Comments Elsewhere

It’s true that freedom of movement across government borders is not a civil right. So what? Most of what the so-called “civil rights” movement was asking for were more than just civil rights, as well.

“As long as we’re running around here asking the white man for civil rights, we’re at his mercy. As long as we’re in Washington, D.C., asking him for civil rights, we’re at his mercy. The entire civil rights program has to be expanded: expanded from the level of civil rights to the level of human rights. … It’s true that it’s within the power of Uncle Sam to give or not give you and me civil rights. But human rights are something that you have when you’re born. Human rights involves the right to be a human being. … But there has been a conspiracy, to keep you and me barking up the civil rights tree, so that we wouldn’t be aware of the human rights tree.” – Malcolm X

Bithead: ‘When Jefferson wrote that “WE HOLD THESE TRUTHS TO BE SELF-EVIDENT” he was not speaking a universal truth at all. The operative word in that phrase is “WE”.’

Jefferson was not claiming that everybody held those truths to be self-evident. He was, however, claiming that in fact all men (without qualification) are created equal, and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, and that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That includes Mexicans, incidentally.

If you want to make up a new position on which only people within certain cultures are created equal, you’re free to do so, but it is irresponsible of you to go around pretending that you are just explaining Jefferson’s views as expressed in the Declaration of Independence.

Bithead: “Morals, you see, are a group thing, and never individualistic in nature. They are, as a result, (yet again) set mostly by the culture. Wherein, if you re-read, you’ll find is the crux of my position on this matter.”

She didn’t say you were an agent-relativist. She just said that you’re a moral relativist. What you’re endorsing here is a straightforward form of cultural relativism, which is indeed one form of moral relativism (since it holds that the moral obligations you have are relative to the culture, and can vary from one culture to the next).

It’s not a very promising foundation for politics, either, since if it were true, it would mean that absolutely any form of tyranny whatsoever could be defended, and any crime justified, no matter how monstrous it is, as long as a commanding faction of the culture in which it is being committed approved of it.