Why Do We Need Human Rights? (34): Which Are the Best Anti-Human-Rights Theories?

Those of us who believe human rights are important have an intellectual duty to engage with the best critics of human rights. “Engage” may be too big a word for this blog post, but what I’ll do here is list some of the best anti-rights theories and link to previous posts where I’ve dealt with them in some more detail.

By “best” I obviously don’t mean “convincing”. If I was convinced by any (or all) of these theories I wouldn’t be writing this blog. None of the theories I list here, or any other anti-rights theories for that matter, are even remotely convincing on close inspection. I won’t provide that close inspection in this post. In most cases I’ve done so before, and I’ll therefore take the luxury of linking back to older posts.

Utilitarianism

Utilitarianism comes in many shapes, but the most basic form of the theory is evidently opposed to human rights. Human rights limit the things that can be done to maximize aggregate utility, and the efforts to maximize aggregate utility often – in some forms of utilitarianism – justify harm done to individuals if that harm is necessary for greater gains elsewhere in society.

Of course, there is such a thing as rule utilitarianism which claims that respect for rules (e.g. human rights) usually maximizes utility or is the best proxy for utility in the absence of detailed knowledge about consequences of specific actions. Read more here and here about the link between utilitarianism and human rights.

Cultural relativism

Cultural relativism doesn’t reject human rights as such, but only their universal applicability and desirability. According to this theory, different cultures have developed their own moral codes, adapted to their own identity, circumstances and history, and moral diversity is therefore something valuable that needs to be protected. Efforts to universalize human rights will destroy moral diversity and non-western cultural identities, and are in fact exercises in cultural imperialism and cultural genocide.

Read more here, here, here and here about cultural relativism and human rights.

Empire

A related criticism views human rights as a tool in outright power imperialism. Human rights talk only serves to justify violent interventions in so-called “rogue states” or other countries that provide a selfish and imperial benefit to the U.S. (but also Europe). The violent interventions in Kosovo/Serbia, Iraq, Afghanistan etc. have all been partially justified by human rights talk but were, according to some, primarily motivated by the strategic interests of the intervening powers. More here.

The economic case against human rights

It’s often argued that economic growth is enhanced by certain policies and actions that imply violations of human rights. The Chinese government in particular is quick to use this argument. And the whole “Asian values” debate – somewhat outdated now – was based on it. Especially developing countries supposedly can’t afford the luxury of human rights. They need discipline and organization in production and consumption, not freedom. Read more here, here and here.

Legal positivism

Legal positivism doesn’t claim that there are no rights, simply that there are no human rights. Rights exist only if they are part of the law. Human rights in the abstract, as something that human beings possess independently of their country’s laws, is simply idle talk. It seems I still have to make the case against legal positivism…

Marxism

According to Marx, human rights are the rights of the egoistic man, separated from his fellow men and from the community. They are the rights of man as an isolated, inward looking, self-centered creature and they are designed to protect the wealthy from the poor. More here, here and here.

More posts in this series are here.

Related Articles

• Justifying Human Rights (filipspagnoli.wordpress.com)
• Hu: ‘A lot’ still needed on human rights in China (seattletimes.nwsource.com)

What Are Human Rights? (42): Individual, Not Individualistic Rights

Lisbeth Salander, arch-individualist

Opponents of human rights often define them as expressions of the individualism and antagonism that is typical of the West. Human rights are viewed as claims against society made by individuals who want to be left alone and who need rights in order to live their peculiar kind of lives free from the intolerance and interference of the larger community. As such, human rights are believed to be incompatible with, detrimental to or at least utterly useless in non-Western societies that are more collectivist, more communitarian, more focused on harmony and less interested in protecting and fostering peculiar lifestyles.

I don’t want to argue for or against these characterizations of Western and non-Western societies, although I do believe that they are wrong and simplistic. I’m also not expressing myself about the relative moral value of individualism and antagonism as opposed to community. What I want to do here is object to the portrayal of human rights as individualistic rights or as rights that promote individualism. Although human rights are the rights of individuals and not the rights of groups, there’s nothing in human rights that makes societies necessarily more individualistic or antagonistic. Many human rights are designed to protect communities, bind them together, and allow them to co-exist with other communities. That’s the case for the right to religious freedom and the assembly and association rights, but also, perhaps less obviously, for freedom of speech. A major function of speech is persuasion. People speak in order to persuade and bring outsiders into a group that holds certain beliefs. This is even more evident in the case of the right to political participation. I don’t understand how anyone can fail to see the importance of community in the system of human rights.

Human rights even have a collectivist side to them. Collectivism is

any philosophic, political, religious, economic, or social outlook that emphasizes the interdependence of every human being. (source)

Indeed, everyone’s rights are dependent on everyone else’s rights. Few if any of my rights make sense if I’m the only one having them or the only one being able to exercise them. If I can speak but nobody else can, then what is the point of me speaking? I will just be talking to walls. If I have freedom of religion but nobody else has, then with whom will I worship and congregate? If I have a right to a fair trial but everyone else is forced to give false testimony or no testimony at all, then I won’t have a fair trial. Etc. The effectiveness of my rights depends on everyone else having equally effective rights. Individualistic rights are therefore nonsensical.

A remark that’s probably superfluous: I’m in no way defending collectivist politics or disparaging the value of individualism. My point is limited to the proper definition of human rights. Calling them individualistic rights or tools for the promotion of individualism at the expense of community, harmony and belonging is just plain wrong and betrays a lack of understanding of their true nature. On the other hand, pointing to the collectivist strand in the system of human rights doesn’t imply a value judgment about collectivism vis-à-vis individualism. It’s just one strand among many, and one that should be mentioned in order to counter some common mischaracterizations of human rights.

(By the way, Marx as well was guilty of these mischaracterizations).

More posts in this series are here.

What Are Human Rights? (39): Human Rights and Human Duties

For some people, there’s too much talk about human rights. They see human rights as a symptom of a typically modern type of moral decay, of a culture of self-importance and egoism, and of an exaggerated sense of entitlement. We want more and more of society and the state, and at the same time we are less willing to contribute. Instead of rights talk, they say, we should promote a sense of duty. Instead of rights declarations and rights in constitutions and treaties, we should have lists of duties and responsibilities, and have the state enforce those duties rather than rights.

You often hear this duty talk when the topic is crime (defendants have “too many rights”) or anti-social behavior (whatever that means), but it seems to be focused mainly on economic human rights. Rather than a right to unemployment benefits people have a duty to work and to support themselves. Rather than a right to very expensive healthcare for everyone, people have a duty to live a healthy life. And so on.

My point here is not to deny the importance of the duties mentioned above, or of a lot of other duties. And neither do I want to claim that human rights talk can’t be frivolous (I have a whole ongoing blog series about “human rights nonsense“). I merely want to mention a couple of risks that come with duty talk. First of all, there’s the danger of rights becoming dependent on duties. If duties are given too much importance, people will be tempted to claim that your rights can only come after you have proven to be a responsible person. That would be wrong. Rights are unconditional. People have rights, end of story. They don’t have rights because they are responsible citizens respecting their social duties. Even irresponsible citizens, and even criminals have rights.

In addition, duty talk is somewhat superfluous. Duties are inherent in rights. Someone’s rights are everyone else’s duties. (It’s wrong to view respect for rights as the duty of the state only). I don’t have a right to violate your right; I have a duty to respect it. Rights would be meaningless words without such duties. So what’s the added value of emphasizing duties?

More posts in this series are here.

Hate (8): Tolerance and Hate Speech

1844, Mormon founder Joseph Smith is murdered in an Illinois prison by a lynch mob; soon after, many of his followers migrate to Utah

(source, source)

Jeremy Waldron claims that tolerance is more than merely the absence of violent assault on people who have adopted beliefs and practices we don’t like, and more than simply abstaining from persecution and legal sanction. He says that tolerance also implies the absence of hate speech and a legal prohibition of hate speech. Members of minority groups whose beliefs and practices are strongly disapproved of by the rest of society, have a right to go about their lives without the threat of constant hatred, vilification, insult and humiliation. They have a right to visit the shops and restaurants they want to visit, and to generally interact with others without being treated as pariahs.

And, indeed, that sounds quite reasonable. People undoubtedly have and should have such rights. But others have rights as well: hate mongers have a right to free speech, and racist shop keepers and restaurant owners have a right to ban whoever they want from their private property, under certain circumstances.

When the rights of the haters and the rights of despised minorities come into conflict, the different rights have to be balanced. I argued before that the right of private property of racists, or the freedom of association of prejudiced groups wanting to exclude homosexuals for example, should no longer be protected when these racists and bigots have become so numerous and authoritative that the objects of their racism or bigotry no longer have any alternative options and risk having their own rights violated. In the Jim Crow era, for example, it was very difficult for blacks to move around, find decent housing etc. because there were so many transport companies and landowners discriminating against them that their options were seriously diminished. Hence their rights were violated, and violated to such a degree that limitations on the rights of their tormentors were justified.

Similarly, in our current example, hate speech should only be banned and the right to free speech of hate mongers should only be limited when there’s an impact on the rights of their targets. Claiming, as Waldron seems to do, that a tolerant society generally requires such bans and limits will not do. That’s just not enough as a justification. For example, writing blood libel on an obscure blog that nobody reads should probably not be prohibited. On the other hand, burning crosses in the front yards of black people and forcing them to move elsewhere is a violation of their right to freely choose their residence. The same is true if people dare not walk the streets because of the risk of being constantly cursed at. These two cases of expressions of hate speech can and should be banned because they result in rights violations. Other expressions of hate speech should be protected. A general claim that tolerance requires not just constraints on coercion and violent persecution but also a general respect for people’s dignity and a social atmosphere free of hatred, insult and defamation, goes too far. It would be nice if the world was free of hate and if respect for dignity was the normal attitude, but there’s no right to such a world. Nor should there be.

If we were to adopt such a right, we’d run the risk of terminating debate altogether. If tolerance includes a general ban on hate speech it’s likely that it will also imply banning vehement discussion of other people’s supposed errors. You don’t need to engage in hate speech in order to have a vehement and lively discussion and criticism of others, but a lot of such criticism can be readily understood and perceived by its targets as an expression of hate and an insult to dignity. These targets can then use the power of law to shut down the debate, and that’s not something we want. Ideally, specific instances of speech should not be judged as inadmissible instances of hate speech and proper objects of legal sanction simply on the basis of the feelings or perceptions of the targets, but only on the basis of the objective consequences for the rights of the targets. Tolerance that includes a ban on all hate speech is a tolerance that in the end may silence us all.

More on tolerance, hate speech, defamation and insults. More posts in this series are here.

The Causes of Human Rights Violations (40): Polarization as a Novel Way of Violating the Right to Free Speech

The traditional ways of silencing people are still all too common: libel or blasphemy laws, threats, the physical targeting of journalists, censorship, book burning or indexing, political correctness, exaggerated respect for people’s sensibilities etc. However, the silencers have developed new and increasingly sophisticated means. And I’m not thinking about tactics like internet filtering – this is indeed a new and sophisticated technology, but in essence it’s just a new form of book burning.

I’m thinking more about things like polarization as one of those new ways of silencing. A commonly cited justification of free speech is that it can help people to influence each other and spread their beliefs. We hold strong beliefs, we think we have good reasons supporting those beliefs, and we want to express these beliefs and these reasons in an attempt to convince others. Free speech helps us to do so.

At least, that’s the case in theory. In real life, this “marketplace of ideas” is dysfunctional. Many groups in society are not arguing, convincing or engaging in public thinking. Instead, ideas are expressed as claims rather than argued for. Expression, if you like, is limited to “brute” expression. One of the reasons for this is that expression can be motivated, not by the willingness to persuade, but by the need to show one’s identity or belonging. In other words, expression is signaling rather than arguing. Another reason for the lack of argumentation is the fact that a lot of expression is about being controversial and outrageous, antagonizing other groups on the polarized spectrum, provoking a “media storm” and cashing in on the advertizing generated by the ensuing pageviews, clicks or whatever.

If ideas aren’t debated but expressed in a “brute” way only, for whatever reason, then polarization is inevitable. No one is convinced by the brute expression of an idea or opinion. And if no one is convinced, then people stay in their respective camps. These camps then drift further apart because absent an exchange of reasons for beliefs, people start to see other groups as increasingly strange, alien and incomprehensible.

Calvin and friend having an argument

Now, polarization is of course nothing new, but I can’t help thinking that nowadays some people in positions of power are actively encouraging polarization as a means to silence debate, consciously or not. People in positions of responsibility, people who could use their power in order to organize and protect debate, use it instead to promote brute expression and hence to stifle the exchange of arguments and to polarize society. Think of news network owners, politicians, many journalists etc. These people are interested in polarized expression rather than debate, particularly the type of polarized expression that is mildly upsetting to other groups because that brings in the readers, page views, ratings and the corresponding advertizing dollars. The silencing that occurs here is not the silencing of expression but the silencing of argumentation and debate. Opinions are still expressed but no longer argued because argumentation – compared to a blunt statement of a controversial opinion - doesn’t provoke and hence doesn’t produce income.

Why do people actively promote the brute expression of ideas and the silencing of debate? Because of the dollars, of course, but also because it diminishes some discomfort. When there’s only brute expression, we can avoid having to examine our beliefs, defend them and possibly change them. We all value consistency in our basic beliefs and we don’t always want to take the trouble arguing for them or responding to arguments against them. If we are shielded from arguments in the media, then we don’t have to take these argument into account. And that’s relaxing. However, the result is polarization because the flip-side of the relaxation offered by the absence of arguments is the increasing alienation from people holding other beliefs: we are also shielded from the arguments these people have (or could have) for their own beliefs, and hence these beliefs start to seem strange, bizarre and not something we want to be involved with.

More on polarization here.

The Ethics of Human Rights (63): Human Rights and Moral Subjectivism

calvin and hobbes on moral relativism – subjectivism being a type of relativism

Human rights seem to be vulnerable to a common argument in morality: how can we objectively determine that some action is morally wrong? I may think it’s wrong, but you may think something else. Which one of us is correct? There seems to be no way of knowing. Morality is therefore subjective: if something is wrong, it’s wrong for me, for my religious group, my culture etc. If you, your church or your culture thinks it’s OK, then go ahead and do it.

This subjectivism and relativism seem inevitable in our age of moral and cultural pluralism. Western societies are no longer characterized by a quasi-general agreement on the precepts of the Bible, and our colonial hangover has made us weary of supposedly objective morality. There’s no more “true or false” about moral norms, just “ours” and “theirs”. This coexistence of different and often incompatible and contradictory norms or moral systems should be accepted in a spirit of tolerance, and should even be celebrated as part of the richness of human life.

moral rules cast in stone, the archetype of moral objectivism (Charlton Heston as Moses in the 1955 film The Ten Commandments)

It’s not clear what if anything is left of human rights once we’re done with this. Since these rights are also moral norms, it seems as if they too should be demoted to the rank of personal or group preferences, with no moral force over people holding other preferences. If human rights aren’t true and objective norms, but merely our norms, and if these norms lack any backing more sophisticated than our subjective preference for them or the fact that they are in our holy book, then there’s no point in talking about human rights at all. Drop the “human” part and replace it with “ours” or “mine”. The only good that human rights can possibly do is symbolic affirmation of group membership (“Free speech is a right!” – “Ah, yes indeed, you must be a liberal! Welcome!”). They’ll offer no protection at all, since all violators obviously have different subjective norms, and have an equally valid justification for those norms, namely that they are theirs or that they are in their books.

Fortunately, none of this is inevitable. We may never be able to say that it is objectively “true” that people have this or that human right, or that it is “true” that a particular human right is an important moral norm. However, there’s considerable space between such objective truth claims on the one hand and merely personal, subjective, cultural and relative claims on the other. We may produce good arguments and make a reasonably convincing case that rights claims are good claims. Not true claims, but good claims in the sense that they are strong and difficult to argue against. Rights claims will then perhaps be accepted by people who initially held anti-rights preferences, not because they are forced by the objective truth of those claims – as they may be forced to accept the laws of gravity when the truth of those is demonstrated to them – but because they have allowed themselves to be convinced by the force of our arguments.

More posts in this series are here.

Gender Discrimination (30): The Politics of the Female Body

(source)

Exploitation can be beneficial to the exploited, human rights violations can be self-inflicted, and people can internalize stereotypes about them and behave accordingly.

Some examples. Take the case where A and B have unequal bargaining power. A sells bread in an isolated village where the people don’t have the means to produce their own bread. A overcharges for the bread because B doesn’t have the means or the strength to find another seller. The sale of bread makes B better off, because without bread he would be worse off. Yet A takes unfair advantage of the buyer’s condition. A exploits B, yet B is better off and can decide to accept his exploitation.

Examples of self-inflicted human rights violations are school drop-outs, the undeserving poor, contestants in privacy invading reality shows etc. – to the extent that these people’s actions are really voluntary and based on informed consent, they impose rights violations on themselves.

Stereotype threat means that the threat of stereotypes about your capacity to succeed at something negatively affects your capacity: when the belief that people like you (African-Americans, women, etc) are worse at a particular task than the comparison group (whites, men, etc) is made prominent, you perform worse at that task.

Jacques Lacan

These three phenomena converge in the lives of many women in present-day western societies. Few of them are ruthlessly oppressed, few of their rights are grossly violated, and sexist stereotyping has become unfashionable. And yet, it’s arguably the case that many western women show signs of having internalized patriarchal power relations. It wouldn’t be correct to depict these women as unconscious victims who can’t choose for themselves – that would be just as bad as the sexist stereotypes of the past – but there are signs that some of them have been taught to participate in their own oppression and subordination.

