Unalienable Bunkum

Perhaps our founding papas were selling us a bill of poppycock.

Of course, to be fair, the whole unalienable rights proposition was an idealized notion, but the independence idea needed an aspirational keystone to the whole enterprise. 

What better? That whole "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" gambit. Life. Hooray! Liberty. Hooray! Pursuit of Happiness! Hoo--uh, wait a minute. Pursuit? Why those slippery hedgers. 

No matter. Again, an ideal fostered to anchor the Declaration of Independence. And obviously ideals serve to undergird what follows when the nitty-gritty of human endeavors comes to the fore. 

But, after all, "If men were angels, no government would be necessary". That insight, well that would be from James Madison. And so, game on.

By the way, should you live alone on an island beyond any national sovereignty, delight in that unalienable mush. Meanwhile, as Madison knew, "Wherever there is interest and power to do wrong, wrong will generally be done". 

Don't we know it.

What if--here I merely ask--we from the get-go allowed every moment, every action, every response would be with the wide-eyed perspective that all rights are negotiated between citizens, neighbors, family members, all of the time. 

Nothing unalienable about any of it. Going forward then would be a source of constant tensions, discussions, analyses--nothing rights-wise taken for granted. Always in our face. Every right to be negotiated and renegotiated. 

And since we--I think very nearly all of us--do not live alone on an island, let us come together and savor our efforts to shape human rights that come not from the ether but from the forge of human toil.