Where do your get your rights?
Libertarianism is inherently empathetic. Libertarians respect individual conscience in all things. We imagine how others…
- want to be treated, and deal with them accordingly (the Golden Rule)
- don’t want to be treated, and we respect their boundaries (the Zero Aggression Principle)
Empathy is a regard for others. It was empathy that motivated humans to create a legal system. We all recognize that none of us wants to be…
- Threatened
- Robbed
- Murdered
- Cheated
We support due process and the presumption of innocence because of empathy. We imagine how we would feel if we were falsely accused. Thus…
Our rights are empowered by empathy! Your neighbor could menace, steal from, or slaughter you. You could do the same to him. Instead, you each recognize that…
Empathy feels good, achieves good, and returns good.
This makes empathy a better social strategy than bullying force. Empathy fosters positive reciprocity. By contrast, The State…
- Threatens and initiates force
- Is funded by violent means
These practices negate empathy. They replace positive reciprocity with political warfare. If you lose the political contest then I impose on you, and vice versa. Empathetic libertarianism rejects political warfare in favor of non-violent persuasion, cooperation, and tolerance.
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By Doug August 19, 2015 - 8:49 pm
I really enjoyed reading your “mental levers” – thanks for all you do.
In Liberty,
Doug
By Perry Willis August 19, 2015 - 10:05 pm
Hi Doug. Thanks for the kind words and encouragement.
By Sharon Presley January 24, 2016 - 10:56 pm
Thi is excellent! I really like the way you put this. It not only makes good political sense, it is good psychology too. Psychologists see empathy as the basis of morality. More people need to understand this.
By Marcus October 24, 2017 - 10:17 pm
I agree with everything I’ve read so far except this. Empathy is different for different people, psychological studies have suggested that the average person can truly have empathy for around 300 individuals. A high number in my opinion. Our rights do not come from any person’s opinions, or they are admissibly malleable and NOT inalienable. For human rights to be ironclad, they must originate from outside and above human philosophy and opinion. They must be acknowledged as an innate part of what we are, pre-eminent and pre-existing before consciousness or personality, just as they exist before government begins. I personally ascribe to the Founders’ expression that they come from ‘Our Creator’, a source we can’t very well legislate away. But basing it on what we feel is best, allows a degree of malleability for cultures with skewed morality.
By Jim Babka October 25, 2017 - 2:47 pm
This is an interesting question that will get a much more thorough treatment later. I too believe they come from “Our Creator.” But our view has problems.
First, who is that Creator? Religions and even denominations disagree, so this question is difficult. But admittedly, there’s malleability here. One person’s “creator” could be more benevolent than another.
Second, is there actually a Creator? How do those who deny that existence come to agree on what is or what is not a right? Third, there’s a hard reality: Rights are relatively easy to violate. Thus empathy is the sense, placed within us (innate) to show us what rights are and are not. Yes, of course, they’ll vary. Empathy and rights have both expanded over time. There’s a corresponding relationship in these two things so that the way we understand rights today is vastly different than how rights were understood 500 years ago when Martin Luther was nailing his ‘theses’ to a church door.
Finally, can we maintain that, for those of us who believe in the Creator, empathy was placed there by him? That is the means the Creator has used, which applies to believer and non-believer alike?
Once again, we’ll be saying much more about this in the future. I realize this answer is incomplete. But it’s a start. Please stay tuned.
By Foster October 25, 2017 - 9:28 pm
Your “answer” is sufficient, no “much more through treatment” necessary, please.
I suggest that for individual sovereignty to exist, it doesn’t make any material difference whether it’s one creator or another or multiple creators, nor if a creator is necessary for individual sovereignty. Don’t let divine sourcing get you off into the weeds; not a question that has a definite proveable answer.
By Penni B October 23, 2019 - 9:03 pm
I would like to suggest that Occam’s Razor would eliminate the ‘multiple creators’ option, and that though a personal creator is not necessary per se for individual sovereignty, one *is* necessary for a moral standard. “The fundamental problem (with Camus’ solution, life is absurd, meaningless and cruel-suicide is the only meaningful question, but I argue against suicide and for living in love for one another) is that it is impossible to live consistently and happily within that framework. If you live consistently, you will not be happy, if you live happily, it is only because you are not consistent.” (William Lane Craig, On Guard, Chapter 2)
Mr. Craig also deals with which one, and though it may not be provable scientifically, there is significant historical evidence for his conclusions.