How else could we explain the beauty ideal, women modifying their bodies, starving themselves, re-sculpturing their silhouettes and conforming in all possible ways to male expectations and prejudices? It’s like they have internalized the male gaze (in the sense given to that word by Jacques Lacan) and look at themselves the way many men do.

I don’t claim that this internalization of stereotypes is beneficial to women in the sense that some forms of exploitation are beneficial to the exploited, although in some cases that may be true – some women may reap some advantages from conforming to stereotypes. Neither do I claim that the internalization of stereotypes is self-inflicted in the sense of a voluntary act. In most cases we’re probably dealing with some form of indoctrination, and it’s fair to say that women and their bodies are still highly regulated, in a way that’s different from but not unlike the way it is in more traditional societies (for example in some Muslim societies). However, we shouldn’t exclude the possibility that some women do in fact voluntarily accept stereotypes. Again, the view that women are passive victims of indoctrination isn’t much better than or different from the view that women conform to more traditional stereotypes.

More on body politics is here. More on gender discrimination is here. And more on the Muslim headscarf is here.

Related Articles

• Do we cling to stereotypes even when information about the individual is available? (bakadesuyo.com)
• The patriarchy is dead … but the kyriarchy lives on | Nichi Hodgson (guardian.co.uk)
• The Devil is sexist (greedygoblin.blogspot.com)
• The New Sexism (time.com)

Human Rights Quote (86): Nationalism

Chris Hondros' photo of Kosovo Albanian women during a funeral for 46 villagers killed by Serbian troops, 1999, Racak, Kosovo

(source)

Dan Fried, speaking about Serbia and Kosovo:

Nationalism in that part of the world is like cheap alcohol. First it makes you drunk, then it makes you blind, then it kills you.

More on nationalism. More human rights quotes.

Cultural Rights (13): Their Place in the System of Human Rights

I know I’ve neglected cultural rights on this blog. That’s not because I think they should be neglected. Cultural rights are indeed important and they deserve a thorough discussion. First, what are they? Cultural rights are the rights of

• indigenous peoples,
• ethnic, racial or linguistics minorities or “nationalities”,
• immigrants
• and perhaps also other marginalized groups.

In certain circumstance, some such groups can legitimately claim cultural rights because without these rights they will be unable to preserve, experience and act in accordance with their cultural identity. This cultural identity includes institutions, beliefs, practices, a way of life, a language etc., all of which can be under pressure from another, dominant culture or from some other hostile forces (e.g. globalization, capitalism etc.). Other, more commonly accepted human rights such as religious liberty, non-discrimination etc. are of course helpful as well but sometimes insufficient for this purpose. For example, a state can’t help but to impose an official language, and the users of this official language have therefore an unfair educational, economic and political advantage. Minority groups can then claim that they need the cultural right to receive education in their own language. Non-cultural human rights won’t be much help.

The background assumption of cultural rights is the equal value of all cultures. All cultures have an equal right to survival and all groups have an equal right to preserve their cultural way of life. The pressures that threaten cultures can take various forms, going from genocide (or ethnocide, or cultural genocide) at one extreme to milder forms of acculturation at the other extreme. Some typical forms of pressure are:

• reducing birthrates through forced sterilization
• forcibly transferring children to other groups
• relocating entire groups
• interfering with education or the transmission of culture to future generations of a group
• forced conversion
• erasing the group’s existence or practices from the historical record
• attacking a culture’s resource base (e.g. deforestation)
• etc.

The concept of cultural rights should be distinguished from related concerns about economic or political domination. Marginalized cultures can indeed suffer cultural as well as other types of oppression simultaneously, and depriving a culture of its economic base can be as lethal as a direct attack on its identity. However, I think it’s useful to isolate the cultural and identity issues. So I’ll focus on those, and I’ll also deliberately sideline the thorny question of the definition of “culture”, a notoriously overbroad concept: which groups can legitimately claim to be a “culture” deserving of cultural rights? Are cultures really distinct and self-contained? Let’s just assume that there are some such groups, and that some of those are threatened.

Which cultural rights?

Apart from the general right to cultural survival, it’s not very clear which are the more specific rights that are bundled together under the general right, and it’s commonly accepted that the concrete realization of cultural rights depends on the circumstances. In some cases cultural rights can imply a right to some form of affirmative action, in other cases a right to regional self-determination etc.

Article 27 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights only mentions a right of groups to enjoy and practice their own culture. The UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples is somewhat more precise, but only somewhat. Hence, cultural rights are often attacked for a double vagueness: vagueness about the specific rights involved, and vagueness about the beneficiaries (which groups qualify as a “culture”?). However, we’ll see below that a more fundamental criticism of those rights is also possible.

Etching of Spanish Explorers and Indigenous People by Bertrand

(source unkonwn)

Justifications of cultural rights

And yet, I do believe that cultural rights are an important addition to the body of human rights. The justification for these rights is based on two things:

• the importance of culture for individuals, and perhaps also some vaguer notion of the general importance of cultural diversity and the “heritage of humanity” (in which case cultural rights are important for everyone and not just for members of threatened cultures)
• the failure of more traditional human rights to protect culture in all cases.

People need a cultural life, a life in a community that transcends time. They want to belong to a group and share a traditional identity. These human values can only be enjoyed collectively and are often neglected in more individualist and liberal theories of rights. Individual human rights such as freedom of religion and association, anti-discrimination laws, tolerance, democratic pluralism etc. are helpful for the preservation of culture and other collective values (such as religion), but not in all circumstances. Take the example I gave before: the simple fact of an official state language and school language puts some minorities in a disadvantaged position, not just culturally but also economically and politically. And indeed there’s nothing that ordinary human rights or tolerance can do about that.

Another justification of cultural rights can be based, not on the value of culture, but on the need for reparations for past injustices. For example, indigenous people can claim that respect for their cultural rights is due to them because of the injustices perpetrated by past generations of the dominant culture, even if there are no present-day threats to their culture.

Criticism of cultural rights

Contrary to the more traditional, individual human rights, cultural rights don’t require the recognition of individuals as equal human beings, equally deserving of respect in spite of their differences. They demand, on the contrary, the recognition of differences and respect for those differences, and differences between groups of individuals rather than differences between individuals. Common identity, group difference and recognition are the keywords behind the notion of cultural rights.

This explains why these rights are often criticized in liberal democracies. Liberalism focuses on the individual. It recognizes group interests but those are typically understood as cooperative, associational and interest based. People, according to liberalism, voluntarily join groups in order to advance their interests. Groups are defined by shared goals and interests, not by the shared identity of the members. Individuals are there first, and groups are secondary. From this point of view, cultural rights can be seen as essentialist: they reduce the identity of members to the identity of the group to which they belong.

Will Kymlicka

This essentialism can indeed be detrimental to individual group members. Because cultural rights are rights aimed at the preservation of cultures, there may be a temptation to use these rights in order to discipline members who deviate from the cultural orthodoxy. Such deviations can be viewed as a threat to the group’s identity and survival. In that case, cultural identity becomes a goal in itself rather than a good for the members. Ideally, cultural rights are valuable because the members of the cultural groups in question value cultural identity, cultural practices and language and can use these rights to protect what they value. It’s those members who have an interest in cultural preservation, not the cultures themselves. (Will Kymlicka has developed this argument). This means that when members lose this interest, they should be free to do so, and cultural rights should not be used to impose an identity, practices or a language. Individual members should be free to evaluate their culture and to reject it if that is what they decide.

It follows that cultural rights should not grant groups power or priority over individuals or over individual rights. If an individual member of a group decides to use her freedom of religion to change her religion, her freedom of movement and residence to physically leave the cultural group, her freedom of expression to decide to start speaking another language etc., then there’s nothing the group can do. The group’s cultural rights can’t trump the individual’s rights. And if individual rights are threatened by cultural rights, the latter should give way. For instance, if a religious group claims the right to oppress its female members or sacrifice its children, that group can’t claim cultural rights as means to protect those practices.

That doesn’t mean a group can never legitimately limit the individual rights of its members. It can, as long as it guarantees a realistic exit right. Individuals can waive their individual rights if they think the rules and practices of their group are more important than their individual rights. This exit right, however, should be realistic and not just formal. There should be no indoctrination and alternatives should not be cut off. For example, Muslim communities should be allowed to discriminate against their female members as long as these members have a realistic right to go elsewhere, realistic meaning that going elsewhere shouldn’t imply abandoning their religion, their family etc., meaning also that they have a real choice and haven’t been indoctrinated into submission (more here).

The priority of individual rights over cultural rights does not force us to adopt an extreme individualist philosophy in which the individual is always prior to the community or in which the community doesn’t count at all. This priority of individual rights is compatible with a communitarian stance. Cultures and cultural rights are important, and they are important for communitarian reasons, but they are not so important that they can trump individual rights. Cultures or other groups have value only in so far as they are of value for the individual members. They can’t have intrinsic value. In other words, they can’t have value for themselves.

The problem of enforced internal orthodoxy within cultural groups, which I mentioned above, may be exacerbated by the possible recognition of cultural rights. Group leaders may believe that they need to enforce orthodoxy and silence “minorities within minorities” in order to present a united culture. Presenting a united culture can make it more likely that the wider society recognizes cultural rights for the minority culture. For example, a leader (or leading class) of an indigenous group may believe that it’s necessary to emphasize the distinctive nature of the group by reviving traditional practices. This revival makes the group seem more valuable from a cultural point of view, and that’s something which will make it more likely that special recognition and special rights are forthcoming. Leaders may even have a personal and selfish interests in those rights, for example their personal leading role may be cemented after the recognition of those rights or during the struggle for recognition. However, some of these traditional practices can be harmful to the individual rights of certain members (e.g. gender discrimination, polygamy etc.) or can go against one particular current of belief within the minority group which is subsequently repressed.

So cultural rights may harm individual rights and may promote internal orthodoxy before they are recognized – and as a means to achieve recognition – as well as after they are recognized – for example, regional autonomy can imply restrictions on intervention by the central authority in the case of rights violations occurring within the regional group. It’s relatively easy to make the granting of cultural rights conditional on respect for individual rights within the group demanding cultural rights (and withdraw those rights when they result in violations of individual rights), but it’s a lot more difficult to avoid the dynamic of groups violating individual rights and suppressing internal dissent in the process of a struggle for cultural rights.

A mid-19th century engraving depicting an Inuit community in northern Canada

(source unkonwn)

Actionability of cultural rights

Individual rights trump cultural rights, but this raises the question of the actionability of cultural rights: when exactly can they be used to protect cultures? They can’t if a culture’s preservation is in danger because individual members decide to leave, for example through voluntary assimilation into other groups, or decide to fashion the group’s identity differently. Neither can they be actionable when a culture dies because of low fertility rates for instance. Artificially propping up fertility rates for the sake of cultural preservation would harm the rights of individuals in a manner which few would accept. A culture that can’t gain the uncoerced adherence of its members or promote the vitality necessary for the reproduction of its members at replacement rates, doesn’t seem to be worth preserving. Again, cultures are important for individuals. And if individuals lose their interest or change their minds, there’s not much one can do.

If one were to limit individual rights in order to prop up a culture, one would violate the principle that culture are important because they are important for individuals. One would have to adopt the unlikely view that cultures are important in themselves whatever people believe, and that they have an intrinsic value even if no one wants to be a member. Of course, it’s sad when a language dies or when some cultural practices disappear, but this sadness isn’t enough to give cultures the right to force people to do something against their will. Even if it would be somehow morally OK to force people, it would be pointless. One may succeed in getting people to speak a language, take part in rituals etc., but that would happen for the wrong reasons. A culture has to come from within. It shouldn’t be an externally imposed duty.

Perhaps cultural rights become actionable when the preservation of a culture is threatened, not by the free choices of individual members, but by economic forces, migration patterns or political oppression. Indeed, it’s not entirely unreasonable for the French government for instance to subsidize French language cinema in order to protect it against the “onslaught” of Hollywood. Or for the Tibetans to complain of Chinese “demographic aggression“. (Similar talk about Eurabia seems a lot less reasonable). Or for native Indians in the U.S. to resist forced resettlement.

Realization of cultural rights

And when we decide that cultural rights are actionable in certain cases, we still don’t know which actions short of violations of individual rights we can take to protect them. Some possibilities:

• An obvious policy could be some kind of federalism and limited self-government, primarily but not exclusively when the minority cultures are geographically isolated and when they haven’t voluntarily chosen to live within a larger political unity (e.g. tribal sovereignty for indigenous peoples).
• Maybe some quota systems in representative bodies could also help to give culture a voice.
• Affirmative action.
• Reparations.
• Special educational provisions (for example the provision of some hours of education in a native language) or other types of assistance to do things that the majority takes for granted (e.g. multilingual ballots).
• Certain veto powers (for example, the right of indigenous people to veto the use of land).
• Some group-based exceptions to general laws (such as an exemption to the rule forcing drivers to wear a crash helmet).
• Granting jurisdiction over family law to religious or tribal courts.
• A politics of recognition (e.g. teaching black history in U.S. schools).
• And perhaps even a right to separate from the political community if nothing else works or if the claim to authority of the central state is weak (as in the case of colonies).

It’s clear from this that cultural rights can in some cases restrict the rights of non-members. For example, the use of English is restricted in Quebec; affirmative action restricts the rights of non-group members; veto-powers over land use restrict the property rights of outsiders etc. However, it’s not the case that cultural rights necessarily restrict the rights of outsiders. Subsidies or regional autonomy for example do not, by definition, involve such restrictions. But if they do restrict some of the rights of outsiders, then we should be very careful. As stated above, cultural rights don’t trump individual rights; the opposite is true. But this general priority of individual rights doesn’t mean that there will never be cases in which it’s better to give priority to cultural rights (the good this will allow us to do may sometimes far outweigh the harm to some people’s individual rights). The general priority of individual rights over group rights doesn’t mean that there can’t be specific cases where the balance goes the other way.

More here.

What Are Human Rights? (34): Different Things

human rights cartoon by Julian Pena-Pai

(source)

Another way of phrasing the question in the title of this post: how do human rights exist? They can exist in many forms:

1. They can be part of the law. For instance, they can be included in a country’s constitution, in the international treaties a country has accepted, in customary law etc.
2. Human rights can also exist as part of a moral tradition of a certain culture, nation or civilization. They are then shared norms of actual human moralities.
3. They can exist as part of a religion, or better as part of a religion’s teachings, scriptures etc. (“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights…”).
4. They can exist as part of a justified morality (as opposed to an actual human morality). E.g. some human rights are part of John Rawls‘ theory of justice. A justified morality is not the existing morality of a group; it’s a moral theory that justifies moral norms such as human rights by way of argued reasons. (There’s my own attempt here).
5. They can be facts of life: rather than merely moral, legal or religious norms (justified or not), they are part of everyday behavior. Rather than aspirations or goals they are real capabilities. If that’s the case, then people don’t just have a legal right to free speech, or a right to free speech granted to them by their cultural or religious norms. And they don’t just have this right because a justified moral theory gives it to them. They have free speech, period.

forms of human rights

Depending on where you live, human rights – or certain human rights some of the time – can exist in all 5 forms or in just one. Human rights exist everywhere in form 1: the Universal Declaration has become part of international customary law and is therefore binding on all countries in the world, even the few that haven’t accepted any human rights treaties and that haven’t incorporated human rights in their constitutions. Hence, human rights are part of the law everywhere.

Of course, that doesn’t have to be of much use. Several countries don’t care about the enforcement of this part of the law, or of any part for that matter. Or they are unable to enforce the law because they don’t have the resources, the institutions or popular support for rights. Perhaps the reason why the law is not enforced is the unwillingness of their dictatorial governments. Perhaps the reason is the absence of rights in form 2 and/or 3.

Rights in form 1 are important, however, and it’s preferable that the type of law that includes human rights is more than merely international customary law. That’s a notorious weak form of law. Better to have a country accept human rights treaties and, on top of that, include them in its constitution. If this can be combined with

• an effective and non-corrupt government – including a good police force and judiciary
• and with human rights in form 2 or 3 – which gives rights public support

then rights can exist in form 5. Not of course all rights all of the time. There will probably always be rights violations, even in ideal legal, political, governmental, moral and cultural settings.

Regarding rights in form 2 or 3: no existing moralities or religions include all human rights, or at least all rights properly and broadly defined. The full existence of rights in form 5 can therefore not follow simply from their existence in form 2 or 3. A particular disadvantage of rights in form 3 is that they’re unconvincing to non-believers or members of other religions in the community. Or sometimes the rights granted by God are only granted to believers.

A disadvantage of rights in form 4: no two moral theorists seem to be able to agree. They all think their reasons are supported by the best arguments. It seems naive to believe that there will one day be scholarly agreement on political morality. Not even a sincere commitment to open-minded, rational and serious philosophical inquiry seems to make that possible. And without rights in form 4, it’s much more difficult to correct the deficiencies of rights in forms 2 and 3. Or maybe that’s me being naive about the power of philosophy.

More posts in this series are here.

Human Rights Ads (67): Child Marriage

Unicef's child marriage awareness advert

(source)

More on child marriage here. More human rights ads here.

Children’s Rights (13): Minimum Age of Marriage Laws Reduce Incidence of Child Marriage

(source)

In many countries, it’s customary for girls to marry at a very young age, voluntarily or not. This practice is detrimental to the human rights of women, as I argued before.

In the developing world, more than one third of women aged 20 to 24 report that they were married or in a union by the age of 18. (source)

This practice is often legally entrenched:

In 50 countries, the minimum legal age of marriage is lower for females. (source)

However, it seems that the law can also work the other way:

(source, click image to enlarge)

Or perhaps the causation goes the other way: countries where customs are against early marriage also adopt laws stipulating a high minimum marriage age. In general, we shouldn’t be too optimistic about the power of legislation.

More on child marriage here. More human rights facts here.

