Activism Change

County Sovereignty, Vol. 1, No. 3

Question:

- Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – Anton, you’re not exactly offering a great counterpoint here.  I mean, if you’re a woman, and you can vote in Wyoming, but you live in New York, are you going to move to Wyoming just to vote?  Probably not. That’s why we needed a federal amendment. Under COUNTY sovereignty, you’d only need to move to another county. Does anyone have any concrete estimates of what the francise is actually worth to people? I read an ecomonics article that took income in various cities and looked at those who moved and considered various things like the crime rate. It turns out that people value sunshine at about a dollar a day. (This is from memory, so I may be off.) Frank, moving to another COUNTY, still violates human rights laws concerning not requiring a person to have to relocate for political reasons.

The whole problem here is that there are *disagreements* about what constitutes "human rights." Liberals insist that all humans have a human right to extract resources, such as food, shelter, and even education, from the the taxpayers. In fact the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights includes paid vacations among them! And if these liberals are philosophers, they will often justify their notions of human rights by their "moral intuitions." I say, fine, if County A wants to make paid vacations a human right, this is all right with me. My real hope is not that there will come unanimous agreement on which rights are human, but that counties will not go to war with one another. I realize the Mohammedans disagree, as Protestants and Catholics did at one time, until philosopers and polticians concluded that religous freedom was a "human right." In fact, the exaltation of self-interest came about during this period, not because philosophers discovered Objectivism before Ayn Rand, but because making money was clearly less harmful than fighting religious wars. Stephen Holmes (my favorite liberal among contemporary political philosophers) has written about this several times. My point is that, under County Sovereignty, the amount of damage that can result from misspecifications of "human rights" is sharply limited. – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – : I’d be interested to here your theories on the value of decentralized : government for Jews, or any minority group.  After all, it’s the : FEDERAL government that granted full voting rights and full protection : with the 5th, 14th, 15th, and 19th amendments. So?  Which of those was not already in effect in at least some of the States? By the time the 19th Amendment was ratified (1920 August 18), only five states did not allow women the vote. As those states were all in the South, the Amendment could be regarded as the fourth Reconstruction Amendment. This is tantamount to saying that the South is inherently backward. Not that I disagree, but what is your point?

Just that the North (actually 3/4th of the states) once again crammed their own version of the Truth down the throats of Southerners, whom they regarded as sinful, though today we use your word, "backward." – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text -Incidentally, the immediate effect of the Thirteenth Amendment, the one that abolished slavery, was to increase the representation of Southern states in the House of Representatives, the reason being that slaves counted as only 3/5 of a person for purposes of apportioning Representatives (Article I, Sec. 2), and untaxed Indians were not counted at all. Howls went up by Republicans, who did not know the consequences of what they were doing. They corrected their oversight in the Fourteenth Amendment. From Section 2 (take a deep breath!): "But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the Unted States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, [having fought for the Confederacy!!--Frank] or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State." What happened was that many Northern states did not allow Negroes to vote, the result being that this Section was simply forgotten and never enforced. I don’t the question of reducing the number of Congressmen in those states that excluded a large number of voters disqualified for failure to pass a literacy test or pay a poll tax ever came up. And the hapless Indians? The Attorney General ruled in 1940 that all Indians were subject to taxation! Ah, but the 15th Amendment, which you do not address, gives voting rights to all races.

You are quite correct. But ratification of the 14th Amendment was completed 1868 July 9, while that of the 15th 1870 February 3 ("unless the  withdrawal of ratification by New York was effective; i which event ratification was completed on February 17, 1870, when Nebraska ratified," if you want to get technical.) – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – the women were ever denied the vote. But, forgetting about the relatively small number of spinsters in those days, what this denial effectively did was to make the *household* the lowest unit of participation in public life. And this is not, on its face, a wholly objectionable idea, and I can imagine some of the "family values" people making a fairly good case for it. This would, moreover, comport with my idea of federalism under County Sovereignty: families, counties, states, nation (with room for international bodies, too). I’m used to getting in hot water, so here goes: Prove to ME that women *ought* to have the vote. I expect a lot of rights-talk, but please prove the existence of rights (and also say what, exactly, rights are). No name calling, no appeals to what all "enlightened" people know. This could be an interesting and instructive exercise, esp. if we consider that rights are not something wholly timeless but also partly relative to time and place. In other words, women did not have the right to vote until circumstances were ready. (Possibility: male oppression did indeed make them irrational and short-sighted and so not fit to case a vote conistent with the ideal of *deliberative* republican government. Another one: the household as the unit makes good sense generally, but with and only with the rise of a large number of independent women did the household no longer correspond to political interests.) There is no inherent human right to vote.  It is a CIVIL right extended to a government under a social contract (constitution) to its law-abiding citizens.  This being said, as women were/are by and large law-abiding, there is no reason that they should not be allowed to vote.

