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Re:Harvard's response to federal government letter demanding... by kevin_thibedeau on Monday April 14, 2025 @03:30PM (#43685256)
The more fundamental corollary is that the US government does not grant any rights. We have them by default and cede limited power for the benefit of an orderly society. Within such a framework, it should be impossible to disenfranchise people by denying them due process.
Re:Harvard's response to federal government letter demanding... by nathan_compton on Monday April 14, 2025 @04:11PM (#43685788)
I've posted here before that this idea that we just have rights is actually problematic, not the least reason for which is that whether we have such rights or not, their mere existence has never and will never actually defend anyone from any violation of them.

Rights are just the concessions that the less powerful have extracted from the powerful by virtue and utilization of power. This perspective has the double benefit not relying on the imaginary and making it clear that if you don't fight for your rights you will not get to keep them. Rights may be God given, but God isn't going to come down and rescue you from a concentration camp if you get put there by an autocrat who doesn't like your "free speech."

All that matters is whether we will personally tolerate abuses against human beings and what we are willing to do to prevent them. If I had my way, talk of rights qua rights would be swept into the dustbin of history with other imaginary stuff like religion in favor of concrete, ideally evidence based, free human discussion about what human beings want from the universe and what we are willing to endure to get it.

Re:Harvard's response to federal government letter demanding... by areoform on Monday April 14, 2025 @03:37PM (#43685334)
Precisely. If only the people who worship the Declaration of Independence and recite it like parrots singing a psalm, actually understood what the document was saying.
Re:Harvard's response to federal government letter demanding... by Vegenoid on Monday April 14, 2025 @04:06PM (#43685726)
Unfortunately, those people have a lot of practice worshipping a text that they have not read.
Re:Harvard's response to federal government letter demanding... by Muromec on Monday April 14, 2025 @03:40PM (#43685376)
>Within such a framework, it should be impossible to disenfranchise people by denying them due process.

Yet, US was systematically disenfranchising people for centuries

Re:Harvard's response to federal government letter demanding... by 8bitsrule on Monday April 14, 2025 @04:18PM (#43685854)
Within the lifetimes of some of us, lynchings were still common.