Gender Discrimination (25): The Plough as a Cause of Gender Inequality

Gender inequality means different levels of protection of human rights according to gender. No need to say which of the two gender’s rights are usually violated more or protected less rigorously. Gender inequality occurs in many areas of life:

• in political representation or participation
• in income or labor market participation
• in labor sorting (when women are relegated to certain professions)
• in family life (when women do not have the same marriage or divorce rights, inheritance rights etc.)
• in criminal justice (when the testimony of women is considered less valuable) etc.

Too many areas to mention, unfortunately.

When you read about the causes of gender inequality, the usual suspects are religion, patriarchy and all sorts of anti-women prejudice. A different and interesting perspective, focused on inequality in the labor market, is the following:

Ester Boserup … argues that gender role differences have their origins in different forms of agriculture practiced traditionally. In particular, she identifies important differences between shifting and plough cultivation. The former, which uses hand-held tools like the hoe and the digging stick, is labor intensive and women actively participate in farm work. The latter, in contrast, is more capital intensive, using the plough to prepare the soil. Unlike the hoe or digging stick, the plough requires significant upper body strength, grip strength, and burst of power, which are needed to either pull the plough or control the animal that pulls it.

Because of these requirements, when plough agriculture is practiced, men have an advantage in farming relative to women. Also reinforcing this gender-bias in ability is the fact that when the plough is used, there is less need for weeding, a task typically undertaken by women and children. In addition, child-care, a task almost universally performed by women, is most compatible with activities that can be stopped and resumed easily and do not put children in danger. These are characteristics that are satisfied for hoe agriculture, but not for plough agriculture since large animals are typically used to pull the plough. …

[T]his division of labor then generated norms about the appropriate role of women in society. Societies characterized by plough agriculture, and a resulting gender-based division of labor, developed the belief that the natural place for women is within the home. These cultural beliefs tend to persist even if the economy moves out of agriculture, affecting the participation of women in activities performed outside of the home, such as market employment, entrepreneurship, and participation in politics. (source)

And there does seem to be a strong statistical correlation between historical plough use and prejudice against women. More human rights facts here.

Human Rights Maps (141): The American Indian Wars

19th century depiction of representatives of native American tribes

In remembrance of Custer’s Last Stand, which earlier this week was 135 years ago to the day, a few words and maps about the Indian wars. This is the name for the series of violent conflicts between the native peoples of North America and the colonial settlers assisted by the federal U.S. government, lasting roughly from the beginning of the 17th century till the end of the 19th. The European settlers wanted to open land for westward settlement, land that was often occupied by native Americans. Although initial contacts were normally friendly and peaceful, increased settlement and westward expansion provoked resistance on the part of the natives, who saw their lands and other resources taken away from them. This resistance was also caused by cultural differences as well as mutual feelings of superiority.

Cultural differences–the failure of each side to understand the assumptions of the other–led to frequent misunderstandings that in turn led to warfare. One of the most elementary forms of misunderstanding, for example, was the anger felt by the Indians over the colonists’ allowing their cattle and hogs to roam in unfenced freedom. The consequence was often the destruction of the Indians’ corn, which led to the Indians’ killing the offending animals, which led to retaliation by the settlers upon the Indians who had killed the animals, and so on. And too often those retaliating failed to discriminate between the Indians who were responsible for the “offense” and those who were not. (source)

Another example of cultural differences leading to conflicts:

[T]he northern Europeans made only limited use of Indian labor. Rather, they wanted land; if it had not been acquired through war or simple occupation, they sought to purchase it. But often the Indians assumed they were conferring on Europeans only the right to use the land without losing their own right to continue to use it for hunting, fishing, or gathering food. (source)

These cultural differences, together with other factors such as railroad expansion, new mining ventures, the destruction of the buffalo, the deliberate slaughter of Indian horses and the often barbaric attacks on both parts led to bad faith and escalations in hostilities. The settlers and the government regularly engaged in scorched-earth policies, the destruction of entire villages and the murder of women and children.

A turning point in the history of the Indian wars was the American Revolutionary War. Most native Americans perceived the colonial pioneers as a greater threat than the British government, and hence sided with the latter, a decision for which they would pay dearly after the war’s end.

For the American rebels the American Revolutionary War was essentially two parallel wars: while the war in the East was a struggle against British rule, the war in the West was an “Indian War”. The newly proclaimed United States competed with the British for control of Native American nations east of the Mississippi River. The colonial interest in westward colonization, as opposed to the British policy of maintaining peace, was one cause of the war. Most Native Americans who joined the struggle sided with the British, hoping to use the war to reduce settlement and expansion onto their land. The Revolutionary War was “the most extensive and destructive” Indian war in United States history. … When the British made peace with the Americans in the Treaty of Paris (1783), they ceded a vast amount of Native American territory (without the consent of the indigenous peoples) to the United States. The United States treated the Native Americans who had fought with the British as a conquered people who had lost their land. (source)

Other Indian wars soon followed (there a list here) and lasted until the end of the 19th century. The French, Russians and Spanish also fought Indian wars, but obviously not to the same extent as the Settlers and the U.S. government.

The wars resulted invariably in the conquest of native Americans, their assimilation or forced relocation to Indian reservations, and ultimately in the near-destruction of the indigenous peoples. There’s disagreement about the claim that the settlement of North America was a genocidal assault by more powerful intruders upon weaker, more “primitive” peoples. Conservative estimates put the total population of native Americans at about 8 million before the arrival of the Europeans. Although infectious diseases brought over by the Europeans were the overwhelming cause of the population decline of the American natives, many of the latter, probably tens of thousands, died a violent death during the Indian wars or the forced resettlement. The fact is that by the end of the Indian wars, at the end of the 19th century, only around 200.000 native Americans remained. Some say that the destruction of the tribes was largely involuntary because it resulted from the imported diseases for which the Indians had no immunity. Others point to widespread murder, the destruction of the Indian economy, and the forced removals. Also, if the Europeans brought diseases, they could have done something to protect the natives. They didn’t. Some even claim that there have been cases of groups of Indians being purposefully infected.

Here’ a map depicting some of the battles in the Indian wars:

A map of the Western United States showing the general location of tribes and the location of some army posts and battles.

(source, click image to enlarge)

Here’s an interesting artistic rendering of these events, in quasi-map form:

This painting shows "Manifest Destiny" (the religious belief that the United States should expand from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean in the name of God). In 1872 artist John Gast painted a popular scene of people moving west that captured the view of Americans at the time. Called "Spirit of the Frontier" and widely distributed as an engraving portrayed settlers moving west, guided and protected by Columbia, a goddess-like figure and aided by technology (railways, telegraphs), driving Native Americans, wild animals and bison into obscurity. Columbia leads civilization westward with American settlers, stringing telegraph wire as she travels; she holds a school book. It is also important to note that she is bringing the "light" as witnessed on the eastern side of the painting as she travels towards the "darkened" west.

(source)

See also this map about imperialism in North America. Other human rights maps are here.

The Ethics of Human Rights (48): Human Rights and Honor

(source)

Many human rights violations are perpetrated by people in power for selfish reasons, because they are corrupt or evil, or because they believe they are doing good. In such cases, it often helps to remove those people from their positions of power. Other types of rights violations, however, are deeply ingrained in a society’s everyday culture and are the daily habits of large numbers of people. Think of gender discrimination in traditional patriarchal societies, or homophobia, racism etc.

What can be done about the latter type of rights violation? It’s extremely hard to change cultural customs and beliefs (some say that we shouldn’t even try because we should avoid cultural imperialism). Cultures do change, of course, but very slowly. There’s an inherent inertia. Culture determines personal identity, and people obviously cling to identity. And there’s no identity, it seems, without stability. Culture is also a marker of belonging and community, two other cherished values. When cultures change, the patterns of belonging and community may also change, and that frightens people. The result is again inertia. And finally, there’s the time element: when something has existed for a very long time (or when people believe it has existed for a very long time) it becomes much harder to change because it has the patina of tradition. When something has survived for so long, it surely must have some value.

As a result of all this, appeals to change fall on deaf ears. You can reason, and say that certain practices aren’t in the best interests of anyone, that they aren’t really very old and traditional and that they aren’t anointed by religious texts or cultural transmission. Or you may have other killer arguments. When people’s identity and community are believed to be at stake, all this will fail. You can also outlaw the practices, but then the law will simply be put aside. You can claim that people are being immoral, but they will answer that they have another morality.

Then how to motivate people to do the right thing? Which tools are left? I’ve discussed Rorty’s story telling strategy before. And more recently, another philosopher, Kwame Anthony Appiah, has claimed that appeals to honor may be successful catalysts of change. He

singles out three historic practices that later were stamped out: dueling, footbinding, and the Atlantic slave trade. In each case, he says, a successful public campaign to end the misconduct was based not on questions of right or wrong, but on honor. Dueling swiftly perished when attitudes changed among gentlemen, who went from considering it highly honorable, to disreputable. The excruciating binding of women’s feet disappeared with great abruptness once China began to worry about its reputation among nations, early in the 20th century — national honor seeming at stake. A similar sense of honor led Great Britain finally to ban the slave trade after all appeals to morality had proven futile. (source)

footbinding

Shaming people or nations, and trying to convince them that they bring dishonor upon themselves by way of the rights violations they commit or condone, may indeed be more successful than simply telling them that they are morally wrong or that they act in an irrational manner against their own self-interest. People need the esteem and approval of others. Few of us can survive a constant barrage of contempt.

However, as Appiah also notices, honor has often been a force against human rights, sometimes even a deadly force. It may have contributed to the demise of dueling, but it was also its origin. And then there are the infamous honor killings, when fathers or other relatives kill girls after accusations of sexual or romantic misconduct. That’s a practice that has survived until today. Furthermore, shame and dishonor have often been used as cruel forms of criminal punishment, with convicted criminals forced to endure public humiliation. Hence, honor is a two-edged sword at best. Sharpening one edge may also make the use of the other edge more common.

More posts in this series are here.

(image source)

Capital Punishment (34): Mere Signaling

It’s often assumed that capital punishment is about fighting crime, just retribution or desert, or perhaps about anger and revenge, but in reality it’s much more about signaling. And by signaling I don’t mean the signaling of threats to potential murderers so that they are deterred, or the signaling of the “just” nature of a society that takes an eye for an eye. Proponents of capital punishment, by expressing their support for it, signal their own moral rectitude. Their expression of support refers to high profile crime cases that are widely discussed in the media and that are likely to be familiar to friends, family and others to whom people want to signal. Signaling support for the death penalty in reference to such high profile cases makes the signal particularly strong and deep, partly because it’s so full of familiar and shockingly emotional detail.

Politicians who favor capital punishment and who keep the legal regime in place are equally focused on signaling. They signal that they care about the emotions of the victims of crimes and of the relatives of the victims, and at the same time they signal that they emotionally identify with those who care about the victims of crime. In other words, they signal that they feel connected to the large majority of humanity. And that kind of signal is vitally important for democratic politicians.

Opponents of capital punishment simply don’t have the same signaling power. For example, there’s no large constituency for signals about sympathy for criminals or for signals about anti-instrumentalization. Politicians don’t stand a lot to gain from such signals, and neither do citizens concerned about how others think of them. On the contrary, they risk signaling emotional indifference for the plight of victims and hence they risk lowering their moral standing.

This asymmetry in signaling power between proponents and opponents can explain the persistence of rational arguments in favor of capital punishment, even after they have been shown to be wrong or inconsistent with the facts. (That’s the case for the arguments based on the deterrent effect for instance – see here and here – but also for the arguments based on retribution which are hopelessly circular: a certain punishment is appropriate for a crime because that crime requires a certain punishment). Proponents of capital punishment obviously can’t justify it simply on the basis of emotional identification. They need a more rational story as a cover. And as long as this story can be used successfully in the signaling process, that will do, whether or not the story is factually or logically correct. That will do, because opponents who point to factual or logical failings in the story amplify the signaling of the proponents: by pointing to these failures, the opponents signal rationality and detachment rather than emotional connection, and they thereby make the case for the proponents.

This is counterintuitive, given that it’s most often the opponents of capital punishment who are accused of emotionality and a lack of toughness, but I think it’s the right conclusion.

More on human rights and signaling is here. More on the death penalty here.

Related Articles

• How the planned execution of Teresa Lewis challenges our views on gender and capital punishment. (slate.com)
• It Beats Death By Electrocution (andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com)
• Jerry Brown Wants Executions To Resume In California (huffingtonpost.com)
• Swiss death penalty advocates drop campaign for referendum to restore capital punishment (foxnews.com)
• Teresa Lewis: God have mercy on us | Lynn Litchfield Divers (guardian.co.uk)

The Causes of Poverty (43): The Welfare State

Dorothea Lange's 'Unemployment Line,' 1936

(source unknown)

Yes, that’s right: the welfare state… According to many conservatives, the welfare state is self-defeating and actually makes people poorer. Welfare and social security (and perhaps even private charity) unwittingly work to thwart their own goal – helping the poor – in two different ways. There’s supposed to be a supply side and a demand side to the so-called “perverse effects” of anti-poverty policies.

Take the supply side first. The delivery of welfare by the government and – indirectly – by the taxpayers is economically inefficient. It burdens the primary suppliers of the necessary funds, namely the individual and corporate taxpayers. Because of this burden, companies and individuals lose the incentive to be productive. If they have to pay large amounts in taxes in order to fund the welfare state, they can’t or won’t create the wealth that is the basis for redistribution. In other words, they can’t or won’t create a rising tide that will lift all boats. Ultimately, a tax-based welfare state will eat itself because it burdens the wealth creators whose wealth it wants to redistribute.

I’ve argued against this rejection of the welfare state before, and I won’t repeat myself here. Suffice it to say that the risks to incentives are overstated, as well as the benefits of trickle down economics. (For instance, companies may decide to be more productive in order to compensate for the losses from taxation).

Let’s now turn to the demand side of the anti-welfare argument. Again, the reasoning is based on incentives that ultimately result in a self-defeating anti-poverty system, but this time it’s about the incentives of the recipients of welfare. The argument goes roughly like this. Take unemployment benefits for instance (one part of the welfare state). These benefits supposedly discourage people from working. And when people don’t work, they fail to gain experience and to nurture certain values – such as discipline – necessary in order to escape poverty. Hence, unemployment insurance makes the recipients worse off.

Or take another kind of benefit: financial support for children born out-of-wedlock. This kind of support also triggers the wrong incentives. It encourages teenagers to get pregnant and it discourages adults to marry. Teen-pregnancies and single parenthood both make it more difficult to escape poverty. Something similar happens with scholarships or affirmative action for poor students. These so-called anti-poverty policies actually incentivize students to enroll in education programs that are above their capabilities, forcing them to drop out of school at some point, and hence forcing them into poverty. And, finally, there’s the argument about welfare dependence: when people get money from the government they tend to settle in their role as receivers and fail to take their lives into their own hands. Again the wrong incentives.

This demand side of the anti-welfare argument suffers from two fatal shortcomings. First, the data don’t (always) support it. For example, it’s not true that generous unemployment insurance leads to higher unemployment (see here). And secondly, it’s classist in the sense that it offers an essentialist depreciation of the poor as a class. The poor, according to the argument, suffer from a series of typical deficiencies:

• shortsightedness (in the case of the person being tempted by child benefits and ignoring the long-term costs of teen pregnancy or single parenthood)
• a lack of self-judgment (in the case of the student accepting a scholarship and enrolling in a program beyond her capabilities) and
• a lack of self-control (in the case of the person settling in dependency).

This classism is not only generally incorrect and unfair, but it also obscures the many other causes of poverty. The poor aren’t always to blame for their own poverty, and the welfare state doesn’t force them to make themselves poor. Moreover, and even worse, this classism can be self-fulfilling.

Also, hasn’t the recent financial crisis shown that wealthy people, especially bankers, are equally short-sighted, self-deluded and lacking in self-control? And even if it’s true that those vices are more prominent among the poor (as is claimed here for example), wouldn’t that be a good argument for welfare rather than against it? If the poor can’t rationally take care of their own fate because they are self-deluded and unable to plan for the long term, shouldn’t the rest of us try to help them?

More here and here about the “culture of poverty” and the “undeserving poor”. More here about the causes of poverty.

Human Rights Maps (130): The Trail of Tears, the Story of Indian Removal

Indian removal, also called the Trail of Tears, was a nineteenth century policy of the government of the United States to relocate Native American tribes living east of the Mississippi River to lands west of the river. The Indian Removal Act was signed into law by President Andrew Jackson on May 26, 1830.

America’s policy had always been to allow Native Americans to remain east of the Mississippi as long as they remained “civilized” or assimilated themselves. Part of the expected assimilation was the abandonment of a hunting lifestyle in favor of an agricultural one. The latter didn’t require a lot of land and the loss of land would be compensated by the possibility of trade of agricultural goods with the white population. Needless to say, the land that would come available through this mechanism could be used by those of European descent.

In the words of Jefferson:

Thomas Jefferson

exchange [of] lands, which they have to spare and we want, for necessaries, which we have to spare and they want.

This policy of assimilation was accompanied by policies of land purchase – usually by treaty and sometimes under coercion – and land exchange: Native Americans would relinquish land in the east in exchange for equal or comparable land west of the Mississippi River.

In 1830, some of the “Five Civilized Tribes” — the Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, Seminole, and Cherokee — were still living east of the Mississippi and their lands were desired by whites, for economic reasons but also because of fears that the Natives would anew engage in wars. Governments of the various U.S. states wanted that all tribal lands within their boundaries be placed under state jurisdiction. The federal government assisted them by passing the Removal Act, which provided for the government to negotiate removal treaties with the various tribes. As a result, the five tribes were resettled in the new Indian Territory in modern-day Oklahoma and parts of Kansas. Some of them resisted, leading to new wars between the Natives and the settlers. Others suffered or died en route to their destinations, because of exposure, disease and starvation. An estimated 4,000 died. By 1837, 46,000 Native Americans from these southeastern states had been removed from their homelands thereby opening 25 million acres for settlement.