I cannot recite the arguments given back then against extending the vote to women. But, supposing they were valid *and* appealed to conditions that could change, then it is quite possible that the arguments are *no longer* valid. It’s a philosophical point, namely that moral truths can change with circumstances. In any case, Andrew is (like far, far too many people) pretending that HE knows what the various moral truths are and is quite willing to impose them on the national level. My purpose in proposing the idea of country sovereignty is to get away from this idea. There are no moral truths, Frank.  Only individuals’ perceptions of what is right and wrong.  Get enough people together who agree on what’s right and wrong, and you have a society which writes a social contracts based on these things.   Our social contract gives you the CIVIL right to dissent, but only by peaceable means.

So I guess you would say that capitalists had no rights in the Soviet Union and would not say that they were *denied* their rights. Too much quoting here, so I hope anyone responding will just address this last point, or rather question. Frank

Response:

: My point, which you seem to have side-stepped, is that a person has an : inherent right to stay where s/he is, and not to have to move or be : moved in order to have the rights that s/he has inalienably, to quote : the Declaration. The right to vote is alienable, in that you can delegate it.         … : Use the word Muslim, Frank; a Mohammedan would worship Muhammad, which : Muslims do not do. Tell it to the Lutherans. : My point is that, under County Sovereignty, the amount of damage that can : result from misspecifications of "human rights" is sharply limited. : No argument, but let’s enumerate those rights, eh? Why?  If the enumeration varies on a scale of thirty miles or so (the size of the county where I was raised), and people can move to a county whose list of rights makes for healthier society than that of their own county, then the lists will converge to a good list.  Better that than try to write a complete theory of good government a priori.  Sure, most of us can agree on a partial list (the Bill of Rights); so let’s credit our neighbors with the ability to do the same. — I wasn’t always anarcho-capitalist, you know.   —   Ubi scriptum?

Response:

- Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – Frank, moving to another COUNTY, still violates human rights laws concerning not requiring a person to have to relocate for political reasons. The whole problem here is that there are *disagreements* about what constitutes "human rights." Liberals insist that all humans have a human right to extract resources, such as food, shelter, and even education, from the the taxpayers. In fact the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights includes paid vacations among them! And if these liberals are philosophers, they will often justify their notions of human rights by their "moral intuitions." I say, fine, if County A wants to make paid vacations a human right, this is all right with me. My point, which you seem to have side-stepped, is that a person has an inherent right to stay where s/he is, and not to have to move or be moved in order to have the rights that s/he has inalienably, to quote the Declaration.

How absolute is this right to stay where you are? What if you don’t want to pay taxes or even to commit mayhem? As far as the Declaration of Independence goes, do I have the right to secede from the government? And does my "unalienable rights, among them life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" extend to freedom from taxation? Alas, the problem remains that disagreements about rights will continue. [later] Use the word Muslim, Frank; a Mohammedan would worship Muhammad, which Muslims do not do.

Oh, I know that: "There is one god, Allah, and Mohammed (Mahomet) is his prophet." But I can be a Marxist merely by being a follower of his teachings, not by worshipping him. A friend of mine told me that Mohammeden was commonly used in the nineteenth century but is regarded by them as an insult today. Actually, I think Islam is far more insulting, since the word means "the body of the people who submit." Telling someone that he submits to someone else’s doctrines rather than thinking things out for himself is a high insult, in my books! When do you think I should submit to others’ demands on my vocabulary. Recall the progressions Boshevik-communist-Marxist, savage-backward-underdeveloped-developing, black-colored-negro-Negro-black. My point is that, under County Sovereignty, the amount of damage that can result from misspecifications of "human rights" is sharply limited. No argument, but let’s enumerate those rights, eh?

You, too! Rights violations are a subset of immoral actions. And morally enforceable rights violations a subset within that. Now, human have not come to any agreement on which actions are immoral any where approaching consensus. I could give you my own ideas about the good life, right action, alienable and inalienable rights, and so on. But what good would it do you to know what Frank Forman thinks, unless you were conducting a survey? You’d have a hard time convincing me of the justification for *any* government, much less the one you, self-described as "far left," would want. [more snipping] Again, human rights.  Is there an inherent human right not to be ensalved?

