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

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