I've lately revised my opinion about this civil/human rights dichotomy. I was, yet again reading Hannah Arendt's The Origins of Totalitarianism (which is very good) when I changed my mind. She made an excellent argument that the inalienable rights of the Declaration of Independence and all similar such endeavors have largely listed rights that are in no way fundamental to the human condition, are entirely alienable, and generally speaking must be protected in some way through collective action.
This theory dovetails nicely with the bit of polemic in Heinlein's Starship Troopers about how a man drowning in the sea doesn't have the right to life and a man living in a dictatorship doesn't have a right to freedom. Heinlein concedes that perhaps the pursuit of happiness is inalienable, although I suspect that he and I would both have doubts about how effective that pursuit can possibly be for people who are dying of starvation. Arendt notes that even in benevolent democracies, the inalienable right to life is frequently taken from soldiers in time of war.
In From Beirut to Jerusalem, Thomas Friedman notes that rather than reverting to a nasty, brutish, solitary, and short life as Hobbes might have expected, the people of Lebanon handled rising chaos by organizing neighborhood militias and becoming increasingly close knit because only through collective action could they defend their interests and ensure their well-being. Organization into a limited political community was the means by which they prevented their alienation from their inalienable rights. Aristotle noted that man is a political animal, and any realistic examination of human history and pre-history must note that humankind's success as a species, and the success of its myriad subdivisions, are only possible because of collective action.
Thus we return again to the concept of the state as something that ensures the well-being of its citizens to the maximum extent possible without infringing upon the freedoms that they hold dear. Our inalienable rights are only inalienable when collectively agreed upon and defended by a political entity that prosecutes murderers, guarantees our freedoms through the equitable application of law, and wages war against our nation's alleged enemies at the worst of times and discouraging people from getting on our bad side by keeping a lot of guns, missiles, bombs, et cetera on hand.
In other words, our government is the means by which we preserve our freedoms, and by extension our civility and humanity.
The flip side of this coin is that because we are citizens in a democracy, we are all equally culpable for the actions of our government. We have a responsibility to it and to each other to be thoughtful, well-informed, and compassionate advocates of the humanity of our nation.
This seems like something worth remembering at a time in which the public clamors against a Ground Zero mosque out of bigotry and fear, in which states are stripping their public servants of the right to collectively bargain for the benefit of all, and in which certain segments of Congress seem determined to cut as many holes as possible in the social safety net for our tired, hungry, and downtrodden.
We must be constant advocates for our human rights. We must beware what Foucault called "the fascism in us all, in our heads and in our everyday behavior, the fascism that causes us to love power, to desire the very thing that dominates and exploits us." Rather than political rhetoric that implies a deeply speciated humanity, we should remember that we're all in this mess called life together, and advocate practical solutions grounded in sympathy and respect for our fellow citizens.
No comments:
Post a Comment