for the purpose of attaining office. And it works, every damn time.
They then find themselves either predictably impotent or, worse, they settle in and show their real colors... and usually win re-election anyway.
If enough people continue to fail to understand this, the majority of the voting public will continue to actively subjugate everyone to the rule and whim of dangerously uninterested officials, and those who do understand will continue to find themselves without candidates worth voting for, as these races the world over are overwhelmingly choked with self-serving bureaucrats who have little if any interest in their constituents' (or anyone else's) well-being.
Nah, it's too late. The USA is no longer what it was relative to the rest of the world. It still has the same flag, but the understanding of the importance of Liberty is largely gone.
200+ years ago, a large portion of the population would rather die than be dictated to by an implacable and uncaring confiscatory government. Today the population doesn't even realize what they're missing because they have really good cable television, video games, and reality shows.
99.999% of government officials aren't close to being touched by elections. Do you honestly believe you can change government significantly while leaving 99.999% of the government unchanged?
> The idealist's battle against tyranny on one side and anarchy on the other is strewn all across the pages of history. Some idealists lost their way. But the ideals, "Safety and Happiness" – really, the entire Declaration of Independence or the UN Declaration of Human Rights – the ideals don't die.
> They are self-evident. Like 3.14159 and 2.71828.
sounds, I'm with you on this one, being intrinsically inalienable -- incapable of being separated -- as in Plato's Republic,
where the individual is homeomorphic to the enveloping state(cops, donuts, coffee cups are topologically equivalent therefore flock together) that you conduct your
own personal House, COITUS(Congress), SCOTUS, POTUS, and JUDUS founded on the certain conviction that the mathematical constants will be in the sky tomorrow, we can improve our municipal safety officers by serving EQUAL EXCHANGE(tm) coffees:
"...But Obama’s Justice Department, like Bush’s, has not been above an opportunistic (and occasionally downright Procrustean) reading of particular statutes to permit whatever it is that the White House wants to do."
No, we chose leaders who would give us freebies and security vs leaders who would protect our freedoms.
The fact that we have twice elected a President who talks of "fair share" and we don't recognize that language for the trap that it is tells you exactly why we are in this situation today.
> The fact that we have twice elected a President who (...)
The fact that your alternative to re-electing that guy would've been somebody equivalently bad, tells me that there wasn't a lot of choice involved in the first place.
Your betrayal started already before that, with the corruption of choice.
The Simpsons laid it out pretty clearly already some decades ago, and instead it seems to have only gotten worse--from "the lesser of two evils" to "the equivalent of two evils" ...
It demonstrated that they had the right ideals but were unable to put them into practice in one fell swoop. As Lincoln pointed out - the framework of the Declaration was an ideal to be pursued. The Founders' wisdom in what they put into motion necessitated the eventual end of slavery.
There's a big difference between moving toward the Declaration as an ideal as we still were in the time from the Founding until the early 1900s vs completely running away from those ideals as we have since.
Some of the Founders more than others. While many of them came from the North, where there were no slaves and slavery was generally unpopular, and some of the others like Washington and Jefferson held slaves but felt bad about it, there was a large enough contingent of Southern politicians who just plain favored slavery and had to be politically negotiated with. If you define "the Founders" as "everyone who attended the Continental Congresses or the Constitutional Convention", many of them were idealists, many of them had a vision, but many others were just ordinary politicians with their own agendas.
This also holds true for all American political history from the founding of the country to the Civil War.
It's also important to remember that this was before the industrial revolution, when almost the entire economy was agricultural, thus the South was far more powerful than the north.
The Civil War started right after the industrial revolution ended. By this time, the balance of power was greatly in favor of the North.
It's also worth pointing out that one of the early products of the industrial revolution--the cotton gin--made slavery far more cost-effective. It would have died out by natural economic causes otherwise.
Agreed. There will never be 100% admirable behavior in any person or political body.
The amazing thing about the Founders, though, was that the admirable forces were able to write the documents.
Compare that to today's "gang of eight" senators who created the immigration bill. That thing was a disaster before they had their first meeting. They had a unique chance to create solid immigration law, but have f'd it up beyond all reasoning.
The Founding documents were philosophical and political works of art. Where are works such as they coming form in today's society? Where are they being enacted into law?