(source, click image to enlarge)

(source)

(source)

More on indigenous rights. More human rights maps.

Related Articles

• For and Against: Two Sides of the 1830s Indian Removal (prweb.com)
• Before the Tears: The Cherokees’ Proud Past (online.wsj.com)

What Are Human Rights? (26): The “Human” Part of Human Rights

The Pioneer plaques are a pair of gold-anodized aluminum plaques which were placed on board the 1972 Pioneer 10 and 1973 Pioneer 11 spacecraft, featuring a pictorial message, in case either Pioneer 10 or 11 are intercepted by extraterrestrial life. The plaques show the nude figures of a human male and female along with several symbols that are designed to provide information about the origin of the spacecraft.

Why do we need the qualifier “human” when we talk about human rights? Why is the word “rights” not enough? The obvious reason is that we want to broaden the class of protected persons to cover the whole of humanity. Traditionally, rights were accorded only to specific groups of persons, e.g. the nobility, guilds, citizens etc. The essence of human rights is their universality, which means that they are rights that belong to human beings whatever group they are part of and wherever they happen to live. People have certain rights for the simple reason that they are human; there’s no need for any other reason such as group affiliation, nationality, form of government, legal system etc.

Human rights can thus be seen as the end state of a long expansionary evolution during which ever broader groups of people acquired certain rights. However, the inclusiveness of human rights has often been countered by exclusionary movements. If some want to include a maximum number of people under the protection of rights, others have an interest in the continuation of rights violations. The latter have two options: challenge human rights directly (e.g. by claiming that they are western rights, godless rights etc.), or take the more indirect route: maintain the notion of human rights but at the same time exclude some categories of people from humanity.

still from the video of the beheading of Nicholas Berg

Many rights violations are explicitly or implicitly justified by reference to an absence of humanity on the part of the targets of those violations. The terror inflicted by Al-Qaida, the televised beheadings of innocent hostages etc. proves that these people are less than human. They are “animals” and can’t therefore claim that their “human” rights are respected when they are executed extra-judicially, eliminated by way of targeted killing, tortured, or arrested indefinitely in Guantanamo. Perhaps people don’t mean it literally when they say that terrorists are animals. Perhaps they do accept that they are human – they look human after all – but at least they are lesser humans, and hence not deserving the same rights as the rest of humanity. Perhaps they are merely barbarians, a separate and inferior class of humans.

The same attitude is evident in certain non-consequentialist justifications of capital punishment: the people who are executed are “the worst of the worst”, “animals” that have proven their inhumanity by way of their crimes. Also the native populations of colonized territories were considered to be non-human or at least lesser humans. There was a time when westerners weren’t sure that these people had a “soul”, a classic if currently somewhat outmoded distinguishing mark of humans. For those who believed they didn’t have a soul, their enslavement and murder was as acceptable as keeping and slaughtering animals. It took a Papal Bull to attempt to reign in the more extreme colonizers, without much success by the way.

homo sapiens

This raises the fundamental question: what is “human”, what does it mean to be human, what is humanity? Respect for human rights depends on the type of answer we can agree on. Ideally, we would like to have a broad definition that makes it difficult if not impossible to exclude large portions of homo sapiens from the category of humanity and to violate their rights as a result of this exclusion. Claiming that someone is human because of his or her “good behavior”, e.g. non-terrorist and non-murderous behavior, is not the right way forward. “Good behavior” is a moralistic notion that can be defined in lots of different ways. Hence we potentially exclude the large majority if not the totality of people from humanity if we go along that road.

Plato

On the other hand, a non-moralistic definition, for instance a naturalistic or biological one, isn’t necessarily better. Given the way in which we treat animals, it’s probably best to avoid a definition of humanity as a distinct animal species (in Plato’s phrase, the “featherless biped“). An animal species, however distinct from other species, still consists of animals that are in some sense like other animals belonging to other species. We don’t have moral rules that tell us to treat cats differently from dogs, so a definition of humanity as a distinct animal species is unlikely to yield moral rules that tell us to treat humans differently from cats or dogs.

However, biology can be a useful element in the definition of humanity since it’s biology that justifies some human rights. Some of the biological vulnerabilities that are distinctive of us featherless bipeds, and perhaps even some of the vulnerabilities we share with some non-human species (e.g. the ability to suffer) can be seen as reasons to respect certain human rights. (Although in the latter case the price to pay would be to grant the same rights to non-human species that have the same vulnerabilities; those human rights would then no longer be strictly “human” rights. But perhaps that’s a price we should be willing to pay).

However, for the reasons given above biology is hardly sufficient for the definition of humanity. I guess we also don’t want to use the concept of “soul” to define humanity, given its association with religion. Ideally, we want to be persuasive to the non-religious violators of human rights as well, and those won’t be swayed by soul talk (perhaps they won’t be swayed at all but at least we can try). “Human nature” is a discredited concept, dignity is excessively vague, and moral agency seems to be less typical of humanity than we once believed.

So what can we use? I’ve argued elsewhere that some values that are typical of and in certain cases exclusive to human beings – or homo sapiens – can be seen as adequate justifications of human rights, since these rights serve the realization of those values (examples of those values are the importance of thinking, of social and cultural life, of religion, of prosperity, peace etc.). Excluding certain specimen of homo sapiens from the category of humanity or “real humanity” is then an attack on values that are shared by all specimens; rights violators then unwillingly attack their own values.

Hannah Arendt

However, one problem remains. People’s rights aren’t necessarily safe, not even if we can settle the question of humanity and define the concept in such a way that it becomes difficult to exclude people from humanity. Humanity itself can be the problem. If human rights can be violated when a person’s humanity is denied, it’s also the case that a person who’s merely human runs the same risk. Hannah Arendt has often cited the plight of stateless persons before and after WWII, people whose nationality had been taken away from them by their racist, fascist or xenophobic governments, and who therefore only had their “humanity” left. In the best of cases, they were refugees in foreign countries where their rights were far from safe given that many countries only protected the rights of their own citizens.

The notion of humanity inherent in human rights is also incompatible with widespread feelings of partiality: most of us care more for our family and friends than for the rest of humanity, and some of us also care more for fellow-citizens. Somehow that’s inevitable: not only is it psychologically impossible to care for all the misery in the world – there’s simply too much of it – but it also seems morally right to care more for those who are closer.

In all those examples, we see that human rights have to come back to partiality. Inherent in human rights is universal inclusiveness, but at the same time we see that human rights can only be adequately protected when they are at the same time rights of very specific subgroups of humans: citizens, soldiers, family etc.

More on dehumanization and universality.

The Causes of Human Rights Violations (27): Harmful Moral Judgments

(source)

Human rights violations have many possible causes, but it’s reasonable to assume that a lot of them are caused by some of the moral convictions of the violators. For example:

• One of the reasons why people engage in female genital mutilation (FGM) is the fear that if women are left unmolested they won’t be able to restrain their sexuality.
• Discrimination of homosexuals is often based on the belief that homosexuality is immoral.
• The death penalty is believed to limit the occurrence of violent crime.
• Etc. etc.

The rational approach

It follows that if we want to stop rights violations, we’ll have to change people’s moral convictions. How do we do that? The standard answer is moral persuasion based on moral theory (in most cases, this will be some kind of intercultural dialogue). This is basically a philosophical enterprise. We argue that some things which people believe to be moral are in fact immoral. For example, we could use the Golden Rule to argue with men who support FGM that FGM is wrong (and the Golden Rule is present in all major traditions; Confucianism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism etc.). We could argue that the consequentialism used in the defense of capital punishment is in fact an instrumentalization of people and doesn’t take seriously the separateness of individuals.

You can already see the obvious difficulty here: this approach appeals to concepts that are strange and unfamiliar to many, and perhaps a bit too esoteric, and therefore also unconvincing. They may appeal to people who regularly engage in philosophical and moral discussions, but those people tend not to be practitioners of FGM, oppressors of homosexuals etc.

That is why another approach, which you could call the internal approach, is perhaps more successful: instead of using abstract philosophical reasoning, we can try to clarify people’s traditions to them. FGM is often believed to be a practice required by Islam, whereas in reality this is not the case. There’s nothing in the Koran about it. Authority figures within each culture can play a key role here. One limit of this approach is that many cultures don’t have the resources necessary for this kind of exegesis or reinterpretation, at least not in all cases of morality based rights violations.

One way to overcome this limitation is to dig for the “deep resources”. We can point to some very basic moral convictions that are globally shared but not translated in the same way into precise moral rules across different cultures. For example, killing is universally believed to be wrong, but different cultures provide different exceptions: some cultures still accept capital punishment, others still accept honor killings etc. One could argue that some exceptions aren’t really exceptions to the ground rule but in reality unacceptable violations of the ground rule.

The emotional approach

David Hume

The problem with all these approaches is that they are invariably based on a belief in rationality: it’s assumed that if you argue with people and explain stuff to them, they will change their harmful moral judgments. In practice, however, we see that many ingrained moral beliefs are very resistant to rational debate, even to internal debate within a tradition. One of the reasons for this resistance, according to moral psychology, is that moral judgment is not the result of reasoning but rather a “gut reaction” based on emotions such as empathy or disgust (which have perhaps biologically evolved). (This theory goes back to David Hume, who believed that moral reasons are “the slave of the passions”, and is compatible with the discovery that very young children and even primates have a sense of morality – see the work of Frans De Waal for instance).

Indeed, tests have shown that moral judgments are simply too fast to be reasoned judgments of specific cases based on sets of basic principles, rules of logic and facts, and that they take place in the emotional parts of the brain. This emotional take on morality also corresponds to the phenomenon of “moral dumbfounding” (Jonathan Haidt‘s phrase): when people are asked to explain why they believe something is wrong, they usually can’t come up with anything more than “I just know it’s wrong!”.

If all this is true, then reasoned arguments about morality are mostly post-hoc justifications for gut reactions and therefore not something that can change gut reactions. The rational approach described above is then a non-starter. However, I don’t think it has to be true, or at least not always. I believe moral psychology underestimates the role of debate and internal reflection, but I also think that in many cases and for many people it is true, unfortunately. And that fact limits the importance of enhanced debate as a tool to modify harmful moral judgments. But the same fact opens up another avenue for change. If moral judgments are reactions based on emotions, we can change judgments by changing emotions. And the claim that our moral emotions have evolved biologically doesn’t imply that they can’t change. The fact is that they change all the time. Slavery was believed to be moral, some centuries ago, and did not generally evoke emotions like disgust. If the moral approval of slavery was a gut reaction based on biologically evolved emotions, then either these emotions or the gut reaction to them has changed.

Richard Rorty

The most famous example of the emotional approach is Richard Rorty’s insistence on the importance of the telling of sentimental stories like “Uncle Tom’s cabin” or “Roots” etc. Such stories, but also non-narrative political art, make the audience sympathize with persons whose rights are violated because they invite the audience to imagine what it is like to be in the victim’s position.

The problem with the emotional approach is that it can just as easily be used to instill and fortify harmful moral judgments, or even immoral judgments.

Both emotional and rational processes are relevant to moral change, and when the rational processes turn out to be insufficient, as they undoubtedly are in many cases (especially the cases in which change is most urgent), we’ll have to turn to the emotional ones. (The emotional approach can be very useful in early internalization. Early childhood is probably the best time to try to change a society’s “gut reactions”).

The diversity approach

Apart from the rational or emotional approach, there’s also the diversity approach: put people in situations of moral or cultural diversity, and harmful moral judgments will, to some extent, disappear automatically. People’s morality does indeed change through widened contact with groups who have other moral opinions. And widened contact is typical of our age in which travel, migration, trade and political and economic interdependence are more common than ever. This automatic change can happen in several ways:

• In a setting of social diversity, people see that a certain practice which they believe is immoral doesn’t really have the disastrous consequences they feared it would have. For example, when you see that people who haven’t endured FGM usually don’t live sexually depraved lives, you may modify your moral judgment about FGM. Some moral beliefs are based on factual mistakes. If we point to the facts, or better let people experience the facts, they may adapt their mistaken moral judgments in light of those facts.
• When people live among other people who have radically different moral beliefs or practices, they can learn to accept these other people because they see that they are decent people, notwithstanding their erroneous moral beliefs or practices. This kind of experience doesn’t necessarily change people’s harmful moral judgments, but at least makes these people more tolerant and less inclined to persecute or oppress others.
• Tolerance is generally a wise option in diverse societies, from a selfish perspective: intolerance in a diverse society in which no single group is an outright majority can lead to strife and conflict, and even violence. So all groups in a such a society have an interest in being tolerant. Tolerance in itself does not cause people to reconsider their harmful moral judgments, but at least removes the sharp edges from those judgments. However, tolerance can, ultimately, produce change: if you treat others with respect they are more likely to think that you have a point. Hence, they’re more likely to be convinced by your arguments that their moral judgments are harmful.
• People can get used to things. Being exposed to different and seemingly immoral beliefs or practices can render people’s moral judgments less pronounced and therefore less dangerous.
• Also,

When we are required to confront things that bother us we sometimes (often?) reduce cognitive dissonance by changing our preferences so that we are no longer bothered.  Thus [we should] encourag[e] the intolerable to come forward, thereby forcing the intolerant to reduce cognitive dissonance by accepting what was formerly intolerable. (source)

Of course, this “contact-hypothesis” or “diversity-hypothesis” doesn’t explain all moral change. For example, it’s hard to argue that the abolition of slavery in the U.S. came about through increased social diversity.

Perhaps there are cases when we shouldn’t do anything. People can get more attached to harmful moral convictions when their group is faced with outsiders telling them how awful their convictions and practices are, especially when the group is colonized, or when they are a (recent) minority (e.g. immigrants). In order to avoid such a counter-reaction, it’s often best to leave people alone and hope for the automatic transformations brought about by life in diversity. However, that’s likely to be very risky is some cases. A lot of people can suffer while we wait for change. Also, one might as well argue that the use of force to change certain practices based on harmful moral judgments will, in time, also change those moral judgments: if people are forced to abandon FGM, maybe they’ll come to understand why FGM is wrong, over time.

More on the causes of human rights violations.

Related Articles

• Serotonin regulates our moral judgements (mindblog.dericbownds.net)
• Morality: Beyond intuition (newscientist.com)
• A scientific consensus on human morality (openparachute.wordpress.com)
• Frans de Waal on the origin of morality – and atheism (whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com)
• Ewwwwwwwww! (boston.com)
• Consensus Statement on Morality (wired.com)
• “Hieronymus Bosch, Animal Altruism and Bottom-Up Morality” and related posts (mockingbirdnyc.blogspot.com)
• Morals Without God? (opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com)
• Morality: Don’t be afraid – science can make us better (newscientist.com)

The Causes of Human Rights Violations (26): Are False Beliefs Useful For Human Rights?

I would say yes, but only some. For example, if we go around and successfully propagate the theory that wrongdoers will burn in hell, then this may have a beneficial effect because fear may inculcate morality (as all deterrence theories about crime have to assume). Similarly, false beliefs about the efficacy of law enforcement and the honesty of law enforcement officials also help.

Many false beliefs about high levels of risk can produce risk-averse behavior which in fact lowers the risk and makes it more likely that human rights are protected. For example, if people wrongly believe that their privacy is threatened in certain circumstances, they will take action to secure their privacy and make their privacy more secure than it already was. (More about human rights and risk here).

Human equality – “all men are created equal” – is obviously a false belief when taken as a fact, and in the quote it is taken as such. People are born with different abilities, talents, endowments, advantages etc. And yet we act as if the phrase is more than just a moral imperative. It seems like it’s easier to convince people to treat each other as equals when we say that they are equals.

Certain forms of self-deception also seem to be beneficial from the point of view of human rights:

Self-deception … may be psychologically or biologically programmed. The psychological evidence indicates that self-deceived individuals are happier than individuals who are not self-deceived. … Lack of self-deception, in fact, is a strong sign of depression. (The depressed are typically not self-deceived, except about their likelihood of escaping depression, which they underestimate.) Individuals who feel good about themselves, whether or not the facts merit this feeling, also tend to achieve more. They have more self-confidence, are more willing to take risks, and have an easier time commanding the loyalty of others. Self-deception also may protect against a tendency towards distraction. If individuals are geared towards a few major goals (such as food, status, and sex), self-deception may be an evolved defense mechanism against worries and distractions that might cause a loss of focus. Tyler Cowen (source)

We can claim that, to some extent, happiness, self-confidence, achievement and risk taking are indicators of and/or conditions for the use of human rights. Happy and confident people who are willing to take risks are more likely to engage in public discourse, to vote, to associate and to exercise their human rights in other ways. If that’s true, and if there’s a link between happiness, confidence and self-deception, then self-deception is another example of a falsehood that is beneficial to human rights.

I could go on, and I also could, very easily, list several counter-examples of falsehoods that are detrimental to human rights (take the 72 virgins for instance, or communism). The point I want to make is another one: should we actively promote certain false beliefs because of their beneficial outcomes?

Most of us believe that there is something like a benevolent lie and that lying is the right thing to do in certain circumstances. A strict rule-based morality is hard to find these days. Few would go along with Kant who said that we shouldn’t lie when a murderer asks us about the whereabouts of his intended victim (“fiat justitia et pereat mundus“). People tend to think that the expected consequences of actions should to some extent influence actions and determine, again to some extent, the morality of actions (“to some extent” because another common moral intuition tells us that good consequences don’t excuse all types of actions; most of us wouldn’t accept the horrible torture of a terrorist’s baby in order to find the location of his bomb).

