A Simple Question: Why?

[rationalpassion]

Over at her LJ in a private thread, which I have been given permission to excerpt in this public post, phamos818 wrote:

But it's a generational rights issue between us at this point: You believe rights stop at what HR folks call first gen rights (civil and political) where as I also believe in 2nd gen rights (economic and social).

"HR," for those who don't

Comments

[phamos818]

I don't have a whole lot of links stored up, since I'm temporarily politically retired, for the most part. But a quick search on Google Books for "economic and social rights" brought up some images of a Jack Donnelly book that pretty much represents the mainstream liberal universalist thinking on the subject. I tend to agree with Jack Donnelly, that which I've read, and I know this book is often used as a textbook in HR classes, so let's go with that for now.

[rationalpassion]

See my response to ilcylic below. I'm going to re-read--at least once, but probably more than that--but the first reading was really shocking to me. Is this "mainstream liberal universalist thinking?" If so, the hatred Americans have for liberals is far too weak. I have to go re-read

I Was Wrong.

[rationalpassion]

Mark it down--I don't admit it often, but I was wrong. I blame Google/my web browser mostly. I did say, in both my comment to ilcylic and in my comment to you, that I had to give the thing a re-read. Well, on rereading, I was wrong about Donnelly and, by extension, you. You are not a radical. That's the good news, from my point of view. The bad news is that I don't find Donnelly's arguments illuminating. They remind me a lot of the arguments we've had, publicly and privately, on LJ and on the phone. So I'm going to try to reconstruct Donnelly's argument as I understand it, pointing out my problems with it as I go

Part II

[rationalpassion]

6. Having asserted, but never proved, that property is an "economic and social right," he says that it may be a "limited" right. He never suggests anywhere that welfare is limited--indeed, he suggests that, for many, perhaps most, people, other benefits are far more important than property rights. As such, property rights can be allowed on a limited basis, but only insofar as "economic security and autonomy for all" are provided for by the welfare state. Bogus

[ilcylic]

I'd personally like to hear how those second generation rights are supposed to exist without trampling all over the first generation ones.

[rationalpassion]

From my initial reading of the bits of the Donnelly book I could get to (I kept having browser issues, and now Google has locked me out because it thinks a bot is auto-searching, when it's really just me trying to get back to the page--I'll go to a public computer in my building and try giving it another look), the first generation rights are really, really basic rights of political participation and speech--stuff that very few people outside of the leaders of Iran, Cuba, and North Korea (and other such countries) oppose. Property appears to be treated as a very limited (i.e. non-absolute) second generation right--to the extent it is treated as a right at all

[ilcylic]

Ah. It seems to be a somewhat more formalized version of "rights are whatever the government and the people around you let you have". Which is sort of ironically reversed from what they're trying to achieve, but if you don't have a solid philosophical underpinning to your system of rights (i.e. "Life, liberty, property") then anything can be a "right", as long as you get enough people to agree to it... and conversely, if enough people disagree with you, you don't have any rights at all

[rationalpassion]

There will be a new reply (possibly more than one post) to phamos818 that will negate much--though not all--of the analysis I made in my previous comment. I encourage you to read the new analysis.