I wish I had some authoritative references for this. Hopefully somebody else can write authoritatively or correct me. Based on my readings, slavery was always a problematic aspect of America.
Even the founders debated whether to abolish slavery, but ultimately punted because they felt uniting the states was more important.
That is, it was a tough compromise.
Take a look at the book The Long March (about Lincoln). There was a several-decade long movement before 1864 to abolish slavery.
William Freehling's Road to Disunion covers the topic thoroughly. Most of the founders expected slavery to die away gradually. The idea that it should remain permanently didn't appear for another 50 years and was never universal, even in the Deep South.
The book also explores the tensions between slavery and American ideals, and the many complications the tensions produced.
I can't understand the historical perspective that trashes the founders because of slavery. After fighting a long guerrilla rebellion and forming a new nation with a novel form of government, were they supposed to immediately turn on southern slave owners in another bloody war? If so, the American republic would have lasted maybe 10 years.
Okay, so what about all of us that don't believe in the supernatural? Do our rights come from an all-loving God, or are they creations of man like everything else in society?
The idea of rights as creations of man begs the question of how any of our present rights came to exist in the first place, especially considering the sentiments expressed elsewhere in this thread--that is, "might makes right" and that states are just more powerful criminal gangs. On the other hand, the idea of man's rights being endowed by their Creator implies that these self-evident rights are based on the nature of an all-loving creator God and are bestowed on mankind by God. Although such a view may be residue of the influence of Christendom on society and law, it's hard to find a more cogent argument for human rights. At least I haven't heard any compelling secular arguments for their existence.
It says "their creator". You didn't spring up from a cabbage patch so something created you. The total context of what that means to you is up to you. The US is a free country, believe what you want. A lot of people died and do die to give us that, I'm grateful for them and for the US even though I wish and pray for a better choice in the next election.
Well, Enlightenment ideals that were still based in semi-religious terminology aside, "their Creator" does not necessarily require an appeal to the supernatural.
One would, I think, be justified interpreting that to mean the physical processes of the Universe from which humankind arose (justified in interpreting the meaning of 'their Creator', not necessarily possessed of an easily established and defended position regarding how rights themselves rose from the primordial soup (which I must admit would make for an entertaining read)). Science had yet to provide an explanation for the origin of life, as I'm sure you know, and we can safely dispense with the defense that these rights come from a god. To suggest they come from the Universe is equally silly, but it's a hell of a lot better than the supernatural.
One would, I think, be more justified interpreting it properly just as you said--the Creator is humankind itself, like everything else in society. All (nearly all?) notable political theorists have built their analyses of social states on the premise that there are fundamental rights agreed to be important for all persons, for which humankind organizes governments/societies to protect and guarantee in the pursuit of justice. (I can't think of a notable theorist who has argued otherwise, but would be interested in knowing of one.)
Their appeals to the supernatural aside, the founders are certainly the creators of the rights of which we still believe we are endowed.
Not that this is much of a surprise. You'll have a hard time reconciling France's last 200 years with the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen it birthed
The constitution was written for a world that lacked instant communication and had clearly defined jurisdictions that could be drawn on a map. It is time to extend the bill or rights to everyone.
Welcome to the world outside of the US, there is such a thing as 'human rights' already you know. You can keep your bill of 'rights' where it is, thanks.
Just so we are clear the comment you are replying to is quoting the Declaration of Independence and not the Constitution. These documents are very different.
This ideal is all but gone. Today, the American government baldly proclaims that rights do not belong to human beings, but are conferred only by citizenship. the starkest example of this remains John Yoo's rationale (embraced by the Bush administration) for why the Geneva Convention does not apply to the Taliban: that the rights guaranteed by the Convention were not human rights, but rights granted to combatants of UN member states. Yoo argued that human rights did not exist, and that rights derive solely from citizenship.
To be fair, the roots of that doctrine long preceded the Bush administration, and have continue to grow since. But when I look at framing of debate about rights -- and this applies not only to the NSA spying, but also to the outrage over the fact that the US President would order the drone assassination of, gasp, American citizens (as opposed to the thousands of other non-combatants he has killed in the same way) -- when I see this, it becomes clear that the ideals which inspired the declaration of independence are long since gone.