On Tue, 18 Nov 1997, William H. Geiger III wrote:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
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