Really good to read how you describe the use of language and the shift.
One comment I wanted to make is about rights, and an individuals right. An individuals right to something should have no imposition on another individual to observe. In this way rights naturally are a negative, i.e. right to defend your life, liberty and property as Bastiat wrote in The Law.
Food, shelter and clothing are really necessities as everyone learns in school, but none of us had a right to it. If we had a right to food i.e. a positive right, then we can enslave another individual to provide food without their consent which conflicts with the right to defend ones liberty and property.
As you so eloquently put, we have forgotten this and what it took to get the level of individual liberty that once existed.
A very considered piece. It would be so nice if everyone’s right were observed appreciated and accepted whether negative or positive. But they are not. Trying to be free while others stop or hinder or are plain obtuse is as hard as it is to describe and pin down by words or means. It’s trying to wrestle a slippery eel! You think you have a handle on it but then, it just slips away. If it were easy then we would need governments or charters or the law. But clearly we need all snd I would assert more. We need care, protection and fairness just as much as a wish freedoms especially in the face of those trying their level best to deny you of them or in your case trying to set a default base line beyond which is a never to go boundary. To be honest with you, I’m struggling to place a handle on it myself. Its simple parameters and boundary’s are difficult to place in a modern thoughtful society. For example DNA. Your argument still wants that knowledge to be ‘unknown’ as its use would be an infringement to liberty in disclosing it. Yet it is used in law as a method of proof. I would assert we need it to be known. So we can instantly track down perpetrators to protect the very freedoms of the rest. The same for ID cards. In a modern society I think it’s about time we accepted the need for identity checks. It’s accepted at every level of society from a library card to a bank account from a passport to loan agreement. Yet we shy away from a one fits all card to take the place of all the these different ones. I’m all for these to protect us and our freedom to live in peace as an aid to it not as an overstep. I’m all for a framework if evenness as you elude to in business and speech etc but we live now in a modern democracy where we accept that the decision of the majority rule. I assert now this has become the backstop to freedoms. We must accept the will of the collective as in Brexit. The 49% must adhere to the 51%. Which somewhat conflicts with the freedoms you want clearly to hang on to. Recently for example we have had the uproar from the on line bill and the fight for free speech. But it’s aimed at the protection of children! No adult has been harmed in the process and outcome of the bill! Snd yo use it as an overreach for the now archaic stand on freedoms is wrong in my view. Protections have to be just that protective. Children are not free! Not even to parents snd schools. So no rights are to be handed to monsters on the internet who wish to use freedoms as a way to attack them in their bedrooms from the internet. We have to be reasonable. We can’t just accept a line over which we can’t step. We have to accept a straight line is sometimes wavy for very good reasons. Who knows what, The authors of the Magna Carta or those who decided on the US Constitution or even those authors of the bibles commandments as written, not said, might have come up with in a modern democracy rather than those at the time of writing. We all move on from anarchy. Yet it still exists! So we can’t be complacent as we must be diligent of course we should! That means rules and laws under the democratic backstop we have decided upon. By all means change laws that are not perfect. But we can’t not do things because if the argument of freedom. That’s my opinion.
Really good to read how you describe the use of language and the shift.
One comment I wanted to make is about rights, and an individuals right. An individuals right to something should have no imposition on another individual to observe. In this way rights naturally are a negative, i.e. right to defend your life, liberty and property as Bastiat wrote in The Law.
Food, shelter and clothing are really necessities as everyone learns in school, but none of us had a right to it. If we had a right to food i.e. a positive right, then we can enslave another individual to provide food without their consent which conflicts with the right to defend ones liberty and property.
As you so eloquently put, we have forgotten this and what it took to get the level of individual liberty that once existed.
Important point Jilan, thank you for raising it!
A very considered piece. It would be so nice if everyone’s right were observed appreciated and accepted whether negative or positive. But they are not. Trying to be free while others stop or hinder or are plain obtuse is as hard as it is to describe and pin down by words or means. It’s trying to wrestle a slippery eel! You think you have a handle on it but then, it just slips away. If it were easy then we would need governments or charters or the law. But clearly we need all snd I would assert more. We need care, protection and fairness just as much as a wish freedoms especially in the face of those trying their level best to deny you of them or in your case trying to set a default base line beyond which is a never to go boundary. To be honest with you, I’m struggling to place a handle on it myself. Its simple parameters and boundary’s are difficult to place in a modern thoughtful society. For example DNA. Your argument still wants that knowledge to be ‘unknown’ as its use would be an infringement to liberty in disclosing it. Yet it is used in law as a method of proof. I would assert we need it to be known. So we can instantly track down perpetrators to protect the very freedoms of the rest. The same for ID cards. In a modern society I think it’s about time we accepted the need for identity checks. It’s accepted at every level of society from a library card to a bank account from a passport to loan agreement. Yet we shy away from a one fits all card to take the place of all the these different ones. I’m all for these to protect us and our freedom to live in peace as an aid to it not as an overstep. I’m all for a framework if evenness as you elude to in business and speech etc but we live now in a modern democracy where we accept that the decision of the majority rule. I assert now this has become the backstop to freedoms. We must accept the will of the collective as in Brexit. The 49% must adhere to the 51%. Which somewhat conflicts with the freedoms you want clearly to hang on to. Recently for example we have had the uproar from the on line bill and the fight for free speech. But it’s aimed at the protection of children! No adult has been harmed in the process and outcome of the bill! Snd yo use it as an overreach for the now archaic stand on freedoms is wrong in my view. Protections have to be just that protective. Children are not free! Not even to parents snd schools. So no rights are to be handed to monsters on the internet who wish to use freedoms as a way to attack them in their bedrooms from the internet. We have to be reasonable. We can’t just accept a line over which we can’t step. We have to accept a straight line is sometimes wavy for very good reasons. Who knows what, The authors of the Magna Carta or those who decided on the US Constitution or even those authors of the bibles commandments as written, not said, might have come up with in a modern democracy rather than those at the time of writing. We all move on from anarchy. Yet it still exists! So we can’t be complacent as we must be diligent of course we should! That means rules and laws under the democratic backstop we have decided upon. By all means change laws that are not perfect. But we can’t not do things because if the argument of freedom. That’s my opinion.