On the other hand, we should ask ourselves if such an enterprise, even if we deem it morally sound, is practically stable. Some false beliefs have proven to be vulnerable to scientific inquiry and public reasoning (hell could be one example). It’s not a good idea to build the system of human rights on such a weak and uncertain basis. But perhaps we should do whatever we can to promote respect for human rights, even if it’s not certain that our tactic is sustainable.

And yet, actively promoting falsehoods is in direct opposition to one of the main justifications of human rights, namely epistemological advances (I stated here what I mean by that). We would therefore be introducing a dangerous inconsistency in the system of human rights. We can’t at the same time promote the use of falsehoods and argue that we need human rights to improve thinking and knowledge. So we are then forced to promote the use of falsehoods in secret – which is necessary anyway because people will not believe falsehoods if we tell them that they are falsehoods – but thereby we introduce another inconsistency: human rights are, after all, about publicity and openness.

(image source)

The Ethics of Human Rights (44): Human Rights Between Cosmopolitanism and Partiality

James Gillray’s famous political cartoon depicting Pitt and Napoleon carving up the world

Cosmopolitanism and partiality (or parochialism if you don’t mean it in a negative sense) are two very strong and yet contradictory moral intuitions. Let’s start with the former. Most of us have a strong sense of the arbitrariness of national borders. The accident of being born on one or the other side of a border – just like the accident of being born black or female – shouldn’t have any moral weight and shouldn’t determine one’s life prospects, as it unfortunately does.

As a result of this intuition, we believe that all people have the same moral worth, and this in turn convinces us that we shouldn’t condone the notion that the suffering or oppression of a fellow-citizen is more urgent or more important than the equal suffering of someone far away. There is something like humanity and all members of the human species have equal value. Being partial and favoring the alleviation of the suffering of some over the alleviation of the suffering of others, just doesn’t sound like the right thing to do. We should help people because they are human beings, not because they are compatriots. If I see a compatriot and a foreigner drowning in a pool I have no reason to save one before the other.

That’s the cosmopolitan intuition. On the other hand, there’s an equally strong intuition favoring some level of partiality. A father watching his daughter and her friend drown in a pool is allowed to save his daughter first if he can save only one. People care more about their friends and family than about strangers, and that’s completely uncontroversial. A bit less uncontroversial but perfectly common is the fact that citizens of a country – through their tax payments – typically provide relatively generous social security and welfare to their fellow-citizens and much less development aid, even though the beneficiaries of development aid are much less well off than many of the beneficiaries of the welfare state. Countries also impose immigration restrictions as a means to protect the prosperity of their reasonably well off citizenry, even if doing so means condemning foreigners to poverty. And finally, states generally enforce the other human rights of their citizens (poverty is a human right) much more rigorously than the rights of foreigners.

Without staking out my position regarding these two contradictory intuitions, I would argue that imposing strict immigration and aid restrictions means taking partiality too far and that we should have more migration, more global redistribution and more international intervention aimed at the protection of human rights. However, you can demand this and still favor some level of partiality over strict cosmopolitanism.

So, the conclusions people draw from the partiality intuition aren’t always morally defensible, but the intuition itself is. And the same is true for the cosmopolitan intuition. In what follows I will ignore those who draw extreme conclusions from either intuition because they tend thereby to ignore the other intuition. Extreme nationalists, chauvinist patriots, racists, “ethical egoists” à la Rand etc. on one side, and the much less numerous “uprooted” citizens of the world and the corporate or non-governmental “modern nomads” who ridicule origins and meaningful national affiliations on the other side. It’s generally not a good idea to deny strong moral intuitions, and certainly not in this case. So I’ll focus on those who recognize the two intuitions and somehow try to juggle them.

How do people do that? Some choose one as the most important and believe that the other can only be followed in addition. Others just accept this as a case of irreconcilable value pluralism and believe that we can’t solve the dilemma. And still others deny that there’s always a conflict between the two intuitions.

Let’s look at those who favor the priority of partiality, see what reasons they have, and how those who favor cosmopolitanism respond. Many of those who favor the partiality intuition agree that we can and should do more to help others in distant places, but they also claim that we shouldn’t do as much for the billions of poor and oppressed people in the world as we do for our local charity, our relatives and friends and even our compatriots. They believe that once we’ve provided a minimum of care and aid to humanity in general, we’re allowed to focus our attention on a partial group or a limited circle of people that have a special meaning to us. They may provide different reasons for this claim. Let’s look at a few and at the ways in which cosmopolitans can reply:

• Parochialists may argue that we need global institutions similar to national ones in order to provide the same amount and quality of care and aid to humanity as a whole. For example, you need a global welfare state to provide social security to everyone, and an effective global judiciary to punish gross violations of human rights in despotic regimes elsewhere in the world. We can call this the institutional objection to cosmopolitanism. Cosmopolitans could point to the progress in international criminal justice that has already been made, and could also argue that international redistribution of resources doesn’t necessarily require a global welfare state.
• Parochialist can defend their limited partiality by claiming that relatively small groups of people are best placed to help each other, and that long distance help isn’t the most effective. For example, local judiciaries are better placed to judge local human rights violations than “ivory towery” international institutions, and small groups of people are better able and more motivated to give each other material assistance. Closeness means that you can do more, and if you can do more you should do more. It also means that appeals to help will be better heard and be more persuasive. People far away simply don’t have the necessary information or motivation to help effectively. We can call this the effectiveness and motivational objection to cosmopolitanism. Cosmopolitans could reply that there’s a certain circularity in this argument and that globalization has eroded much of the salience of closeness. I can go to an internet site and donate money to a specific person thousands of miles away. And the modern media have made the suffering of such a person much more salient and motivating.
• Parochialists can argue that relatively small groups of people are not only best placed to help each other, but have a right to help each other and should be allowed to do so before the international humanitarians come barging in. This is akin to arguments about self-determination and cultural relativism. Caring about other places on the globe means wanting to intervene in those places in order to promote human rights and alleviate suffering. Such intervention may amount to cultural aggression. We can call this the cultural objection to cosmopolitanism. I’ve argued against cultural relativism elsewhere so I won’t repeat myself here.
• Parochialists may claim that partiality is the result of the importance of community membership. People want to belong to communities. This belonging is important for many reasons, notably for personal identity. In order to maintain a community, there have to be special duties towards fellow members. We can call this the community objection to cosmopolitanism. The cosmopolitan could argue that those special duties are different from the global duties imposed on us by human rights and humanitarianism and don’t diminish or replace those global duties.
• Parochialists can argue that global duties and a global morality are meaningless concepts. Perhaps a real understanding of what a moral duty is can only arise from the communal traditions and language of a particular culture. Morality is then culturally situated, embedded and determined. Moral impartiality and global justice are then oxymorons. This objection to cosmopolitanism is related to the cultural objection, and we can call it the meta-ethical objection. A cosmopolitan could reply that this is a rather strange conception of morality. It’s not uncommon for people to be influenced by moralities from far away. Hence, it’s wrong to claim that morality is completely embedded in culture.
• Parochialists can argue that cosmopolitanism and the need to treat everyone equally imply the imposition of excessive burdens on the wealthier members of humanity and would therefore be both unrealistic and unfair. Treating everyone equally would leave them with little for themselves and for their partial circle of care. None of them would still wear expensive watches or clothes, go on vacations or give their children an expensive education. We can call this the feasibility objection to cosmopolitanism. The cosmopolitan could answer in different ways. First, things aren’t entirely zero-sum as the parochialist seems to believe. For example, a well-educated child can more effectively help humanity. Hence, the two intuitions don’t have to cancel each other out and people don’t always have to choose. Love for humanity and love for certain people don’t necessarily clash. Secondly, even if it’s not feasible to help everyone, that doesn’t mean we have to be partial. The moral equality of all human beings may require that we select a random group of people to help, rather than our inner circle. Such a random choice would guarantee that we help strangers just as much as relatives, friends and compatriots, even though we can’t help everyone equally. The problem with such a random choice is that you need to know about people in order to be able to help (see the effectiveness objection above). The cosmopolitan could reply that random selection isn’t really necessary and that we can help a lot of people a lot more than we may think, without completely undermining our own wellbeing. It’s not absolutely clear that the world doesn’t hold enough resource to give everyone a decent life.

More about caring for what happens in the world, about charity, about arbitrariness and morality, and about moral dilemmas. More posts in this series are here.

Racism (17): Racism is Ghostbusting

There’s a huge assumption underlying talk by racist and anti-racists alike, namely that there are different races. That may be an uncontroversial assumption at first sight, but once you start to think about it things get muddled. Are there races? Not in the biological sense. Most genetic variation occurs within so-called racial groups, not between them.

Races are social constructs rather than a biological reality. Centuries of interbreeding have made it impossible to distinguish different human gene pools. Differences between groups of homo sapiens sapiens are purely cultural and constructed. The apparent skin, hair or other physical differences are indeed natural and biological but they are

• only skin deep, which means genetically irrelevant and certainly irrelevant for comparative merit or superiority,
• and they are gradual variations rather than discrete groupings (some “black” people are more similar to “white” people than to others from their “race”).

Groups are self-identifying and other-identifying entities, and this identification is based on beliefs concerning shared culture, ancestry and history and on the removal of the gradual nature of differences in appearances. They are constructs, the product of beliefs and traditions, a particular way that some people talk about themselves and others.

Racism is a specific way people talk about themselves and others. It isn’t a descriptive exercise about factual differences between the “biologies” of different groups; it’s a normative exercise in which groups form beliefs about the merits of other groups, and these other groups are constructed through talk about them. They are not “natural” entities, and their members aren’t scientifically identifiable. Superficial characteristics that form a continuum are given extraordinary importance (skin color determines merit) and the gradual continuum is believed to be ruptured. Individual differences are grouped into discrete race differences, and individuals are reduced to a constructed entity.

An example. Some say that racial disparities in the US are caused by a specific culture or mentality that is rampant in “black America”, namely a culture of crime, family breakdown and lack of educational aspiration and achievement. Black America, it’s claimed, “should do something about this”! But once you try to imagine this “black America”, you’ll find that it’s impossible. There is no black America, let alone a black culture. There are certain individuals who are situated at a certain point in a skin color spectrum who may or may not belong to “black America” and who may or may not exhibit certain mentalities. But that is all one can say. There’s no way one can plausibly claim that all or most members of “black America” exhibit certain mentalities, first because it’s impossible to unequivocally determine a threshold value of skin color which puts a person inside or outside “black America”, and second because with each randomly determined threshold value you’ll end up with a very diverse group of people exhibiting many different mentalities.

(source)

Does that mean that all talk about race is superfluous? If so, then the same is true about all talk about racism. But that’s not the case. The absence of a factual reality about race doesn’t remove the salience of race in the minds of racists. Hence, racism can have consequences even in the absence of races.

Members of socially constructed racialized identities suffer real harms, and laws might have to distinguish individuals according to their racialized identities in order to compensate for such harms. (source)

People continue to label each other and themselves according to racial categories, and to act accordingly. If we want to address the negative consequences of those labels and actions, we have no choice but to use the same labels. If people impose disadvantages on another group, based on the random delineation and construction of that group, countermeasures can’t help but work with the same group. Also, this group may find the concept of its race useful in its efforts to mobilize against racist measures. It just has to careful that it doesn’t start to believe the essentialist claptrap of its racist foes and that it remains conscious of the ghostlike nature of the concept of race.

Why Do We Need Human Rights? (20): Does Polarization Invalidate Freedom of Speech?

(Perhaps it’s best to read this post together with a previous one dealing with a similar topic).

One of the justifications of the right to free speech is an epistemological one: free, equal and massive participation in public discourse produces better decisions and opinions because it allows for

• the appearance of a large number of arguments and perspective and
• widespread criticism and examination of possible decisions and opinions.

Looking at possible decisions and opinions from a variety of perspectives and listening to a maximum number of critical arguments for and against, improves the quality of decisions and opinions. Freedom of speech is not, in theory, necessary for this improvement, since a single talented individual can, in isolation, imagine perspectives and counter-arguments. However, better than to trust the imagination and the limitless neutrality of an individual, it is better to use the resources of the crowd, and there is no better way to do that than to protect freedom of speech as an equal right for all. This idea has been called the marketplace of ideas.

An added advantage of involving the crowd in public discourse is that individuals will anticipate criticism and will therefore make better use of their imagination and improve their arguments even before entering the quality enhancing public discourse. (I’ve made a somewhat more profound version of this argument here).

(source)

Intuitively, one would expect that this marketplace of ideas, protected by freedom of speech, should result in some convergence: bad arguments and weakly argued opinions and decisions would lose support in public discourse, because they are publicly shown to be bad or weakly supported. The majority of people should then gravitate towards the better opinions. However, we often see the opposite, namely polarization, i.e. increasingly sharp divisions in society with groups having extreme opinions that are strongly held and that aren’t thoroughly examined. Often, the strength at which those opinions are held bears no relation to the strength of the arguments in favor of them. That’s the marketplace of ideas equivalent of harmful but popular products.

We then have to ask ourselves which of these two statements is true:

• Polarization is the result of an insufficient or inefficient functioning of freedom of speech and public discourse. In which case we can hold on to our epistemological justification of that right.
• Or polarization happens notwithstanding freedom of speech. In which case we seem to lose a possible justification for freedom of speech.

“Both” is probably the best answer. Freedom of speech facilitates public discourse and improves the quality of it, but only if it is used. If people decide not to use freedom of speech, and decide not to listen to opposing views or to argue with opponents, then this freedom can’t improve public discourse. Yet the absence of a proper use of this freedom does not invalidate the freedom itself. It does make it harder to justify this freedom as something beneficial. If many people don’t use freedom of speech to improve public discourse it becomes more difficult to argue that we should protect freedom of speech because it improves public discourse. And yet, this doesn’t undermine the theoretical or philosophical argument that freedom of speech can – in theory – improve public discourse. So the inherent desirability of free speech remains, even if the practical desirability is weak. (Note that there are other possible justifications for freedom of speech, some of which have nothing to do with the topic we’re discussing here).

Also, we often see that polarization is the result of an insufficient or inefficient functioning of freedom of speech and public discourse. Cass Sunstein, for example, wrote about the “law of group polarization” and showed that polarization is to some extent the result of exclusively intra-group deliberation (climate change deniers who discuss their views only with fellow-deniers tend to come out of these discussions with an even stronger version of their initial opinions).

And finally, we should be careful in our estimates of polarization. Some high profile cases of polarization can give the impression that polarization is rampant. But people disagree about the extent of polarization. It all depends what topic you’re dealing with, and things differ from country to country as well. Also, the political class can make polarization look more common than it is among the general population. If polarization isn’t as widespread as we think it is, then its impact on freedom of speech is also smaller.

More on polarization here and here.

Related Articles

• Limiting Free Speech (42): Reporting the Names of Suspects and Defendants (filipspagnoli.wordpress.com)
• FREEDOM OF SPEECH. Good or bad? Its a bitter sweet symphony… [Nick Dutch] (ecademy.com)
• Does Freedom of Speech Exist in Liberal Precincts? – Fox News Video – FoxNews.com (pumabydesign001.wordpress.com)

Nazism Between Utopia and Anti-Utopia

Adolf Hitler

On the one hand, Nazism was clearly a utopian movement. It wanted to create a perfect world for the pure Aryan race, devoid of degenerating forces. In a sense, it was idealistic. It had an ideal view of humanity and wanted to realize it, in part by way of the destruction of the less than ideal human beings and of those who were considered enemies of and dangerous to the better humans. Nazism had a peculiar kind of love for humanity. It’s love for humanity implied the destruction of those who abase, bring down and pollute it. Humanity was of course defined in a very particular way: true humans were the Aryans. The love for Aryans rather than hatred of Jews and other inferior beings was the prime motive. Love was what mattered, not hate, sadism, rancor or revenge. The future mattered, not our origins. People’s origins and race mattered only to the extent that racial mixing would threaten the future existence of the better race. And although there was blind and violent rage, the Nazi killings were in general rational, dutiful, professional, organized, and framed in terms of self-defense against degenerating forces.

On the other hand, as George Steiner has pointed out, Nazism was also a movement based on rancor towards Judaism and towards the impossible promise of unbearable and unattainable moral demands emanating from Judaism. Judaism presented to the world an impossible ideal, and we never hate anyone more than those who present us an impossible ideal. Nazism wanted to exterminate the Jews because Jews continuously confront humanity with its failings. The unbearable perfection caused the destruction of the emissaries of this perfection.

Steiner puts the following words in the mouth of Hitler (in “The Portage to San Cristobal of A.H.):

Related Articles

• Human Rights and Utopia (filipspagnoli.wordpress.com)
• Hitler exhibition in Berlin breaks taboos on how Germany embraced the Nazis (dailymail.co.uk)

The Causes of Poverty (40): A Culture of Poverty

It’s not uncommon to hear people claim that the poor shouldn’t blame “the system” for their poverty, but should look instead at their own values and behavior. Poor people, or at least some of them, show behavior that can be called a “culture of poverty“. They are the “undeserving poor“, the “stupid poor” who are poor because of their self-destructive lifestyle choices, their own stupid decisions, their self-chosen family situation, their involvement in crime, their drug use, their welfare dependency, their lack of effort in school, their lack of general discipline and their inability to plan for the long term.

Of course, we can all imagine some people who are “undeserving” in this sense, and some of us may know (of) some of them, but the adherents of the culture of poverty theory claim that such undeserving behavior is quite common among the poor and is the reason why the levels of poverty remain quite constant over time, even in some of the most wealthy and generous welfare states.

There are actually two versions of the culture of poverty theory, one more common than the other.

