There is a “sky-hooky” nature to human rights: one can only enforce them if one already has them. This is not to say that they aren’t worth having in some form. Indeed much of their prominence is due to their widespread absence – we loudly lament the failure of “regimes” to give their people rights. But are rights in the gift of governments in this way? It may be that the absence of rights has a cause rather than being a choice. Even a benign “regime” or dictator would consider the consequences of introducing rights (assuming that the society in question even has functioning law). It may be that such an assessment leads to the decision that the granting of certain rights would lead to chaos. Freedom of association, for example, is a potential gift to usurpers. We can assert therefore that rights may require prior conditions such as a sense of community with shared mores. Rights may be viewed therefore as codifications or extensions of pre-existing norms. The threat to rights comes not only from a reaction stimulated by the removal of topics from discussion and compromise (are such compromises – if they are compromises – “liberal”?); more pressingly perhaps they may come from the consequences of rights themselves. A right may create an unsustainable burden for the state leading to the failure of the state. Reaction to such a prospect cannot be called illiberal. Democratic politics also has similar dangers – many people have foreseen the bankruptcy of democratic societies arising from people voting for ever more state spending and protections. Again, for democracy itself to function there must arguably be a pre-existing culture of restraint. Of course society evolves and rights may foster loyalty as well as being a strain upon it. However, rights remain, as you say John, “ideological”. Liberal rights often suit the born-lucky. The ill-favoured might wonder if all really is fair in love, for example. I remember a young Russian lady defending her country’s previous “communist” system to an ambitious Czech: “It wasn’t all bad,” she said, distressed. She talked of the kindergartens and the holidays for ordinary people. Thanks for another of your wonderful essays Prof. Gray.
I want to add that I am not sure it would be a good idea now to abandon “human rights”: partly as a consequence of their own operation they have become perhaps the only clear repository of the moral system that begat them. For this reason we should not abandon the attempt to promote them abroad either, although we should admit that their adoption elsewhere is not just a matter of someone passing a decree.
Seb Dakin
3 years ago
Another issue with ‘rights’ is that where they create an obligation on the part of another to provide something for you, the existence of the right in one place is an obligation in another. If rights to be allowed to do something (free speech, freedom of association etc) were described as rights, and ‘rights’ to get something (housing, education) were described as entitlements then it would help to clarify matters.
There is a “sky-hooky” nature to human rights: one can only enforce them if one already has them. This is not to say that they aren’t worth having in some form. Indeed much of their prominence is due to their widespread absence – we loudly lament the failure of “regimes” to give their people rights.
But are rights in the gift of governments in this way? It may be that the absence of rights has a cause rather than being a choice. Even a benign “regime” or dictator would consider the consequences of introducing rights (assuming that the society in question even has functioning law). It may be that such an assessment leads to the decision that the granting of certain rights would lead to chaos. Freedom of association, for example, is a potential gift to usurpers. We can assert therefore that rights may require prior conditions such as a sense of community with shared mores. Rights may be viewed therefore as codifications or extensions of pre-existing norms.
The threat to rights comes not only from a reaction stimulated by the removal of topics from discussion and compromise (are such compromises – if they are compromises – “liberal”?); more pressingly perhaps they may come from the consequences of rights themselves. A right may create an unsustainable burden for the state leading to the failure of the state. Reaction to such a prospect cannot be called illiberal.
Democratic politics also has similar dangers – many people have foreseen the bankruptcy of democratic societies arising from people voting for ever more state spending and protections. Again, for democracy itself to function there must arguably be a pre-existing culture of restraint.
Of course society evolves and rights may foster loyalty as well as being a strain upon it. However, rights remain, as you say John, “ideological”. Liberal rights often suit the born-lucky. The ill-favoured might wonder if all really is fair in love, for example. I remember a young Russian lady defending her country’s previous “communist” system to an ambitious Czech: “It wasn’t all bad,” she said, distressed. She talked of the kindergartens and the holidays for ordinary people.
Thanks for another of your wonderful essays Prof. Gray.
I want to add that I am not sure it would be a good idea now to abandon “human rights”: partly as a consequence of their own operation they have become perhaps the only clear repository of the moral system that begat them. For this reason we should not abandon the attempt to promote them abroad either, although we should admit that their adoption elsewhere is not just a matter of someone passing a decree.
Another issue with ‘rights’ is that where they create an obligation on the part of another to provide something for you, the existence of the right in one place is an obligation in another. If rights to be allowed to do something (free speech, freedom of association etc) were described as rights, and ‘rights’ to get something (housing, education) were described as entitlements then it would help to clarify matters.