Who's rights are they?

[JTG51]

In the last year I've heard lots of people saying things like, "Since so and so isn't an American citizen, they don't have the same rights we have". Glenn also brought that up below in the "boil a baby" thread when he was talking about torturing a foreign terrorist.

I'm always somewhat troubled with that statement (not that I necessarily disagree with Glenn in the situation described below, that's not what this post is meant to be about). It almost gives me the chills to hear someone say it.

What I'm getting at is, if we believe all Americans deserve certain rights, shouldn't we in general extend those same rights to all human beings? When someone says, "He's not an American, he's not protected by the Bill of Rights" isn't that incredibly hypocritical? Doesn't that go against every principal this country was founded on? Everyone being equal and so on?

Am I way off base here?

[Glenn]

When I said that, I was just using it to discredit an overly literal interpretation of the Bill of Rights. If you interpret it so overzealously that you think you have to let 5 million people die by not torturing one, then you also should understand that it does not literally apply to non-US citizens. I personally believe neither. Of course foreigners within our borders should have a right to live, get fair trials, etc in the general case. However, in the posed case, common sense is overwhelming.

[IrishHand]

As it turns out, I agree 100% with Glenn's perspective to the "boil a baby" thread I started. I think that when you get to something of that magnitude, the Bill of Rights has to be suspended. Some might argue it's a slippery slope, but I think that the slipping is pretty easily stopped if you say that anytime over a million people's lives are clearly at risk, the offender's rights are toast (or something similar with better verbage.

So saying, Glenn's statement "[o]f course foreigners within our borders should have a right to live, get fair trials, etc in the general case" ignores the question posed at the beginning of this thread: "if we believe all Americans deserve certain rights, shouldn't we in general extend those same rights to all human beings?" The answer I believe has to be yes, which is the reason I've engaged in the food debate in another thread. (How our consumption of 3rd world resources is starving those country's citizens such that wealthy industrialists here and abroad might make money.)

For the many who seem to think that it applies only to Americans, or some other subsection of humanity, the Declaration of Independance begins: 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 Bill of Rights merely clarifies some of these referenced "Rights". They have nothing to do with nationality and everything to do with humanity.

[Glenn]

First of all I agree that all people should have rights, etc... I don't think that it is our responsibility to ensure fair treatment of everyone in the world though.

Secondly, you can't quote the Declaration of Independance and then use it to support some one world meaning. The whole point of the Declaration of Independance was to SEPARATE the USA.

[IrishHand]

Actually, I can happily quote the Declaration and give it a meaning as applied to all men - that's what it says, and that's what its writers intended. Certainly the intent was to separate the USA from a form of government that they felt was in conflict with these inalienable rights that all men possessed. However, a main goal of the Declaration of Independance was to make a statement that would be heard around the world about the moral and philosophical differences that many soon-to-be-Americans felt they had with the English form of government (imperialistic monarchy) and then to express their intention to use these rights to form a government more in line with their values and beliefs as expressed in the Declaration.

It would be hypocrisy in the extreme to say that "we're separating because all men have these rights and you're not recognizing them" and then completely disregard them in our treatment of non-Americans.

Now, in your first point you raise a completely separate point - whether we as Americans have any sort of responsibility to ensure that people's inalienable rights are respected around the world. Whether non-Americans have rights and whether we intend to do anything about it (or at least not violate them) are totally different issues. Given the rhetoric spouted by our government about our reasons for international intervention (military and otherwise), it should be fairly clear that most Americans feel some sort of global responsibility (hopefully vaguely in line with our level of global influence) - again, basing this logic on the idea that our government typically doesn't make public declarations that are way out of line with the opinions of most Americans.

[HDPM]

Well, it depends. /forums/images/icons/smirk.gif

Obviously some people don't have rights guaranteed by our Constitution. An easy, simplistic example is that foreigners can't vote. (And you can't be President if foreign born even if you are a citizen. Says so right in there.) But the Constitution does protect non-citizens in a lot of areas. OTOH, there is a long legal tradition that foreign invaders or insurgents get othing in the way of rights. They get none of the protections that cover troops of a foreign sovereign fighting a war, and they get none of the rights of citizens. In other words, you capture spies and terrorists and put them to death after whatever process you see fit to provide them. This is not unamerican or illegal. In WWII we did just that. Our internment of Japanese-American citizens was illegal, but we put some spies to death after cursory military tribunals. That was OK. We give terrorists a lot more rights than they have legally. Of course, the obvious problem is when the government goes after people who aren't terrorists.

[JTG51]

I agree with everything you said. I think you clarified what I was trying to say very nicely.

By the way, I also agree with Glenn in the "boil a baby" thread.

[eLROY]

[Glenn]

Honestly, I have lost complete track of what we are arguing. I think this started with you saying that we should make sure people in other countries eat. I think that they should make sure they eat. Most of what you wrote above is right, but no one said it wasn't. My question is: What is your point?

[IrishHand]

I never said we should make sure that people in other countries eat. I only implied that it might not be right for us (as a nation) to pursue policies/activities which render it more difficult or impossible for them to do so.

You're right though - I tend to suspect we're not really disagreeing. Live and let live, I always say! (Actually, someone else said that - I'm just unoriginal.) /forums/images/icons/smile.gif