Innate moral deficiencies

Usually, the culture of poverty is believed to be a symptom of innate moral deficiencies among the poor. Or, euphemistically, the poor have a “unique value system”. It’s the depraved morality of the poor, and the self-destructive attitudes and behaviors that result from it, that keep them poor, period. All other possible explanations of poverty – discrimination, the membership theory of poverty, the bee sting theory, economic structures and processes, the business cycle etc. – go on the dump of politically correct academic claptrap.

This version of the culture of poverty theory is in essence a form of classism, akin to racism. Like a racist who claims that the depravation and inferiority of people of another race is entirely the fault of those people and should not be blamed on racism, adherents of this version of the culture of poverty theory claim that the poor are a separate group of people that make their own lives miserable, quite independently of external causes. The theory is also classist in the sense that it assumes one coherent culture among the poor, a culture that they simply “have” and that doesn’t contain major internal differences.

Acquired moral deficiencies

A more moderate but less common form of the theory maintains the moral opprobrium directed at poor people, but also sees some external reasons for their self-destructive values and behavior. The poor are still a separate group of people with a distinct culture, but this culture doesn’t result from some form of innate or genetically determined moral depravation that’s typical of the poor. The moral depravation that the adherents of this second version of the theory witness among the poor isn’t innate but is produced by generations of poverty. The poor classes and their offspring have responded to the ongoing burden of poverty by developing values and attitudes that perpetuate their poverty, and they socialize the next generations into these values and attitudes.

A homeless man in Paris

For example, decades of generational or hereditary poverty instill in people feelings of powerlessness, inferiority, victimhood and marginality, and these feelings in turn produce self-destructive values and behavior. They work as a kind of self-fulfilling prophecies. So, according to this second version of the theory, the self-destructive attitudes and behavior patterns that are the essence of the culture of poverty aren’t shaped by innate or genetic moral deficiencies. The observed moral deficiencies and the resulting self-destructive attitudes and behavior patterns are produced by internalization and socialization following decades of generational poverty.

The opposition to welfare inherent in the culture of poverty theory

Whatever the causes of self-destructive behavior – innate or genetic moral depravation on the one hand, or internalized self-destructive values on the other – the adherents of the culture of poverty theory claim that it’s only better behavior and values that can help people escape from poverty. The adherents of the “innate depravity” version of the theory will just have some more difficulties explaining how we can change the behavior and values of the poor.

And because it’s only better behavior that can help them, we shouldn’t give poor people money, unemployment benefits, healthcare insurance, child benefits etc. We don’t need a welfare state. Instead, the poor should be more diligent in their pursuit of a good education and a good job, they should lead healthier lives and have less children, especially out of wedlock etc. Some claim that money doesn’t matter for poverty (really!). The poor will do well even without money, as long as they change their value system. So, money doesn’t matter for poverty, like ice doesn’t matter for ice-skating, or something.

The fatalism inherent in the culture of poverty theory

According to the adherents of the culture of poverty theory, the poor aren’t just like all the rest of us minus the money. No, they are completely different, and just throwing money at them won’t change one iota. On the contrary, welfare benefits will just confirm them in their sense of victimhood and inferiority and will therefore perpetuate their destructive value system. However, closing the welfare tap and forcing them to pull themselves up by their bootstraps isn’t likely to work either, since they don’t have the discipline and the other values needed for that, and neither do they have the values necessary to get the education necessary to acquire a superior value system (were such an education provided to them).

Hence, even those adherents of the culture of poverty theory who don’t believe in innate moral deficiencies tend to conclude that poverty is permanent and that nothing can be done. Only those among the middle classes who have internalized the right values but for some reason or other become destitute (a widow for example, or a wounded soldier) will have the resources to recover. They might therefore also benefit from some form of welfare support. The generational poor, however, will remain poor even with tons of cash. Maybe the shock of near-starvation will help them, but also that is unlikely given their lack of moral resources and the difficulty of helping them to acquire those resources.

This is why the adherents of the culture of poverty theory claim that this theory explains the persistence of poverty much better than racism, discrimination, the inadequacies of the welfare state, the “creative destruction” of the business cycle etc.

A self-interested theory?

The culture of poverty theory, because it places the blame for poverty at the feet of the poor themselves, logically entails the claim that if those who are poor had acted differently they would not now be poor. And this entails yet another claim, namely that those who are not poor are so because of the way they acted. Hence, the wealthy deserve their riches. I can agree that they do to the extent that they work hard to earn their wealth. But wealth creation isn’t a solipsistic effort, it depends on cooperation. And it also depends on endowments such as talents, good and wealthy parents etc. and no one deserves any of those endowments. Many people who come into life with few endowments also work hard, and yet don’t achieve wealth.

I have the impression that the culture of poverty theory is just a tool for the wealthy to justify their own wealth and discredit the efforts to redistribute a part of that wealth in order to help the poor. I don’t mean that there are no individuals who are themselves the primary or even sole cause of their poverty, or that there aren’t any “cultural” explanations for poverty (“acting white” comes to mind). Neither do I underestimate the pernicious effects of a negative self-image or of welfare dependency. And I certainly don’t want to dispossess the wealthy simply because they can’t be said to deserve their wealth in any coherent sense of the word “deserve”. What I want to point out here is the tunnel vision of the culture of poverty theory, blocking out all other causes of poverty (mostly of a more structural nature), as well as the classism inherent in the theory, a classism that I believe is motivated by economic self-interest. And, finally, the fatalism of the theory is likely to be self-fulfilling.

More posts in this series are here.

Related Articles

• Poverty: what’s culture got to do with it? (chicagonow.com)
• You: ‘Culture of Poverty’ Makes a Comeback (nytimes.com)
• Understanding poverty: Clues from Chicago and conservatives (chicagonow.com)
• From LICC: Connecting with Culture Eradicating Poverty (bpdt.wordpress.com)
• Culture of Poverty (slog.thestranger.com)
• America’s Poor: Where Poverty Is Rising In New York (harlemworldblog.wordpress.com)
• Letters: It’s the poor who are being clobbered (guardian.co.uk)
• Nobel economics winner Christopher Pissarides warns deep welfare cuts risk spiralling poverty (telegraph.co.uk)

Migration and Human Rights (38): The Cultural Argument Against Open Borders

People have a legitimate interest in the preservation of their distinctive cultural identity, their language, customs, habits, institutions, traditions etc. Opening the borders and welcoming massive numbers of immigrants – something that I favor – is supposedly incompatible with this interest. Relatively wealthy countries in particular risk being overrun by masses of poorer migrants, often from very different cultures. Opening borders or even relaxing immigration restrictions in such countries means cultural suicide.

There are some hidden assumptions behind his argument:

Artwork depicting the first contact between the Gweagal Aborigines and Captain James Cook on the shores of the Kurnell Peninsula. The natives seem to be opposing the arrival of the colonizers.

• There is a uniform culture of the host country.
• The culture of immigrants is fundamentally different from the culture of the host country.
• Immigrants will be numerous and permanent enough to make a difference.
• Immigrants will, on balance, influence the hosts more than vice versa. In other words, they will generally fail to assimilate and they will be hostile to the host culture.
• Cultural change, occurring independently or following intercultural contact, is a bad thing.
• Cultural change in the host country would not occur independently, i.e. without the physical presence of immigrants in the territory of the host culture, or will do so less rapidly or extensively (e.g. cultural change through other causes such as globalization and intercultural exchange).
• Because people have an interest in preserving their cultural identity – to the extent that this identity exists – they also have an absolute right to preserve it.
• The right to preserve a cultural identity supposes a right to exclusive control over a part of the surface of the earth.
• The right to preserve a cultural identity always trumps the right to free movement of immigrants.

I would argue that none of these assumptions is correct. More here, here and here.

Related Articles

• Understanding Cultural Diversity for International Students (brighthub.com)
• The case for open borders (trueslant.com)
• One Way to Help Immigrants to Assimilate (immigration.change.org)
• A Human Right to Free Movement, Immigration, and the Common Ownership of the Earth (filipspagnoli.wordpress.com)
• White Britons ‘will be outnumbered’ by 2066 if immigration continues (dailymail.co.uk)
• The Social Security Argument Against Open Borders (filipspagnoli.wordpress.com)

The Most Absurd Human Rights Violations (64): The Commodification of Albinos

Albino boy in Tanzania

A lobby group says politicians are involved in the trade of human albino body parts in Africa and use them as charms to bring them good fortune.

Albino body parts are sold for hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars in parts of Africa. Coumba Makalou, president of the U.S.-based Salif Keita Global Foundation, a group that advocates for albinos‘ rights, says those who pay for body parts include rich businessmen and politicians looking to improve their political fortunes.

Makalou says body parts sell for as much as $2,000. At least 57 albinos have been killed in Tanzania and 14 in Burundi since 2007. Thousands of albinos are estimated to live in hiding.

The killings are fueled by superstitious beliefs that human albino body parts will bring wealth and success. (source)

More on commodification and organ trade here and here. More on dehumanization here. More absurd human rights violations here.

Related Articles

• Swaziland Tries to Protect Albinos From Witch Doctors (newser.com)
• Fighting the Limb Harvesters (thedailybeast.com)
• The Witch Doctors (andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com)
• Kenyan albino trafficker jailed (bbc.co.uk)

Infantilization, A Collection of Images

There’s something particularly reprehensible about infantilization. With all respect to children, but when you treat another adult like a child you actually say that she isn’t really an equal human being. Maybe you want to imply that she doesn’t have moral agency, that she’s not responsible for her actions, that she can or should be easily dominated (which is perhaps why some infantilizing images also have a sexual character, see below). Or maybe you imply that she is somewhat stupid or uneducated.

And I’m using the politically correct female pronoun for the other adult on purpose here, because it is usually women who are infantilized in our culture. Here are a few examples of female infantilization (I guess I don’t have to point to the sexual nature of most of them):

(source, complete with the thumb going to the mouth…)

(source)

(source)

Reille Hunter is posing with Kermit the Frog, Barney the Dinosaur, and Dora the Explorer

(source)

(source)

(source)

(source)

However, since it’s not just women who have to be kept down, it’s not just women who are infantilized either. There’s blacks of course:

(source)

(source)

(source)

And Native Americans who, it seems, needed to learn to wash themselves:

(source)

And the Chinese, maybe because they’re sooo small:

(source)

And, surprisingly, even the occasional white male:

(source)

And then there’s the opposite deviancy of pretending that children are adults, often female children, and often – again – in a sexual light:

(source unknown)

It’s all pretty sick.

More on the related subjects of paternalism, instrumentalization, objectification and animalization. More collections of images are here.

The Most Absurd Human Rights Violations (61): Honor Killing the Wrong People

An “honor killing” gang murdered a married couple in their home when they set fire to the wrong house. Abdullah Mohammed and wife Aysha [not in the image] suffocated after petrol was poured through their letterbox and set alight by the gang of young men. …

Four men were yesterday found guilty of murdering the husband and wife, including 21-year-old gang leader Hisamuddin Ibrahim who had intended to attack a man who was having an affair with his married sister. (source)

More on honor killings. More absurd human rights violations.

Related Articles

• Journalist: Women raped at Abu Ghraib were later ‘honor killed’ (angryindian.blogspot.com)
• Honor killings (thehill.com)
• Editorial: Only Horror in ‘Honor Killings’ (nytimes.com)

The Ethics of Human Rights (35): The Global Origins and Foundations of Human Rights

As Jacques Maritain put it when discussing the work on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

the nations should and could reach practical agreement on basic principles of human rights without achieving a consensus on their foundations. (source)

In other words, different countries and cultures in the world can – and could in 1948 – agree on the list of human rights as long as nobody asks them why, because they all will have different reasons. Even if we take the charitable view and assume that no one accepts the UDHR and human rights in general for opportunistic reasons (because it reduces international pressure and confers legitimacy for example), we still have to say which substantial reasons different nations, cultures or religions tend to use in order to justify the importance and acceptance of human rights. These reason will emanate from their own culture, religious texts, traditions and history.

To some extent, different cultures can and do find their own foundations of human rights. In this sense, human rights aren’t simply western rights which are imposed on or adopted by the rest of the world. Of course, some of these foundations will be universal because some values are universal in the sense that they belong to all cultures in the world. Homicide, for example, is universally considered to be immoral. In other cases, however, different cultures will find different reasons to justify human rights. For example, the right to free speech in the West will be viewed as justified by the necessity of counterbalancing government power, whereas in other cultures it may be viewed as something to promote prosperity or religious tolerance.

There’s a nice German term for this: human rights are said to be Begründungsoffen, their justification or foundation is open in the sense that they can be justified by different religious, cultural or intellectual traditions. That’s a big advantage. One can legitimately object to making universal claims grounded on such particularized foundations as Christianity, dignity, likeness of God etc. Muslims probably won’t accept human rights if they can only be justified by the teachings of Jesus. They can be justified in this way, and that’s a powerful justification for Christians, but they can also be justified in other ways. There isn’t one ultimate justification for human rights. All different justifications have a particular plausibility for a certain group of human beings, whether this group is a culture, a nation or a religion.

These different cultural paths to human rights, based on different cultural and historical resources, should, however, not discourage dialogue. If you’re convinced that different cultures can find their own way to human rights, you may conclude that intercultural dialogue isn’t necessary. It is necessary, because it’s utopian to believe that each culture will find its way to an identical set of human rights or an identical understanding of human rights. The moralities of all or most cultures or groups will condemn homicide, torture and slavery, but will perhaps provide different exceptions. And other values, such as free speech or freedom of religion may not find an equally strong justification in all cultures. It’s unlikely that the entire set of human rights as present in the Universal Declaration will find a strong and broad justification in all cultures. There’s still a lot of disagreement between cultures on the foundation, importance and extent of things such as discrimination, religious freedom etc.

That is why human rights treaties and declarations don’t just codify a universal moral consensus but also try to steer different moralities into a certain common direction. They want to change norms rather than just describe them. In other words, they formulate a justified morality rather than an existing morality. They want to create a consensus, not describe one. Creating a consensus is impossible if all cultures limit themselves to independently and solipsistically justifying human rights using only their own resources. Intercultural dialogue is necessary, and this dialogue will not just be the exchange of descriptions of different moralities but will try to go beyond existing moralities and formulate a consensus that is wider that the sum of existing norms. It will contain a set of norms that are based not solely on existing moralities but also on justified reasons. Not just on the sum of different moral codes but on the agreements of people discussing about good reasons for human rights, reasons that go beyond “my God/prophet/history/tradition says …”. This dialogue will result in a wider global agreement on the importance of human rights, an agreement that can ultimately result in greater respect for human rights.

For the benefit of those who don’t even believe in the first step – finding the sources of human rights in different cultures – here’s a sample of those sources:

• Christianity, and more generally the Abrahamic religions – so that includes Judaism and Islam – postulate the equality before God. All human beings are equal creatures of God, and created in the image of God. That notion bestows a sacredness to life that is not a function of national origin, status or affiliation. This is also apparent in the Judaic maxim that he who destroys one person has dealt a blow at the entire universe and he who saves one person has sustained the whole world.
• Protestantism has developed the freedom of conscience, the right and responsibility of every man to worship as his conscience dictates, to make his own judgments, uninhibited by a religious hierarchy.
• The Indian emperor Ashoka (third century BC) is famous for the Edicts of Ashoka, a collection of 33 inscriptions on the Pillars of Ashoka, as well as on boulders and cave walls found throughout India. These are social and moral precepts in favor of tolerance and individual freedom, the doing of good deeds, respect for others, generosity, fairness in the exercise of justice, caution and tolerance in the application of sentences, and kindness to prisoners. His was the first welfare state, providing free education and hospitals.
• Akbar, the great Mughal emperor in sixteenth century India, was famous for his religious tolerance.
• The Qur’an claims that there can be no compulsion in religion. Islam also knows the principle of equality and generosity: “Not one of you (truly) believes until he wishes for his brother what he wishes for himself” (An-Nawawī’s Forty Hadith). Caliph Omar, in the 7th century: “Only decide on the basis of proof, be kind to the weak so that they can express themselves freely and without fear, deal on an equal footing with litigants by trying to reconcile them”.
• Mencius, arguably the most famous Confucian after Confucius himself, has said: “Try your best to treat others as you would wish to be treated yourself, and you will find that this is the shortest way to benevolence”.
• Lao Tzu, a central figure in Taoism, has said: “Regard your neighbor’s gain as your own gain and your neighbor’s loss as your own loss”.
• In the Mahabharata, one of the major Sanskrit and Hindu epics, it says: “This is the sum of duty: Do naught unto others which would cause you pain if done to you”.
• Siddhartha (the birth name of the founder of Buddhism, Gautama Buddha) has said: “What is displeasing and disagreeable to me is displeasing and disagreeable to others too. How can I inflict upon another what is displeasing and disagreeable to me?” In Buddhism, the human perfection that is sometimes called “enlightenment” consists, in part, in discerning the transcendent truth that the Other is infinitely precious and in acting toward the Other in accord with that discernment, namely, with compassion (in the words of Thich Nhat Hanh).
• Baha’i, a monotheistic religion founded in nineteenth-century Persia, claims: “Lay not on any soul a load which ye would not wish to be laid upon you, and desire not for any one the things ye would not desire for yourselves. This is My best counsel unto you, did ye but observe it”.
• Jainism is an ancient religion of India that prescribes a path of non-violence towards all living beings: “One should treat all creatures in the world as one would like to be treated”.

Granted, not all of these moral precepts can be immediately translated into recognizable human rights, and many precepts underlying human rights are difficult to find here. Yet, we can claim that all these cultural sources can be used, to some extent, to justify human rights.

More posts in this series are here.

Related Articles

• Human Rights in History (3quarksdaily.com)

Why Do We Need Human Rights? (17): Freedom From Nature

From the beginning of human history, man has always tried to escape from natural necessity. Christianity views our earthly existence as a valley of tears and is generally hostile to nature, especially the nature within us. Genesis 1:26-27 states that man has been made to rule over nature, rather than the other way around. Philosophers also have long believed that the body is the prison of the mind, limiting the mind with its passions and natural needs.

