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Sure, so if the local custom changes to disallowing race segregated spaces (as America has done) then that idms fine and dandy. Abd then if they decide trans women can use womens bathrooms that is also fine and dandy?
I agree that is a description of how the world operates. But it doesn't give you any information on how to decide if the local consensus is good or not. The local consensus is the local consensus is both true and not terribly helpful.
Plus the English tradition (itself obviously only important if it is the local consensus) does include positive rights.
Regardless society is quite capable of compromises, so while it may not be possible to perfectly reconcile equality and liberty, the most sucessful nations do make the attempt and perfect is the enemy of good enough.
The only thing that matters is consent.
Segregation was ended by the force of bayonets. That was unjust. Even if segregation itself was an ill.
A healthy society would have sought to reconcile the races through means of discourse rather than force. And would not have created the ressentiment that animates racial tensions in it today.
I am precisely denouncing the notion you are so fully avowed to that you don't notice it: that of universalism.
The English tradition is peculiar, not universal. Your neighbors may not decide to live as you do. This is not cause for alarm and demands they change to suit you. Insofar as their relationship to you is proper.
As the English are fond of saying: mind your own business.
You'll note that such an arrangement is a lot more compatible with fair lives for transgender individuals than the universalist battleground where that have to win out some political argument to be allowed to exist, but it demands that they do not seek to upend society.
It does not. Or you would be able to name them.
But segregation was also IMPOSED by the force of bayonets. No-one was asking black people if they consented to it. Doesn't their consent matter?
And while I am not English (rather British) I lived in and worked for the government in England for a number of decades.
The right for anyone too old or too infirm to be housed and fed by the state stretches back to the 1300's, was codified in various laws from the 1600's onwards in one form or another, and birthed the modern welfare state. Also the right to petition the government, the government can't just let you speak against them (covered by free speech and assembly), but put in place measures to listen. Even if they don't have to act. Which birthed the modern day MP's surgeries where constituents can go and talk to their representative face to face. Which is why in the US taking about the right to petition:
"But the majority of state constitutional petition provisions — in 32 states — frame the right as a positive one (an entitlement), rather than a negative one (a restriction on the government)."
It's true that negative rights were certainly more common, but it was by no means exclusive, and even some of the negative rights stretched into positive ones, the right to a fair trial, in English tradition requires other citizens to serve on a jury. So you are entitled to people doing something for you, even if they would rather not. To stand between you and the state before you can be jailed.
There is no right to be associated with. Blacks had much more solid grievances in the systematic destruction of their own institutions, or indeed the original source of this whole mess in being imported as slaves.
I also question the assumption that they collectively desired, at the time, to destroy segregation. The MLK answer to the question was the one supported by power, and one that profits the needs for standardization, but was it really the most popular on the ground? Black nationalism was no less prolific ideologically. It simply didn't have the ear of USG.
In any case, the proposed solution is to remove imposition on either side and let people have segregated and non segretated communities as they please. Which you'd only object to if you don't actually care about consent.
I knew this would eventually come to the holy NHS. But public charity, even if it is expected doesn't raise to the level of a right.
People would look badly upon an English ruler that did not take proper care of the elderly, they probably would not fight him to the death on this alone.
As for rights to political participation, I find it silly to view them as positive given how they are framed and justified in every foundational document as a protection against tyranny.
Well sure there is we were just talking about it. The right to free association. And of course that wasn't the worst thing done to them, but if you think segregation shouldn't have been done away with without consent then their right to free association should not have been removed without consent. You can't have it both ways. And it doesn't matter what they wanted collectively does it? If a single black or white person did not want segregation then their rights were removed. And therefore when their rights were restored with the removal of segregation they were just going back to the status quo.
As for voluntary segregation people can do that today. Many areas in the US are either exclusively or almost exclusively segregated. You just can't use race when offering services, and you can't have legal segregation that the government will enforce. It is now up to you to avoid black people (or vice versa), and if that means you have to move rather than them, then that is the right you have. You just can't legally force someone else to move. Your beliefs, you have to be the one to make the effort to abide by them. You want no black people in your neighborhood, you have to move neighborhoods, you can't make them move. Otherwise, you are trying to force people to act a certain way to accommodate your beliefs. You are not entitled to force people to change their behavior. You are entitled to move to rural Montana or Amish country or wherever you can find that meets your criteria.
