Re: Report on UN conference on Internet and racism

[Jim Burnes <jim.burnes@ssds.com>]

On Tue, 18 Nov 1997, William H. Geiger III wrote:

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> 
> Hi Dekan,
> 
> I think that there is plenty of case law of extending constutional
> protections to non-citizens. One that comes to mind were the rulings
> against California inwhich the courts ruled the they were obligated to
> provide schooling and social services to illegal aliens (a really fucked
> rulling IMNSHO but if some good can come out of it no sense not making use
> of it).
> 

Interesting.  I was under the opinion that schooling and "social services"
were no more constitutional rights then, say, free food or a pot to
piss in.

Constitutional rights are contractual government guarantees to protect
well known natural rights.  (pleez send all natural rights flames straight
to /dev/null since we all know what they are and have different name for
them) 

Because of the kind of animals that we are, natural law has evolved as an
emergent philosophical model that protects the right of the individual to
do as they please and to profit from the fruits of their labors so long as
they harm no one else.  I pretty much massacred that definition, but
hey, I'm not getting payed for this.

How can we provide *services* to non-citizens and call that a right?

Who the hell pays for it?

Of course you could make the argument that involutarily providing
services even for citizens is brain damaged, but we call that socialism
and take it up to argue on some other channel than cypherpunks.

jim