It's the 4th of July - which is really all about barbecue and fireworks - but also supposedly about the signing the Declaration of Independence. I try to spend a good bit of time in early slides analyzing the argument it contains and the history leading up to it.
I try to draw attention to this open ended part of it: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
In lecture classes I like to generate a discussion about the word "among" which seems to suggest that other rights exist beyond those three listed. Is this in fact that case and if so what might those rights be? How would we figure this out?
The recent decision by the European Union Court of Justice that there is a right to be forgotten would be a perfect subject. This Dish links to a variety of stories discussing the right and the difficulty we might have in enforcing it.
- Click here for the post.
The digital revolution - which makes information retrieval easy - might make this impossible. And ironically, the more we actively try to conceal parts of out past, the more we highlight it. It's one thing to claim a right, a trickier thing to enforce it.
It just occurred to me that early Texas was populated by people who were trying to make themselves forgotten - by creditors, law enforcement and others. Life was different then.