Indeed, these needs are particularly powerful. We have to struggle continuously in order to preserve our biological organism, to feed the biological process of our body and to stay alive. During much of history and still today in many places in the world, this struggle has been a tough one and has left people without time or energy for anything else. But even the wealthy among us have to work to acquire the necessities of life, and this work has no end except death. And those very few who don’t have to work at all and can live off their capital, have to consume in order to survive. So even they are still tied to natural necessity. Necessity is always there, it’s just its weight that differs from person to person.

The current level of scientific, technological and economic development, resulting from centuries of intellectual progress, makes it possible for many of us to mimic the rentiers, to introduce some moments of leisure in between sessions of work and to focus on something else besides mere survival. Moreover, it has eliminated the harmful types of work or softened the harmful consequences of work. Division of labor has allowed us to gain efficiency through specialization and serialization so that each of us doesn’t have to produce all goods necessary for consumption by ourselves. However, no matter how technologically advanced and economically efficient we are, our needs always reaffirm themselves and we regularly have to give up leisure and return to work and consumption. Some of us have to return to work more rapidly than others, depending on the use our society can make of the available technologies.

Karl Marx

Nature is an eternal necessity, imposed on human and animals alike. During our entire existence, nature imposes certain very powerful and compelling needs on us, which we have to fulfill over and over again if we want to stay alive. By producing and consuming we serve nature and nature rules over us. This submission to nature is part of the human condition. Working is a kind of metabolism between man and nature, an eternal, repetitive circle prescribed by nature and biology, a circle of need, labor, production, consumption and then need again. The activities that are necessary in order to stay alive cannot be executed once and for all. Except for birth and death, there is no beginning or end. We always have to go back to work. Men daily remake their own life, in the words of Marx. And the fact that this is easy for some of us doesn’t change the fact that it is necessary.

This perpetual struggle to respond to the biological necessities of our bodies can be painful and a limit on our freedom. It can be tough in itself and when it is, it also limits our capacity to do other things. Nature is a yoke and a burden and we try to get rid of it or at least to soften it and to make it less painful through technology, cooperation etc. Indeed, it seems that we have managed to improve our production methods to such an extent that a certain level of freedom from nature has become possible, at least for those of us lucky enough to live in parts of the world where the use of this technology is affordable. The lucky ones stopped suffering the pain of toil and became able to do other things.

However, as long as we are biological beings – and even the luckiest among us still are – we will never be able to free ourselves completely from natural necessity and labor. All we can do is control it and soften it, make the yoke a bit less heavy and painful, and thereby dedicate ourselves to something “higher”, such as culture, science etc. We can put effort in the production of more durable goods, such as art, cities, homes and machines, some of which we can then use to achieve even more freedom from nature. We no longer have to enslave other people or oppress them, although we still do for other reasons. Other people do not have to carry our yoke together with their own. Slaves, the human instruments (slaves were called “instrumentum vocale”), can be replaced by mechanical and electronic instruments.

The relative ease of modern labor for some of us should not make us forget that we always remain natural beings bound by natural necessity. Necessity of the bearable kind is still necessity. Our artificial world is always situated on earth and in nature, and we will probably always remain natural beings. And I don’t believe genetic modification, nanotechnology, space travel or biotechnology will fundamentally change this. No matter how comfortable our lives are, we always run the risk of a sudden relapse into a tougher kind of natural necessity. And you don’t need an apocalyptic imagination to understand this; sickness, unemployment, a natural disaster or a producers’ strike will suffice. We may think we are free but small events can throw us back into full-fledged necessity.

So even the situation of the luckiest among us is potentially precarious. Nevertheless, on average human naturality has been substantially eroded during the last centuries, and this has often been described as progress, not without reason. Some even go further and claim that this progress in our mastery of natural necessity has contributed to the progress of humanity as a whole because life is supposed to become less oppressive and violent when poverty and natural necessity retreat to the background. Natural necessity indeed causes strife, conflict over scarce resources, slavery, corruption etc. but things are probably much more complicated that this and so it is fair to say that one should be careful with generalizations about the progress of humanity.

Hannah Arendt

One of the perhaps most depressing aspects of life in nature is the impossibility the create memory. It was Hannah Arendt who stressed that life in nature creates survival, if we are lucky, and even decent and comfortable survival, if we are very lucky, but not anything else. The products needed for survival can hardly be called creations because they don’t last. Obviously there can only be memory when something lasts. The permanence of the activity of labor is in strange contrast with the ephemeral nature of the things produced by this activity. The only thing that remains after the activity is done, is life itself. The products of the activity are destroyed by consumption (or decay if they aren’t consumed). The laboring person leaves nothing behind. This ephemeral nature or work (Arendt actually distinguished between “labor” and “work” but I’ll keep that for another time) is an insult to our craving for something permanent and durable, for history, posterity and memory.

That is why, in its struggle against nature, humanity does not only use technology or economic efficiency. It also uses culture. The word “culture” comes from the Latin verb “colere” of which “cultus” is a conjugation. “Colere” means to cultivate, to preserve, to maintain, to care etc. Culture, therefore, initially meant the use of nature, of the earth and of the instruments and technologies appropriate for this use (“to cultivate”). But culture has quickly acquired another, metaphorical sense in which it not only means the cultivation, maintenance and care of nature as a weapon in the struggle against necessity, but also the construction and preservation of durable things that run counter to the cyclical and ephemeral processes of nature, things that are not consumed and do not immediately disappear after being used because they are cared for (care is part of the meaning of culture). Hence the association between culture and art, art being the most durable of human activity (at least it used to be). Culture in the sense of durable human production means production of memory, and hence, derivatively, the cultivation of the mind on the basis of memory (study, schooling etc.).

Our durable world is a world of cultural products that do not need to be consumed. Contrary to the products of the economy, they do not have to be destroyed in order to fulfill their function. On the contrary, they exist because they have to last. And because they last they bestow durability and memory on the world. They are used and cared for rather than consumed, and often they are even useless. As such, they are another step in our liberation from nature, together with but in a way very different from science, technology and economic efficiency.

What’s the relevance of all this for human rights? An obvious and unoriginal point is that human rights need science and technology. In very primitive and prehistoric societies – with the possible exception of those few idyllic and probably imaginary societies where people didn’t have to work and could just pick the fruits from the trees – many human rights were irrelevant in the sense that they couldn’t even arise as an issue: what’s the point of free speech when you’re neck-deep in the struggle for survival? Only rights such as the right to life, to physical security and a few others could even make sense in such societies because the prerequisite for other human rights – leisure for example – simply did not exist. And even these basic rights couldn’t be conceptualized because the people who would have to do the conceptualizing simply didn’t have the time for it.

Another, perhaps more original point is that human rights don’t only require science and the technological applications of science, but culture as well. Cultural products, such as a Constitution – a highly “cultivated” durable product – and permanent government institutions are also prerequisite for human rights. Societies that have neither a scientific mastery of nature, nor a cultural mastery, can’t be rights based societies: they can’t be because they can’t protect human rights, and they can’t protect them because they are inconceivable to them.

This is related to the distinction between negative and positive definitions of human rights. Rights can be viewed as negative, which means that they merely require omissions or forbearance. Given the discussion above, it’s clear that this view is incomplete. Under a negative conception of human rights, a meaningful enjoyment of these rights is frustrated by inadequacies in the scientific and cultural mastery of nature. (I deliberately ignore the ecological dimension of human rights; I’ll talk about that problem another time). In other words, rather than saying that people have a specific human right, we should perhaps say that they have a right to access the means necessary for the enjoyment of that right.

Something on a related topic, namely Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, is here. Some more stuff on the link between freedom and natural necessity is here and here.

Iconic Images of Human Rights Violations (53): Last Public Execution in the US

(source, source, source, photos by Perry Ryan, author of The Last Public Execution in America)

Rainey Bethea’s public execution on Aug. 15, 1936, in Owensboro, Kentucky. The era of public executions in the United States sputtered to a halt after 20,000 turned out for the hanging of Bethea, a black man convicted of raping and killing a elderly white woman. It was also the first first hanging supervised by a woman.

Because the original warrant specified that the hanging would take place in the courthouse yard, where the county, at significant expense, had recently planted new shrubs and flowers, a second death warrant moved the location of the hanging from the courthouse yard to an empty lot near the county garage. The executioner was drunk.

Rainey Bethea

Timothy McVeigh requested in 2001 that his execution be televised, but this was denied. An internet company also sued for the rights to broadcast it.

More on capital punishment. More iconic images of human rights violations.

The Ethics of Human Rights (34): Human Rights, Moral Universals, and Cultural Relativism

The universality of human rights is arguably their most important attribute. I won’t repeat my arguments in favor of this claim (if you’re interested, go here, here, here and here). “Universality” here obviously means something like “universal value”, “universal importance”, “universal moral claims” or “universal desirability”, not factual universality. Human rights aren’t universally protected. If they were, we would hardly need them. I also won’t repeat what I’ve said before on the means to go from merely moral or legal universality to actual universality (some posts here, here and here).

Now, I’ve gone so far as to claim that human rights not only should be universal values (for reasons specified elsewhere), but in fact are universal values (see here and here for instance). The fact that they are regularly violated doesn’t change the equally salient fact that they are universally recognized as important moral goals.

However, claims of the existence of so-called moral universals, and especially claims that some moral values should be universals, immediately provoke the counter-claim of cultural imperialism. Supposedly, different cultures have developed their own moral codes, adapted to their own identity, circumstances and history, and moral diversity is a more important goal than moral universals. This counter-claim is often categorized under the heading of cultural relativism.

Personally, I believe that moral diversity and cultural identity are indeed important values, but also that moral diversity and relativism can be and often are used as a justification for rights violations that are contingently rather than culturally motivated (see here, here and here for my criticism of cultural relativism). And anyway: the existence or the promotion of moral universals in some areas of life doesn’t have to exclude moral diversity in other areas. It’s not because some values are or should be moral universals that all other values, cultures or identities are in danger of disappearing altogether. We can have both: moral universals and moral diversity. And both can reinforce each other if we manage to argue convincingly that some moral universals aren’t just export products, or the result of colonialism or of the omnipresence of the western type of state. Indeed, I believe that globalization, assimilation, colonialism, trade and universality of the modern nation state all contributed to the existence of moral universals, but also that some universals are the product of a global convergence of genuinely local moral rules. (I’ll try in a future post to give an overview of the origins of human rights in different cultures of the world). If we can show that all or most cultures in the world have independently arrived at the same or similar moral rules, then we have moral universals that are build on respect for moral diversity and not just on the export and imposition of one morality on the rest of the world.

However, that’s extremely difficult to prove. It’s relatively easy to show that some moral values are in fact moral universals, but it’s much harder to show why they are moral universals: are they because they have been imposed through colonization, promoted through trade etc. or because they have grown “organically” from within the different cultures that have converging rules? Still, what we can argue is that when there are universals, the burden of proof is on those wanting to argue that they are not genuine but the result of external imposition. The existence of universals is a prima facie argument for their “genuineness”. Also, what’s genuine? Even values that have been imposed or imported a long time ago can have become the genuine morality of the people concerned.

Some evidence of the actual existence of moral universals comes from a paper about a comparative law investigation into the universality of the prohibition of homicide. Such a prohibition is an indication of the moral value of the right to life. The paper shows that this prohibition is in fact universal. Of course, the paper focuses on the law, and the law is at best an imperfect witness of morality (Marx would argue that it is rather an instrument of immorality). But the law is easier to find than morality. And – again – the burden of proof is on the opposing side: if the law indicates universality – as it does in this case and in many others – then it’s up to those claiming non-universality to give counter-evidence.

More posts in this series are here.

Sexism, A Collection of Images (3)

(Previous collections of sexist images are here and here).

(source)

More on stereotypes, prejudice, feminism, women’s rights and gender discrimination. More collections of images.

Related Articles

• The Nation: Sexism Creeps Up Again For Kagan (npr.org)
• CU’Independent : Sexism [Image] (scaryideas.com)
• Sexism in the Workplace Hurts, New Study Finds (livescience.com)

Religion and Human Rights (27): Muslim Headscarves – Between Religious Liberty and Gender Discrimination, Ctd.

Once more on the issue of Muslim headscarves (see here and here for previous posts), because the controversy doesn’t seem to be going away. Belgium, my home country, has the dubious honor of being the first western country outlawing the burqa. Other countries like France seem set to follow, or have already interpreted existing laws on masks or police checks creatively in order to impose fines on women wearing a veil. Forcing Muslim women to show their faces is no longer a fringe xenophobic fantasy.

First of all, and before you get upset that a human rights activist such as me doesn’t take a more outspoken position against the veil, let me stress that I do worry a lot about gender discrimination (as regular readers can attest). I do believe that the veil – especially the complete face and body veil such as the burqa or the niqab – is an expression of a culture in which equal rights for women are – to put it mildly – not a priority. That doesn’t mean that every woman who wears a veil does so because of coercion or discrimination, or because she doesn’t have a right not to. Some do, but others wear it voluntarily, although the degree of “voluntariness” is something that’s always difficult to establish given the subtle effects of social pressure, tradition and education that are often difficult to notice – even for the self. However, it can be argued that also those women who wear the veil in a truly voluntary way – if truly voluntary can be something real, which I hope – contribute to an ideology of female inferiority and make it harder for other women who would like to remove the veil to do so.

Moreover, there can be different motives for wearing the veil voluntarily. Women can believe that this is a requirement of their religion (the Quran only seems to require “modest dress”), and that disregard of such requirements amounts to sin. Or women can decide to wear the veil for strategic reasons. They may believe – correctly I think – that wearing the veil enhances their freedom, for example their freedom of movement. One can argue that this strategic use of the veil isn’t truly voluntary, but that doesn’t make it wrong. I’m personally open to the argument that a prohibition of the veil can result in de facto house arrest for some women: their husbands may decide to force them to stay at home if they aren’t allowed to wear the veil in public. Now you might say that one evil doesn’t excuse another, but there is something called a lesser evil (I’ve made a similar point about sweatshops not so long ago). If wearing the veil allows women to venture outside of the home that is undoubtedly a positive side effect of something that in general may be a moral negative.

What about the arguments in favor of prohibition? Some of them are very weak indeed. It’s not because the veil makes some people uncomfortable that it should be prohibited. It’s not difficult to imagine the horror of the place where everything that makes someone uncomfortable is outlawed. Security risks also aren’t a very strong reason for a general ban, since women can be required to lift their veil in specific circumstances. The argument that modern democracies should be “secular” and that this requires the banning of religious symbols in public is indefensible in view of the human right to freedom of religion.

Some claim that the ban on the burqa is just one of many existing and undisputed restrictions on how people can dress in public: people can’t walk naked in the streets; or wear stockings on their heads inside bank buildings etc. But this confuses types of dress that are not religiously inspired with types that are. Religion does receive special protection in the system of human rights, and this special protection should be recognized if human rights are to be respected. Conflating religious dress with dress in general does not allow you to fully respect human rights. That doesn’t mean that the burqa can’t be banned in specific circumstances where there’s a good reason to do so – in Court rooms, in schools etc. But these exceptions don’t justify banning it altogether. (The justification for a ban in Court rooms is obvious and doesn’t need spelling out. A ban in schools – for both teachers and pupils – is justified on the grounds of the need for adequate education. In addition, there’s a phenomenon of peer pressure in some schools, where girls who wear the veil force others to comply).

How about the argument based on gender equality? That seems a lot stronger at first sight. But isn’t it true that gender equality wouldn’t be advanced a whole lot by a burqa ban? (Maybe a ban would even be bad for gender equality, if it forces women to stay home). And isn’t it also true that other measures in favor of gender equality, such as better education, stricter laws and better enforcement on domestic violence etc., would prove much more effective?

There’s another argument in favor of a ban, and it’s a pretty strong one, although you hardly ever hear it. A democratic community requires a common citizenship and a public space in which people can deliberate freely on their preferred policies. If democracy was just an exercise in voting, it would be compatible with the veil. It would even be compatible with complete solipsism and individuals never meeting each other. But it’s more than that. The burqa and niqab are – to some extent – incompatible with deliberation. One could argue that this only justifies a partial ban, namely a ban in places where deliberation occurs, and when it occurs. Just like the partial ban in Court rooms is justified. The question is of course whether proponents of the veil can accommodate a partial ban. Perhaps their religious belief requires the veil in all circumstances. However, we are allowed to require some level of flexibility of them. Rights often come into conflict with one another (take for example the right to free speech of the journalist wishing to expose the private life of a politician). And that’s the case here: the right to democratic government and the right to religious liberty should be balanced against each other, and maybe the former should take precedence. After all, not everything is justified on the grounds of religious liberty: for example, no one in the West argues that mutilation as a punishment for crime is justified, not even when it is prescribed by a religion.

More on headscarves, gender equality, dress codes, migration and religious liberty.

Human Rights Video (16): Female Genital Mutilation

More on FGM. More human rights videos here.

Why Do Countries Become/Remain Democracies? Or Don’t? (12): Arab Democracy, an Oxymoron?

When people look for reasons why countries haven’t made the transition from authoritarian government to democracy, they often mention economic development or culture, or both. And culture usually means religion more specifically. And religion usually means Islam. Now it’s true that if you look at the largest Muslim region, the Arab world (roughly North Africa plus the Arab Peninsula), you won’t find a single democracy. You can check the most common democracy indexes, Freedom House and Polity. That’s an anomaly: no other large region in the world is similarly devoid of democratic governance.