I am against slavery and am not merely "personally opposed" like Mario Cuomo is to abortion, I think it should be illegal. (I think abortion is great: it reduces the number of unwanted children in the world. What its eugenic/dysgenic effects are, I have been unable to ascertain. I’m giving utilitarian arguments here.) My opposition to slavery is not unlike Hegel’s, for I think slaveholding *has become* extremetly damaging to the slaveholder (to say nothing of the slave). Whether this was always the case, say back in Biblical times, I do not know. The Bible (both Testaments) does not condemn it. Sarah thinks that slavery becoming harmful to the slaveholder is due to our increasing consciousness and self-awareness. I’d add that certain punishments that were neither cruel nor unusual in 1791, when the Bill of Rights was ratified, are cruel today. I don’t know what to think about Supreme Court rulings on this, however; it’s a tricky question. But far leftists are not esp. concerned with procedure. [and some more snipping] There are no moral truths, Frank.  Only individuals’ perceptions of what is right and wrong.  Get enough people together who agree on what’s right and wrong, and you have a society which writes a social contracts based on these things.   Our social contract gives you the CIVIL right to dissent, but only by peaceable means. So I guess you would say that capitalists had no rights in the Soviet Union and would not say that they were *denied* their rights. There is no inherent right to be a capitalist, no.  Were they wrongfully imprisoned and persecuted?  Of course.  Their human rights (as yet to be well enumerated) were clearly violated).

Capitalism is more than having capitalists with their money bags. The term designates a social order where the right of free exchange and the right to freely produce and sell one’s labor is respected. Some of those free men will accumulate capital. We’re headed for a big discussion about getting a more exact definition of capitalism and when it first emerged. Some historians, like Andre Gunder Frank, say capitalism has been going on for five thousand years. I subscribe to an e-mail group devoted to the philosophy of history, but have yet to do much posting. Frank

Response:

Frank, moving to another COUNTY, still violates human rights laws concerning not requiring a person to have to relocate for political reasons. The whole problem here is that there are *disagreements* about what constitutes "human rights." Liberals insist that all humans have a human right to extract resources, such as food, shelter, and even education, from the the taxpayers. In fact the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights includes paid vacations among them! And if these liberals are philosophers, they will often justify their notions of human rights by their "moral intuitions." I say, fine, if County A wants to make paid vacations a human right, this is all right with me.

My point, which you seem to have side-stepped, is that a person has an inherent right to stay where s/he is, and not to have to move or be moved in order to have the rights that s/he has inalienably, to quote the Declaration. My real hope is not that there will come unanimous agreement on which rights are human, but that counties will not go to war with one another. I realize the Mohammedans disagree, as Protestants and Catholics did at one time, until philosopers and polticians concluded that religous freedom was a "human right." In fact, the exaltation of self-interest came about during this period, not because philosophers discovered Objectivism before Ayn Rand, but because making money was clearly less harmful than fighting religious wars. Stephen Holmes (my favorite liberal among contemporary political philosophers) has written about this several times.

Use the word Muslim, Frank; a Mohammedan would worship Muhammad, which Muslims do not do. My point is that, under County Sovereignty, the amount of damage that can result from misspecifications of "human rights" is sharply limited.

No argument, but let’s enumerate those rights, eh? This is tantamount to saying that the South is inherently backward. Not that I disagree, but what is your point? Just that the North (actually 3/4th of the states) once again crammed their own version of the Truth down the throats of Southerners, whom they regarded as sinful, though today we use your word, "backward."

Again, human rights.  Is there an inherent human right not to be ensalved? – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text -Ah, but the 15th Amendment, which you do not address, gives voting rights to all races. You are quite correct. But ratification of the 14th Amendment was completed 1868 July 9, while that of the 15th 1870 February 3 ("unless the  withdrawal of ratification by New York was effective; i which event ratification was completed on February 17, 1870, when Nebraska ratified," if you want to get technical.) There is no inherent human right to vote.  It is a CIVIL right extended to a government under a social contract (constitution) to its law-abiding citizens.  This being said, as women were/are by and large law-abiding, there is no reason that they should not be allowed to vote. I cannot recite the arguments given back then against extending the vote to women. But, supposing they were valid *and* appealed to conditions that could change, then it is quite possible that the arguments are *no longer* valid. It’s a philosophical point, namely that moral truths can change with circumstances. There are no moral truths, Frank.  Only individuals’ perceptions of what is right and wrong.  Get enough people together who agree on what’s right and wrong, and you have a society which writes a social contracts based on these things.   Our social contract gives you the CIVIL right to dissent, but only by peaceable means. So I guess you would say that capitalists had no rights in the Soviet Union and would not say that they were *denied* their rights.