We're not talking about the NHS by the way holy or otherwise. That is healthcare not housing and feeding, which is administered by entirely different bodies, primarily local governments. The right to healthcare is a relatively modern invention. The right for people in England to be fed and housed if they could not do it themselves is hundreds of years older. It is heavily framed within English common law AND statutory law. Whether people would fight to the death about it is not the definition of a right, otherwise the right to bear arms or the right to freedom of speech both of which have been restricted are also not rights.
This is a negative right that protects your freedom to refuse to associate or to associate with willing people without it being prevented by the State.
Some greengrocer who would serve blacks and whites equally in the same establishment would not break this, but neither would one that only serves one of these groups. And if all greengrocers in your area serve the group you are not part of, your right has not been violated either. At least not under the traditional English conception of such things.
There are pubs in Britain with centuries old signs on the front that say "no x allowed".
It is only later universalist developments in liberal political theory that would qualify this state of things as a violation. Because they care about result rather than process.
The idea that you have a right to participate in somebody else's business by virtue of your existence is actually a violation of freedom of association.
Hence this is only contradictory if we accept your conclusion, which I, and many Libertarians and Liberals, do not.
This is wholly untrue. The Civil Rights Act makes this functionally illegal. You cannot setup a village of only your group and only hire people who are part of it. The only exceptions made for this are for tribes and other such minority groups that setup treaties or special status.
If you so much as try to setup Orania in the US, your wife gets shot in front of your children after Feds entrap you on bullshit gun charges. And if you actually do set it up, your women and children get burned alive by conveniently disappearing incendiary grenades.
Correct. Because to do so is to step over someone else's right to free association as I pointed out in my example. What you can do is move to an all white area. What you can't do is stop a black person moving in. Nothing stops you moving to another white area and another. Because your neighbors have the right to associate with black people even if you don't want to, and black people have the right to associate with them. That is the part you must come to grips with. Your neighbor has the right to sell his property to anyone including a black person. Therefore you are the one who must take steps if you have this particular belief. Like a vegan going to a Thanksgiving dinner, you have a right not to eat the food, you do not have the right to demand other people also stop eating turkey.
And yet, if I buy all the land myself or in a compact with people that refuse to sell it (this is how Orania actually works), I still get killed by feds. Curious.
In any case, your line of argument is absurd because it is applicable to any contractual limitation. And I don't see you particularly miffed that non compete clauses or HOAs exist, despite them being clear violations of your conception of freedom of association.
I think you simply desire the state limit what contracts people can sign because you don't like certain kinds of contracts and certain kinds of contractors. Not because they actually violate anybody's rights.
Why shouldn't a vegan be allowed to ban meat eating at his Thanksgiving dinner, exactly? Or setup his own commune of vegans that kicks out people for meat eating? I say that the naked truth is that you have imperial designs of how this vegan hypothetical should live his life because you fear the popularity of veganism may threaten the meat supply and are therefore locked in a political struggle that has nothing to do with freedom and everything to do with domination.
Ancient traditions are specifically evolved as a remedy for this problem, mind you.
Oh I hate HOA's with the burning passion of a million fiery suns! It's just not a topic that comes up here very often.
A vegan can ban meat at his own Thanksgiving dinner, but he cannot ban it at his neighbors is my point. And he can set up a vegan commune! Those exist! But what he can't do without violating someone else's rights is ban his neighbor from being a carnivore, any more than the neighbor can ban him from being vegan.
In general you cannot give up your fundamental rights. If you were a vegan and signed a contract that you would never eat meat again, I think most courts would find that unenforceable. You can't give up your own right to self-determination. If you join a cult you must be able to leave, even if a prior version of you thought you never would want to. There are some things you simply cannot contract away.
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What about habeus corpus or the right to trial by jury?
Negative rights self evidently. You are not to be arbitrary imprisoned.
That this demands extra effort from the State is not to be confused with the demand to continuously provide you some resource or work as a privilege.
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