The Rights We Have

Building on Harley’s post on the Interpol business, I recently found a WaPo editorial that is surprisingly harsh on Obama’s human rights record:

THE OBAMA administration’s commitment to the traditional American cause of promoting democracy and human rights has been widely questioned, and not without reason. So some rights advocates were pleased by an address that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton delivered at Georgetown University, in which she laid out “the Obama administration’s human rights agenda for the 21st century.” We’re not so happy.

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As Ms. Clinton herself suggested, such pledges have been the common currency of American governments. But she did not limit herself to past principles. She offered an innovation: The Obama administration, she said, would “see human rights in a broad context,” in which “oppression of want—want of food, want of health, want of education, and want of equality in law and in fact”—would be addressed alongside the oppression of tyranny and torture. “That is why,” Ms. Clinton said, “the cornerstones of our 21st-century human rights agenda” would be “supporting democracy” and “fostering development.”

This is indeed an important change in U.S. human rights policy—but the idea behind it is pure 20th century. Ms. Clinton’s lumping of economic and social “rights” with political and personal freedom was a standard doctrine of the Soviet Bloc, which used to argue at every East-West conference that human rights in Czechoslovakia were superior to those in the United States, because one provided government health care that the other lacked. In fact, as U.S. diplomats used to tirelessly respond, rights of liberty—for free expression and religion, for example—are unique in that they are both natural and universal; they will exist so long as governments do not suppress them. Health care, shelter and education are desirable social services, but they depend on resources that governments may or may not possess. These are fundamentally different goods, and one cannot substitute for another.

For my entire life, I have heard people claim that liberals are in favor of freedom while the crusty conservatives are oppressive.  I have yet to see a scintilla of evidence that this is the case.  Ever since FDR—with his “freedom from want” and “freedom from fear”—they have replaced the concept of real freedom—the liberty to succeed or fail, to make good decisions or bad ones—with a warped concept of freedom.  It is a freedom as defined by the Nanny State.  The “freedom” to make any decisions but bad ones, the “independence” to be dependent on a benevolent government and the “right” to the fruits of other people’s labors.  The only real liberties they have ever favored have been in the personal arena.

It’s not that I’m against feeding, educating and healing the people of the world.  It’s that when you call them “human rights” rather than the opportunities of civilization, you open up an ugly can of poisonous worms.  The idea of a “right” is that it they are not given to us; they are intrinsic to who we are.  And, a such, everyone’s rights are treated equally.  My right to free speech does not impinge upon yours.  My right to worship my God does not stop you from worshipping yours.  My right to vote does not cancel yours.

But when you give people the “right” to things, you can not possibly continue that paradigm.  Resources are limited.  If you have only enough food to feed some of the people, whose “right” is more important?  If you only have enough teachers to put half the kids into college, who has a “right” to the learning?  If you have one MRI machine, whose busted knee takes priority?  As we have learned from the last few millennia, the answer to all three questions is “whoever has friends in high places”.

We have enough trouble getting the evil people who run much of the world to respect people’s right to vote and speak—as can be seen vividly in Iran right now.  Fuck, we have enough problems getting our own government to respect the liberties written in the Constitution.  Let’s not confound the issue with nebulous socialistic “rights” to other people’s property.