There is no inherent right to be a capitalist, no.  Were they wrongfully imprisoned and persecuted?  Of course.  Their human rights (as yet to be well enumerated) were clearly violated). Too much quoting here, so I hope anyone responding will just address this last point, or rather question.

Did my best. Andrew "If they give you ruled paper, Write the other way."                –Juan Ramon Jimenez

Response:

Anton, you’re not exactly offering a great counterpoint here.  I mean, if you’re a woman, and you can vote in Wyoming, but you live in New York, are you going to move to Wyoming just to vote?  Probably not. That’s why we needed a federal amendment. Under COUNTY sovereignty, you’d only need to move to another county. Does anyone have any concrete estimates of what the francise is actually worth to people? I read an ecomonics article that took income in various cities and looked at those who moved and considered various things like the crime rate. It turns out that people value sunshine at about a dollar a day. (This is from memory, so I may be off.)

Frank, moving to another COUNTY, still violates human rights laws concerning not requiring a person to have to relocate for political reasons. : I’d be interested to here your theories on the value of decentralized : government for Jews, or any minority group.  After all, it’s the : FEDERAL government that granted full voting rights and full protection : with the 5th, 14th, 15th, and 19th amendments. So?  Which of those was not already in effect in at least some of the States? By the time the 19th Amendment was ratified (1920 August 18), only five states did not allow women the vote. As those states were all in the South, the Amendment could be regarded as the fourth Reconstruction Amendment.

This is tantamount to saying that the South is inherently backward. Not that I disagree, but what is your point? – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text -Incidentally, the immediate effect of the Thirteenth Amendment, the one that abolished slavery, was to increase the representation of Southern states in the House of Representatives, the reason being that slaves counted as only 3/5 of a person for purposes of apportioning Representatives (Article I, Sec. 2), and untaxed Indians were not counted at all. Howls went up by Republicans, who did not know the consequences of what they were doing. They corrected their oversight in the Fourteenth Amendment. From Section 2 (take a deep breath!): "But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the Unted States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, [having fought for the Confederacy!!--Frank] or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State." What happened was that many Northern states did not allow Negroes to vote, the result being that this Section was simply forgotten and never enforced. I don’t the question of reducing the number of Congressmen in those states that excluded a large number of voters disqualified for failure to pass a literacy test or pay a poll tax ever came up. And the hapless Indians? The Attorney General ruled in 1940 that all Indians were subject to taxation!

Ah, but the 15th Amendment, which you do not address, gives voting rights to all races. – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – the women were ever denied the vote. But, forgetting about the relatively small number of spinsters in those days, what this denial effectively did was to make the *household* the lowest unit of participation in public life. And this is not, on its face, a wholly objectionable idea, and I can imagine some of the "family values" people making a fairly good case for it. This would, moreover, comport with my idea of federalism under County Sovereignty: families, counties, states, nation (with room for international bodies, too). I’m used to getting in hot water, so here goes: Prove to ME that women *ought* to have the vote. I expect a lot of rights-talk, but please prove the existence of rights (and also say what, exactly, rights are). No name calling, no appeals to what all "enlightened" people know. This could be an interesting and instructive exercise, esp. if we consider that rights are not something wholly timeless but also partly relative to time and place. In other words, women did not have the right to vote until circumstances were ready. (Possibility: male oppression did indeed make them irrational and short-sighted and so not fit to case a vote conistent with the ideal of *deliberative* republican government. Another one: the household as the unit makes good sense generally, but with and only with the rise of a large number of independent women did the household no longer correspond to political interests.)

There is no inherent human right to vote.  It is a CIVIL right extended to a government under a social contract (constitution) to its law-abiding citizens.  This being said, as women were/are by and large law-abiding, there is no reason that they should not be allowed to vote. In any case, Andrew is (like far, far too many people) pretending that HE knows what the various moral truths are and is quite willing to impose them on the national level. My purpose in proposing the idea of country sovereignty is to get away from this idea.

There are no moral truths, Frank.  Only individuals’ perceptions of what is right and wrong.  Get enough people together who agree on what’s right and wrong, and you have a society which writes a social contracts based on these things.   Our social contract gives you the CIVIL right to dissent, but only by peaceable means. Andrew Mathis "If they give you ruled paper, Write the other way."                –Juan Ramon Jimenez

Response:

Filed under: Human Rights

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