Wonky on Civil Rights
I have to admit that I am a bit wonkish (American version – not the British) when it comes to civil rights. You, dear reader, may not be so wonkish on civil rights – few people are. But if you are indeed wonkish on civil rights you would be interested in reading Aaron Rhodes recently published book, The Debasement of Human Rights (2018).
Wait a minute, I can hear you say. Mr. Rhodes is writing about human rights, not civil rights. What’s the difference?
And that’s the problem. The whole concept of rights has become a jumbled mess so that no one knows what they are, when they are being violated or are in conflict with each other allowing some rights to be trampled in order to fulfill other rights.
What we in America (at least initially) understood as civil rights were rights and liberties derived from natural (some might say God given) rights. Natural rights are the rights enjoyed by all individuals living in a state of nature and are considered universal because they apply to all people. But the state of nature is unnatural and unsustainable because human beings are social animals and live in societies whether small (familial), mid-sized (tribal) or large (nation states). But in order to live in a society, people must cede a portion of their natural rights to a government, especially where they interfere with the ability of other people to enjoy their natural rights.
But when the Founders sought to formulate the society of the new American Republic, they stated that certain rights were not to be ceded to society or restricted by government. Some of these rights (also known as liberties) were enumerated in the Bill of Rights. But the Founders believed that there might be other rights beyond the scope of any enumeration such as the Bill of Rights and so included the Tenth Amendment that restricts the federal government to only those powers specifically delegated to it in the Constitution, reserving all other powers to the people and the states.