Norm has responded to my post about positive rights:
In a post on positive rights Peter tries to sidestep the truth of this claim by arguing that all a government needs to do to preserve freedom of speech is not to interfere with it itself. But what about the need for governments to protect the freedom of speech of citizens from possible interference by other citizens (thus entailing policing and so resources)? Here is what Peter says:
“OK, what if something I say annoys someone so much they want to kill me…[?] Then the government will, or rather might, protect me, that’s true. But it makes no difference to the government whether I’m being attacked for something I said, or because my driving annoyed someone and there’s a road rage attack, or if I come face to face with a mugger. The government isn’t protecting my speech, they’re preventing a breach of the peace.”
This is a feeble ploy and falls foul of the simple observation that because an action fits accurately under one description, that doesn’t mean it isn’t true under other descriptions as well.
A ploy? I thought I was making an argument. Ploy makes me think of myself in a black cape, twiddling my moustache. At least let my ploy be dastardly instead of feeble.
Actually, Norm quoted the first of two paragraphs that made that argument. The second ran as follows:
Say I’m an evangelical Christian who thinks homosexuality is an abomination. Let’s say I call a local radio program and say so, or stand out in the street preaching and say so. Then I’m attacked by an enraged gay rights advocate. The government would protect me from the gay rights advocate. Then, when they had protected me from attack, they would take me to court for hate speech, in order to make sure I never said anything like it again.
This isn’t a theoretical idea, it’s really happened. Peter Tatchell has protested about the arrests of bigoted evangelical preachers. Norm was right as far as he went; that something fits one description does not mean it can’t fit any others. But I think I am correct on the broader point. That the police might prevent harm coming to a gay-hating preacher doesn’t mean they are protecting his or her speech. They aren’t, they’ll arrest him or her for it, in practice, now, in this country (the UK).
And the more powerful point surely remains: the only country with effective protection for free speech is the USA, where the protection is of the citizen from attempts by the government to proscribe speech. On the other side, those countries that have tried to enforce the idea that “positive rights” should rank with “negative” ones have suppressed natural rights and turned the right to work, for example, into a compulsion (see my earlier post).
In theory and in practice, therefore, natural rights require protection from, not by, the government and attempts to expand the scope of human rights have ended up diminishing natural rights. It’s a bad thing.
It’s also unnecessary. As I said before, none of this is needed to advance the proposition that it would be good, even a moral duty, to help secure clean water for those in the world who don’t have it.
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I think Norm may have fallen into a positivistic fallacy:
1. All rights need enforcers
2. So we appoint an agent to enforce a right to free speech.
3. But we have nothing to enforce our right to free speech AGAINST that agent.
4. But all rights need enforcers
5. So we appoint another super-agent to enforce our right to have our free speech abridged by our other enforcement agent.
6. But we have nothing to ensure the super-agent fulfills his role, because our right to that is not enforced.
7. So we need a super-super-agent to… etc..
Basically, Norm’s logic pushes us in a Hobbesian direction whereby you have no claim whatsoever to a set of rights outside of the rules that the state sets. If there are a no negative rights, there aren’t really any rights at all.
“If there are a no negative rights, there aren’t really any rights at all.”
Norm isn’t saying there are no negative rights, but rather that some of his opinions about the entitlements of people should be given equal weight. That said, your point stands, I think. The lumping in of positive with negative rights ends up removing all rights, replacing them with whatever a state might choose to allow to its subjects (which might include some parts of some positive and negative rights).
That is, “there aren’t really any rights at all”.