glassejaculate

"And there's also the question of how one could, or if one should, try to transplant these rights in other countries. But I've said enough for now."

Should we impose western ideas of rights on countries in other parts of the world, particularly the middle east, where doing so seems to have had the most disatrous consequences for the world? But is it possible not to because of the Western need for oil resources and new markets for their goods?

August Spies

[ May 01, 2002: Message edited by: August Spies ]</p>

boneyard bill

glassejaculate writes:

I see no reason why we couldn't secure access to oil and other resources in the third world without taking human rights into account in the slightest. Saddam did not want Kuwaiti oil so he could drink it. He most certainly wanted to sell it to the West. It had no value for any other reason. On the contrary, I would argue that our obsession with human rights has actually complicated our efforts to secure resources in the third world. Look at Iran and Iraq. We have embargoes against both of them. How does that help to secure our access. In fact, I hardly think it necessary to secure access. If we wanted Cuban sugar, Castro would be glad to sell it. Again, it is a case where we refuse to buy.

In the international sphere we use human rights as our primary propaganda tool for intervention. But we rarely intervene for that purpose alone. Kosovo may actually be an exception. I can't think of any other reason for our intervention.

In some respects the whole Clinton administration foreign policy may have been a victim of its own propaganda. The result was confusion everywhere. Clinton liked to tell Yeltsin that we weren't intervening in Kosovo for our own benefit. This was supposed to be selling point, but for Yeltsin it was just confusion. Intervening for our own benefit was something Yeltsin could understand and would provide a basis for bargaining. But intervening for human rights only means we were taking over Milosevich's problems in Kosovo, and it's hard for any foreign leader to understand that.

Where foreign policy is concerned, our interests should be our primary concern. If we kept it at that, we would intervene far less often and far more effectively. Moreover, the rest of the world would understand perfectly where we are coming from. It don't say human rights has no place in our foreign policy but it should be at the level of negotiation and incentive. I don't think intervention is a very good way. Have we really promoted human rights in Kosovo? I dont think so. It just means the Serbs instead of the Kosovars are fleeing. Will we secure human rights in Afghanistan? It remains to be seen, but it didn't work in Haiti or any other place I can think of.

boneyard bill

August Spies writes:

Yes August, I've saying this for some time. The United States cannot promote human rights around the world without acting like an imperialist power. And then it gets accused of being imperialist.

If we forgot about human rights and only intervened where our narrow interests were threatened we wouldn't intervene as often a wouldn't get of accused of beign imperialist nearly as much. Of course, we wouldn't do much to advance human rights either. But I don't see where our efforts have really been very successful anyway.

With regard to the rest of your post, I don't see where you've made much of a logical case in support of human rights. In fact, most of what you say seems to be against it.

Personally, I can only reiterate what I've said before and perhaps re-phrase it. Morality, natural law, begins in the social order. That is moral which promotes the well being of a society as a whole. In such a situation, individual rights must be subordinated to the rights of the society. What the West has discovered, I like to say achieved, is that individual rights are good for the social order. The basis of individual rights is for the benefit of society. We see this most clearly in a free-market economy where the freedom of the individual to pursue his selfish advancement nonetheless benefits the whole community by advancing the wealth of that society. It is this material advancement that probably interests the third world most.

But our society also benefits from the right of individuals to critcize the government. Granted even that most criticism of the government is self-interested carping and not well thought out, the right of the ignorant as well as the well-informed is protected.

And, of course, this freedom plays out also in creative arts fields, religion, scientific research and countless other areas.

At any rate, this is my contention. The logical basis for individual rights is that it benefits the society as a whole. And this means that the specific nature of those rights may vary from society to society. Our efforts, therefore, to impose a copy of Western individual rights on other countries isn't likely to succeed. Local conditions need to be taken into account.

slacker

I thought he was best known for "A Letter Concerning Toleration" in which he elaborated the need for a division between church and state. I'm suprised (on a "secular" message group no less) you didn't mention this!