Inalienable Rights: What Constitutes & Public School Attendance

[runner]

What constitutes an inalienable right? Also, every citizen can attend public school from age K-12. Is that considered an inalienable right?

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

Life, liberty, and the purfuit of happinefs.

 

[BobG]

Life, liberty, and the purfuit of happinefs.

Don't type when your mouth is full.

 

[runner]

Life, liberty, and the purfuit of happinefs.

Ok, we accept that. But what makes those things inalienably right compared to something else?

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

Ok, we accept that. But what makes those things inalienably right compared to something else?

It's self-evident.

 

[Astronuc]

Ok, we accept that. But what makes those things inalienably right compared to something else?

It pretty much comes down to mutual consent.

Of course, some might belief and state that inalienable rights are granted by a higher (supernatural) authority or perhaps by Nature itself.

Some discussion here:

The distinction between alienable and unalienable rights was introduced by Francis Hutcheson in his A System of Moral Philosophy (1755) based on the Reformation principle of the liberty of conscience. One could not in fact give up the capacity for private judgment (e.g., about religious questions) regardless of any external contracts or oaths to religious or secular authorities so that right is "unalienable." As Hutcheson wrote, "Thus no man can really change his sentiments, judgments, and inward affections, at the pleasure of another; nor can it tend to any good to make him profess what is contrary to his heart. The right of private judgment is therefore unalienable."[12]

In the German Enlightenment, Hegel gave a highly developed treatment of this inalienability argument. Like Hutcheson, Hegel based the theory of inalienable rights on the de facto inalienability of those aspects of personhood that distinguish persons from things. A thing, like a piece of property, can in fact be transferred from one person to another. But the same would not apply to those aspects that make one a person, wrote Hegel: . . .

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_and_legal_rights (disclaimer: article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards.)

 

[jtbell]

Don't type when your mouth is full.

Someone should have said that to the guy who wrote the manuscript.

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

Also, every citizen can attend public school from age K-12. Is that considered an inalienable right?

This particular right is not inalienable in the US. Your parents can take it away from you by sending you to a private school, or by home-schooling.

 

[runner]

This particular right is not inalienable in the US. Your parents can take it away from you by sending you to a private school, or by home-schooling.

Sorry for not being a little clearer js. What I was trying to say was that as a society we have determined that no one needs to be deprived of an eduction through the primary and secondary school system because of lack of funds. This is not the case in some parts of the world.

 

[Bystander]

"Inalienable right?" You have the right to be dead. Everything else can be taken away by nature or man (law, religion, government).

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

This is not the case in some parts of the world.

Alienable.

Edit: If other countries don't order their societies the way we do, that's their business. We shouldn't go invading them. However, if we do invade them, we are bound to say we are protecting someone's inalienable rights. Are you just concerned about the fact that other countries don't order their societies the way we do, or are you looking for an excuse to invade?

 

[runner]

Alienable.

Edit: If other countries don't order their societies the way we do, that's their business. We shouldn't go invading them. However, if we do invade them, we are bound to say we are protecting someone's inalienable rights. Are you just concerned about the fact that other countries don't order their societies the way we do, or are you looking for an excuse to invade?

Huh? I don't understand where you are going with the comments in your edit. I asked a simple question about what is an inalienable right, and whether the fact that education is available to all makes that in itself an inalienable right or maybe it's some other kind of a legal right. It's obvious I'm not a scholar of the constitution, and I'm just trying to understand what is meant by the phrase.

To all: Are there any other inalienable rights other than what is spelled out in the constitution, or is that pretty much it, by definition? I have to agree with Astronuc that this phrase is probably best seen as something left to mutual consent. I also read a blog today by someone that had the opinion that an inalienable right is one with no cost associated with it. He was talking about it in reference to the national health care program proposed, and that was an attribute (the no cost thing) he was assigning to it.

 

[mheslep]

See Locke. He's the man. Jefferson appears to have actually grabbed the phrase http://www.jstor.org/stable/2130435?seq=2" from George Mason's Virginia Declaration of Rights, but the idea and foundation is all Locke by my reading; he use's 'born to'.

http://history.wisc.edu/sommerville/367/Locke%20DecIndep.htm"

To understand political power right, and derive it from its original, we must consider, what state all men are naturally in, and that is, a state of perfect freedom to order their actions, and dispose of their possessions and persons, as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of nature, without asking leave, or depending upon the will of any other man. A state also of equality, wherein all the power and jurisdiction is reciprocal, no one having more than another; there being nothing more evident, than that creatures of the same species and rank, promiscuously born to all the same advantages of nature, and the use of the same faculties, should also be equal one amongst another without subordination or subjection, ...

This description self evidently includes life, liberty, pursuit ..., and it also rules out anything upon which we must be dependent on others to supply (e.g. education, health care).

 

[mheslep]

"Inalienable right?" You have the right to be dead. Everything else can be taken away by nature or man (law, religion, government).

Because an oppressive government or group might intervene and enforce some deprivation does not make the right any less of one. Inalienable, as it was used by the US founders, I believe refers to those rights which we all have on day one, without dependence on any other. They are few, fundamental, and sufficient.

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

Huh? I don't understand where you are going with the comments in your edit.

I wrote what I wrote since there is such a large gap between the universal concept of inalienable rights, and the narrow concept of public school attendance, a right which so obviously is not inalienable.

To all: Are there any other inalienable rights other than what is spelled out in the constitution, or is that pretty much it, by definition?

The constitution says:
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.

The phrasing (among these) makes it clear that the author felt there were or could be other inalienable rights. However, this is not the definition of inalienable rights. The phrasing (We hold) makes it clear that this is an expression of the author's belief.

 

[runner]

See Locke. He's the man. Jefferson appears to have actually grabbed the phrase http://www.jstor.org/stable/2130435?seq=2" from George Mason's Virginia Declaration of Rights, but the idea and foundation is all Locke by my reading; he use's 'born to'.

http://history.wisc.edu/sommerville/367/Locke%20DecIndep.htm"
This description self evidently includes life, liberty, pursuit ..., and it also rules out anything upon which we might be dependent on others to supply (e.g. education, health care).

Thanks. Just wondering where or how you would categorize those other things (e.g. education, health care). Are they some other form of legal rights?

 

[mheslep]

Thanks. Just wondering where or how you would categorize those other things (e.g. education, health care). Are they some other form of legal rights?

I say no. I believe they are responsibilities on the part of those that are able to provide to those that are not able.

 

[mheslep]

Inalienable Rights and Locke's Treatises
A. John Simmons

gets right to it. There are a number of perceptions of the term, the modern popular, the narrow one espouse by modern philosophers; but those distinct from the meaning used by Locke and the 18 century founders.

Bottom of the page:
http://www.jstor.org/stable/2265297?seq=3
http://www.jstor.org/stable/2265297?seq=4