By Stephen October 25, 2019 - 6:57 pm
Occam’s Razor eliminates all creators. Empathy was evolved over time as humans changed from base animals to societal creatures.
I learned empathy from my parents, neither of which was a magical sky daddy.
If you don’t know the answer to something, it is best to keep trying rather than assume it was a god.
By Penni Bulten March 8, 2021 - 1:07 am
There is a vast agreement in cultures on certain basic principles, which C.S. Lewis covers in his appendix to The Abolition of Man. As Perry Willis points out on another thread, there are principles of morals that 99%+ of humans will concur on. Since I’ve been rather busy, I have not had the opportunity to frequent the site as much as I like, so did not have an opportunity to respond to the ‘we don’t need God , we learn empathy from our parents’. The logical questions could continue indefinitely (where did the first human parents get it), but as far as you can go back, there is both a beginning to the universe, and an originator. Empathy is hard-wired, I believe, but there is a bug in the system that short-circuits the empathy.
By Kirk April 13, 2018 - 11:57 am
The Founders had a thorough Christian world view. They said that a republic could not long exist without a moral people based upon Christian values. Those values have not changed over the millenniums as they are placed into mankind’s conscience. We might be tempted to want to include all other ideas of diverse creators in order to placate our desire to not be so closed-minded, but that would be to the detriment of American history. We were a Christian nation then, and to that end we must attempt to return without coercion, but based upon reason and charity.
By Stephen September 4, 2019 - 2:58 pm
Empathy (and laws) existed long before Christianity or any other current religion. Most of the founders of our country were deists, meaning they were not religious but accepted some form of the creation myth from Christianity, and they gave lip service to religion because they thought it was useful for society.
By Bob Schubring September 4, 2019 - 6:39 pm
What is painfully obvious from the history of Christ’s ministry among us, is that every effort to impose by force, a compliance with religious practices, has done much harm and zero good. Catholic monk Martin Luther made a pilgrimage to Rome, expecting to find scholars with answers to great questions. He arrived to find a corrupted clergy that routinely sold forgiveness of future sins such as wars and assassinations, to get money to build monuments to itself.
Luther’s attempts at reform led to wars.
Christians who applied Christian teaching to limit our own actions toward others, avoiding the doing of harm to them, put our empathy into practice and built peace and prosperity.
Bottom line is that there cannot be such a thing as Conversion By Force. Such statists as Christopher Columbus and Andrew Jackson, who believed that they had to beat Christianity into “savages” by force, before said “savages” earned the right to be treated as human, did much harm and zero good.
By Penni Bulten March 8, 2021 - 10:22 am
Amen! Thank you for saying what I wanted to say, concisely and precisely!
By Michael R Edelstein September 4, 2019 - 11:15 am
Perry, Are you saying empathy comes first, then rights are derived from empathy? Yet we have empathy for animals, for example, but we don’t ascribe rights to animals. Even worse, we cause factory-farmed animals pain and eat them. I appreciate all the great work you and Jim do! Michael
By JackW September 4, 2019 - 12:43 pm
I believe that Jehovah God gave us free will, freedom to choose. The tragedy is that manmade “laws” and constitutions have supplanted God’s laws with Satan’s dross.
By dann ----------------------------------- September 8, 2019 - 3:34 pm
The title, “Where Do We Get Our Rights” is not explained in the mental lever..?
The ‘lever’ explains that “Libertarianism is inherently empathetic.”
And it goes on to say that “Empathy is a regard for others.”
Also, that “We support due process and the presumption of innocence because of empathy.”
Then, it goes on to say that “Our rights are empowered by empathy!”
Plus, “Empathy feels good, achieves good, and returns good.”
And, that, “This makes empathy a better social strategy”
Then it tells how The State contrasts all this; but…
the lever never goes on to answer the title question..??? Where do we get our rights?
[remember, to a non-believer, “the creator” is not an answer.
There are some who believe that we have no rights other than what we are prepared to fight for.
– – – – – – – – – –
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Above all is the importance that no one may be forced to supply us our “rigthts!”