testa-j%OSU-20@OHIO-STATE.ARPA (01/20/87)
fagin%ji.Berkeley.EDU@BERKELEY.EDU (Barry S. Fagin) writes: >Rich Cowan writes: >> -The right of women to walk city streets without fearing sexual >> assault. ... > >I'm always reluctant to concede a right to freedom from fear. After >all, some people are afraid of blacks; can laws be passed forbidding >blacks to walk the streets at night? Or consider another more >realistic example: here in Berkeley, we have a well-known resident >with an extremely rare skin disease that has horribly disfigured his >face. He is extremely frightening to look at; children often burst >out into tears, people cross the street to avoid him, and so forth. >And yet, to pass laws to address their concerns would violate some >very basic rights of this man. So I guess I'm not sure about the >freedom from fear of sexual assault. What are reasonable fears, and >what are irrational ones? I would say that "reasonable" fears are those based on fact; in a situation with a statistically signifigant probability of physical harm happening to me, it is reasonable for me to be fearful of the potential cause of that harm. "Irrational" fears, then, are those not based on fact. Since many women (and men, too!) are assaulted on city streets at night, it is reasonable for them to be afraid of that situation. I can think of no empirical reason to be afraid of blacks any more than i should be afraid to whites or orientals or martians. If the disfigured person you mentioned has a signifigant chance of infecting others, then a fear of that person would be rational. I submit that there are several ways to deal with these fears. Irrational fears should be dealt with through education (though, in Libertaria, no government will have any money to do this...), since this fear is basically due to ignorance. In the case of rational fears, legislation would be appropriate if no other method of eliminating the fear is possible, in order to protect the rights of others to not be harmed. A while back, there were a few comments in this digest about whether or not it was possible for basic rights to be in conflict, or whether they were mutually exclusive, without any conclusion (as usual :-) ). Isn't this such a case where rights can be in conflict? As i reread all of this, i might agree that saying "freedom from fear" is not the best way to put it. How about "freedom from the CAUSES of fear"? (implying actual causality, rather than irrational conclusions). BTW, a John Cale song called "Fear" repeats the line: "fear is a man's best friend". Hmmmm, wonder if that has any signifigance here?? ~joe testa~ ------- -------