Aripyanfar wrote:
Quote:
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.
Ok, so I've highlighted an American ideal to the right to Life. I contend that all the little niggling illnesses and injuries are a detriment to the Right to Life, too.
No, it's not. Liberty is about not having something taken away. Rights are specifically defined liberties. The statements about life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness are within that context because the Founders knew what a "right" was. They meant that people should not have those things taken from them, not that other people should have to pay to improve them. Those are two radically different concepts. They also happen to be
exactly the difference in the meaning of liberty/rights which differentiates classical liberalism from social liberalism as I have argued repeatedly on this forum. I say this, everyone insists I'm wrong, and then the same people repeat the exact same assumptive arguments I said they would take.
You believe that liberty can be given to you. That someone failing to provide you with something is equivalent to someone taking something away from you. Thus, when you read that, you assume that your rights include the "right" to have someone provide you with medical care. Does that make sense to you?
Quote:
Secondly, as someone who has lived a long time with an extremely debilitating chronic illness: Sickness in ALL PRACTICAL MEASURES infringes on personal liberty. An injury to a knee, foot, or hip, and suddenly you can't walk well, or without great pain? Suddenly you can't walk around a shop/office floor, around an art museum, get up stadium steps, play a sport, cook, look after your kids properly by moving around the house, or helping them dress, you can't make it to the corner store when before you could walk all over town all day? Let me tell you: that's an infringement of Liberty right there. An INCREDIBLE infringement on Liberty.
You are now making the other equivalence that I always talk about. You are equating "liberty" with "ability". Your health issues do not infringe you liberty. They limit your ability to do things. Those are two different things. Liberty is specific to the "may" question. Do you have permission to do something (or, do you have to ask for permission at all?). Ability has to do with the "can" question. Clearly, a health problem which limits your mobility affects whether you "can" do something. It has no effect on whether you "may" do something.
I'll point out again that we all learned the difference between can and may in grade school. It's critically important to recognize that the same differences are relevant to a discussion of liberty. Liberty is only infringed by the acts of others which remove from us the freedom to do something. Natural restrictions do not restrict our liberty. A cliff may block your path, but it isn't removing your liberty to get to the other side. Only some act of man can infringe liberty. It's inherent to the definition of liberty. I know that some of you disagree with that definition, but that *is* why the word was created. It exists specifically to differentiate between those things which affect us naturally and man created limits on our lives.
Quote:
Agonising tooth so you can only eat soup, and you are debilitated by pain all day, circumscribing the activities you are up to? Infringement of liberty.
Nope. Just nature. Nature cannot infringe liberty. Nature does not
choose to harm or help you. It just is.
Quote:
For a liberty to be a liberty, you have to not only have the right to do it, but also the ability to do it.
Hahah...
Anyone remember
this thread?
I wrote:
Social Liberalism, as I am using it, is an ideology which offshoots from classical liberalism. Social liberalism believes that the freedom to do something is useless without the ability to do that thing as well. I've pointed this out in numerous other threads when observing that when many posters talk about "liberty", they are actually talking about "ability". Which is why their position is based on social liberalist ideology. It's not enough to have the freedom to obtain medical care if one cannot afford to pay for it. That is a social liberalist position.
Strange. When I wrote that, everyone insisted that I was wrong. Whatever you want to call your position, it is precisely what I disagree with, for precisely the reason I disagree with it. Can we at least reach common ground on *why* we disagree?