The question is of course: why? In our post-9/11 world the obvious answer is Islam, which is believed to be a religion that is particularly incompatible with democratic principles such as separation of state and church, pluralism, rule of law, human rights etc. Some even say that there will never be democracies in the Arab world as long as Islam remains an important force.

However, sometimes the obvious answer is also the wrong one. Some Muslim countries outside the Arab world have reasonably well developed democratic systems of government (Albania, Indonesia, Malaysia, Senegal, Turkey etc.) and are doing much better than some non-Muslim dictatorships out there.

Larry Diamond

But then, if it’s not religion, what is the reason for the absence of democracy in the Arab world? In an interesting new paper, Larry Diamond has a look at some possible reasons. He focuses on the so-called resource-curse and petro-politics and the correlated lack of accountability (accountability only emerges in countries that have to tax their people), but I think he’s wrong there. Lack of economic development could be a cause, but he rightly dismisses it. If you compare economic development in Arab and non-Arab countries, you see that per capita GDP of Kuwait is on the same level as Norway, Bahrain compares to France, and Saudi Arabia is on a par with South Korea. Conversely, you’ll be able to find non-Arab democracies that are much less developed than the average Arab country.

A more promising explanation of enduring Arab authoritarianism is FOTA: fear of the alternative. moderate opposition groups in Arab countries tend to accept their authoritarian governments. Their dislike of “modern pharaohs” is topped by their dislike of radical Islamist groups that could profit from free elections. Rather than the principle “one person, one vote, one time” followed by theocracy, they settle for the relatively mild yoke of secular Arab dictatorship. Something similar happened before in Latin America, when the feared alternative was communist rule.

Another explanation for the lack of Arab democracy is the large proportion of GDP spent on the security apparatus, and the relative efficiency of Arab security forces. This is probably linked to the support these countries receive from the West, which is another reason for their longevity. And finally, the Arab-Israeli conflict is a very convenient diversion: it allows public frustration to discharge outwards, without internal consequences.

As you can see, none of these causes condemn Arab countries to dictatorship. Compared to religion, these are things that can be changed quite easily, if the will is there. The FOTA is self-fulfilling: it’s likely that radical Islamist movements are encouraged by authoritarian rule, as much as they are restrained by it. So better give it up. And the West could use its leverage, resulting from decades of support, to push for reforms.

More posts in this series.

Political Jokes & Funny Quotes (82): Islamic Modest Dress

More on Islamic dress code here, here, and here. More on the headscarf in particular here and here. More jokes on Islam here and here. More on women’s rights. More jokes here.

Religion and Human Rights (25): The Eurabia Falacy

If immigration isn’t opposed because of bogus economic reasons (“importing poverty” and unfair wage competition – see also here ) or bogus law and order reasons (the criminal immigrant stereotype), it is on the grounds of equally bogus cultural reasons. Excessive immigration is said to fundamentally change the culture of the destination region: Europe will turn into Eurabia, just like the Protestant U.S. were once believed to be on the verge of a Catholic takeover following Irish and Southern European immigration.

But even limited immigration will not save us given the supposed “high fertility rates” of immigrants:

That Muslims are grinding out babies ready to take over Europe is an outdated canard. The Eurabia authors worry about declining European fertility, but in fact the Muslim decline is much sharper. In 1970, women in Algeria and Tunisia averaged about seven children each. Now, according to the CIA World Factbook, they average fewer than 1.8. The French rate is almost exactly two. Parisian demographers Youssef Courbage and Emmanuel Todd demonstrate in their 2007 book “Le Rendez-vous des Civilisations” that after most men in a country become literate, eventually a majority of women becomes literate, and then fertility plunges. This demographic transition has now happened in most Muslim states. At last count Algerian women living in France averaged an estimated 2.57 children, or only slightly above the French rate. Moreover, the fertility rate of north African women in France has been falling since 1981. Eurabia is not a demographic prospect. …

The other problem with forecasting numbers of European Muslims in 2100 is the presumption that sixth-generation European Muslims will still be a foreign body here: Islam as a bacillus that even secular former Muslims carry around, forever dangerous. This ignores the transition affecting many nominal Muslims in France. …

Although here and there Muslims have made France a little more north African or Islamic, the influence seems to be more the other way: Muslim immigrants are being infected by Frenchness. (source)

Remember also that people in the 1960s were saying that the higher birthrates among Catholics would mean a swift “Catholic takeover” of Europe and the US:

In the United States the lower birth rate of the Anglo-Saxons has lessened their economic and political power; and the higher birth rate of Roman Catholic families suggest that by the year 2000 the Roman Catholic Church will be the dominant force in national as well as in municipal or state governments. A similar process is helping restore Catholicism in France, Switzerland, and Germany; the lands of Voltaire, Calvin, and Luther may soon return to the papal fold. (source)

Now, of course I’m not insensitive to the plight of culture. A national or regional culture is an important source of identity and wellbeing, and I believe the whole world gains when even a small culture is allowed to survive. I have an older post here lambasting the demographic aggression of China in Tibet. My point is not that immigration can never be a cultural problem, but that the size of the problem is systematically inflated, possibly as a cover for outright xenophobia. In this respect, the “problem” resembles the two other “problems” caused by immigration: more poverty and more crime.

More on immigration, islamophobia and fertility rates.

Gender Discrimination (22): Gendercide

The Economist has a front page story this week on “gendercide”, the millions of girls missing in the world, especially in India and China. Perhaps as many as 100 million girls have disappeared in the last decades because of

• selective abortions encouraged by new medical technology (ultrasounds and fertility technology)
• childhood neglect of girls (nutritional, educational neglect and neglect in health care)
• prejudice, preference for male offspring and
• population policies such as the “one child policy” in China.

I’ve written about this several times before (see here, here and here), and even called it a “boomerang human rights violation“: the skewed sex ratios that result from gendercide (in some areas of China, 130 boys are being born for every 100 girls) are coming back to haunt the men that are responsible (although many mothers probably aren’t without fault either). Because of their relative scarcity, women have found an unlikely source of power. They have a competitive advantage in the marriage market, and can demand more in marriage negotiations, or at least be more selective when choosing a mate.

Causes

In my view, the word “gendercide” is somewhat overwrought because, contrary to genocide, the word that inspired the neologism of gendercide, there’s no centralized plan to exterminate women. Femicide would be a better term since it’s obviously only one of two genders that’s targeted, but it still sounds like a government organized campaign of extermination. Gendercide is the result of a combination of causes:

• individual choices based on
• plain prejudice against girls
• cultural and legal traditions, or
• economic incentives that have been formed by historical prejudice.

Perhaps girls still need a dowry, and poor parents may find it difficult to save enough and hence prefer a boy. Or perhaps they prefer a boy because the law of their country or tribe – inspired by age-old prejudice – says that only boys can inherit land or the family business. Again, the parents may prefer a boy for this reason, not because they dislike girls. Or perhaps tradition holds that girls marry off into their husbands families, and parents simply want to be sure to have someone in their home to care for them when they are old (“raising a daughter is like watering your neighbor’s garden”, is a Hindu saying).

Consequences

The consequences of gendercide are mixed. It’s obviously horrible to the girls that are aborted or neglected to death. But, as in the “boomerang” case cited above, gendercide may ultimately empower women. However, the skewed sex ratios also spell trouble: the presence of armies of men who can’t find wives and have children (“bare branches” or “guanggun” they are called in China) may result in more sexual violence, depression, suicide, human trafficking etc. It’s estimated that in 10 years time, one in five young Chinese men won’t be able to find a bride. On the other hand, a shortage of women will encourage immigration, and immigration may help some women escape poverty, and perhaps will also result in more intercultural tolerance.

Solutions

Economic development won’t stop it. In China and India, the regions with the worst sex ratios are wealthy ones, with educated populations. Even in some population strata in the U.S. sex ratios are skewed. When people escape poverty, fertility rates drop, and when families have fewer children, the need to select for sex only becomes more important in order to realize their son preference. In poor societies with high fertility rates, families are almost destined to have a boy at some point. Female children will suffer relative neglect and may die more often and more rapidly (skewing the sex ratios), but selective abortions aren’t much of a risk: families don’t really feel the need to limit the number of children (on the contrary often, because children are a workforce), and ultrasound technology for sex determination of fetuses isn’t as readily available as in rich countries or regions. When families want few children – as they do in more developed regions – or are forced by the government to limit their number of children (as in China), they will abort female fetuses in pursuit of a son.

Ultimately, only a cultural change will help. The son preference has to die out. Education probably will help, as it always does. Ending pernicious policies such as the one child policy will also help, but then overpopulation hysterics will have to be dealt with. This policy didn’t help stop population growth anyway. Other East Asian countries reduced population pressure as much as China without brutal policies.

Old customs and discriminating laws should also be abolished. Think of the dowry system, or inheritance rights. Stigmatizing abortion, especially sex selective abortion, will also help.

More on gender discrimination, on prejudice, on India, and on China.

Political Jokes & Funny Quotes (77): National Stereotypes

(source)

Of course, clichés about national identities and cultural stereotypes can be good fun, but they can become prejudice and that’s when we may find ourselves here or here. More intelligent information on prejudice (including Allport’s scale) is here. Other political jokes are here.

The Most Absurd Human Rights Violations (27): Immigration Control and Cultural Purity

From the Wall Street Journal:

When Jordan Peimer booked an Argentine band that fuses Jewish Klezmer music with tango, he thought he had the perfect act to headline his “Fiesta Hanukkah” concert.

“It is hard to imagine any band more fitting than Orquesta Kef,” says Mr. Peimer, the program’s director at the Skirball Cultural Center here. The event was designed to attract a Jewish audience and the city’s burgeoning Hispanic community.

That was before the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services weighed in with some cultural commentary of its own. The band couldn’t travel to the U.S., the agency ruled, because it didn’t satisfy a “culturally unique” requirement for a performer visa called P-3.

“The evidence repeatedly suggests the group performs a hybrid or fusion style of music…[which] cannot be considered culturally unique to one particular country, nation, society, class, ethnicity, religion, tribe or other group of persons,” read the denial.

More about the freedom of movement. More absurd human rights violations.

Political Jokes & Funny Quotes (72): Islamophobia

A man is out walking in New York when he sees a girl being savaged by a fierce dog. He fights off the dog by beating about the head with a stick and saves the girl’s life.

The girl’s mother rushes over to him: “Thank you, thank you, you are a hero, tomorrow all the newspapers will have headlines about Brave New Yorker Saves the Life of Young Girl.”

“But I’m not a New Yorker,” the man says.

“Oh, then it will say in all the newspapers Brave American Saves Life of Young Girl,” says the mother.

“But I’m not an American,” the man says.

“What are you then?” asks the mother.

“I’m an Iranian,” the man says.

The next day he sees the newspaper headlines: Islamic Extremist Kills American Dog…

Read more on islamophobia here. Or more about Iran, or more political jokes.

The Causes of Human Rights Violations (16)

We usually distinguish between three different origins of human rights violations:

• The state. States commit rights violations for different reasons. Rulers may believe that such violations are necessary in order to maintain power, undermine or destroy the opposition, and impose some world view or economic organization of society. Or they may think that some types of violations are necessary evils when faced with certain risks. For example, torture or indefinite detention can appear to be a reasonable price to pay in order to reduce the risk of terrorism. States can also violate human rights unintentionally: lawmakers can draft a legal system that unnecessarily encroaches on private freedom (e.g. the “nanny state“). And, finally, a state can violate rights, not – as in the previous cases – by doing something it shouldn’t do, but by failing to do what it should do: a state that doesn’t provide an efficient judiciary or police force will be unable to protect the rights of its citizens and will be an accessory to rights violations.
• Selfishness. In the case of economic human rights – such as the right not to suffer poverty – it’s often greed, lack of compassion or generosity, or the absence of sufficient and adequate aid and intervention that causes rights violations. Selfishness can cause both individuals and states to violate rights. States, for example, can uphold international trade structure or protectionist legal systems that favor the local economy at the expense of relatively poor exporters elsewhere.
• Culture. Some say that certain elements of cultures and religions lead to practices that violate human rights. And then usually we get a mention of Islam, Shari’a, muslim misogyny etc. Here as well, we see that both states and individuals can use culture as a reason to violate rights.

Regarding the last point, there’s an interesting paper here (or here) claiming that it’s not Islam but oil that causes gender discrimination in Muslim countries.

Oil production reduces the number of women in the labor force, which in turn reduces their political influence. As a result, oil-producing states are left with atypically strong patriarchal norms, laws, and political institutions. I support this argument with global data on oil production, female work patterns, and female political representation, and by comparing oil-rich Algeria to oil-poor Morocco and Tunisia. Michael Ross

Oil production and export crowd out other exports, and hence artificially restrict the manufacturing sector. Compared to oil production, manufacturing uses relatively large numbers of low wage workers, which is why manufacturing has always and everywhere been a booster for female labor participation. Female labor participation in turn has always and everywhere promoted female political representation and women’s rights. The paper shows that, in the Middle East, countries without much oil (like Morocco and Tunisia) do relatively well on gender equality, compared to oil-rich countries. The same is true when comparing oil-poor and oil-rich countries outside the Middle East.

If that’s correct, then it’s still cultural and religious practices and beliefs that cause gender discrimination, but these beliefs are themselves caused by or at least promoted by economic fundamentals. Sounds quite Marxian to me (which doesn’t mean it’s wrong!).

Papers looking into the cultural and religion causes of gender discrimination can be found here and here (thanks to the Monkey Cage for the pointer).

More on oil. More on human rights and risk. More on gender discrimination.

What is Democracy? (50): Something of the West, Not For Us, Thank You, and the I-Did-It-My-Way Syndrome

(source)

In discussions about the promotion of democracy in those parts of the world where it hasn’t been (firmly) established yet, the sceptical side of the argument usually advances either or both of the following positions:

• Democracy is a political form typical of the West and undesirable or impossible elsewhere.
• Democracy is a political concept which is defined in different ways according to the culture in which it is applied. When promoting democratic government in certain places, we are in fact promoting standard Western democracy when we should in fact be promoting something quite different.

The first position often includes references to cultural or religious preconditions for democracy which are claimed to be absent in certain countries (notably Muslim countries, which supposedly have a hard time accepting the separation of state and religion, the rule of law, gender equality and other elements of democracy). Or it includes arguments about economic preconditions which are absent (democracy being OK for the wealthy West, but not for countries which have other, more urgent economic concerns). And, finally, the size of countries, or their ethnic mix, is said to make democracy very difficult to achieve, or to make it an element which can undermine national harmony and stability. Democracy is viewed as something which reinforces communal or tribal antagonism because the different political parties tend to be formed along ethnic or tribal dividing lines. As a consequence, these parties see it as their role to defend the communal interest and nothing else, and once they are in power they tend to do so by discriminating against other communities. In such countries, democracy degenerates into an ethnic census.

(source)

The second position doesn’t reject the possibility or desirability of democracy in certain countries, but claims that the western definition of democracy can’t and shouldn’t be imposed outside of the West without taking into account the local, cultural, historical and social circumstances. There should be different models of democracy for different parts of the world. The western model is not a panacea and is not adapted to all circumstances.

Needless to say that this second position tends to collapse into the first one: if democracy is a very open concept that can include very different procedures, rules and institutions, then it can also exclude elements of democracy which we normally see as essential parts of democracy. An “African democracy” or “Asian democracy” or whatever, may turn out to be not very democratic. Indeed, such concepts are often mere smokescreens used by dictators weary of rejecting democracy altogether.

However, there is some element of truth in both positions. Democracy is undoubtedly tied to certain preconditions, and is impossible without those. And, in certain specific circumstances, such as a war or a national emergency, democracy – or full democracy – may be - temporarily - undesirable. Moreover, countries have to be able to follow their own path and to organize their societies according to their own views and traditions, and not according to those of the West. The Western model isn’t by definition the only desirable one, or the best one. It is not up to the West to decide what is and what is not politically acceptable in countries with entirely different traditions. Democracy can take different forms. Even among Western countries, there are vast differences between the types of democracy that are applied.

It’s wrong to copy the specifically Western view of democracy “à la lettre” in the rest of the world. Within certain limits, we have to take local and cultural aspects into consideration and we have to be flexible where we can. But there are limits. A democracy can’t be just anything. Otherwise we would be defending nihilism. If some elements are missing – such as freedom of speech, association and assembly, regular, fair and free elections, the rule of law etc. – then we can hardly speak of democracy.

Read other posts in this series.

Types of Human Rights Violations (4): Boomerang Human Rights Violations

(source)

We usually see human rights violations are zero-sum: a rights violation is a harm inflicted by one person on another, for the benefit of the former. I mentioned before that this isn’t always the correct way of viewing rights violations, but it’s adequate in most cases. One case in which it’s only superficially adequate is what I would call the boomerang human rights violation: you think that violating someone’s rights may produce some benefit for you, and it does so initially, but the actual and final results mean that you become worse off.

There’s the obvious and uninteresting example of the dictator using extreme oppression and causing revolt, but here are some other, more intriguing examples. The first one has to do with the right to work.

Gene Marks is … a small business owner (he sells customer relationship management tools), who is attempting to speak to other small business owners, all of whom, presumably, are also delighted that the potential hiring pool is so chock full of talent desperate to be exploited right now.

But one wonders who exactly is supposed to purchase all those products and services from the small businesses of the world, if unemployment creeps up to the 10 percent mark or higher? High unemployment means low consumer demand. Which usually means small businesses end up going out of business, or at the very least, laying off more employees, who push the unemployment rate even higher. And so on. (source)

If, as a “capitalist” (i.e. employer), you want to take advantage of unemployment – or the risk of unemployment – to put downward pressure on wages and workers benefits – and thereby violate workers’ rights (a fair wage is a human right, as are favorable working conditions) – you’ll end up shooting yourself in the foot because neither hard working laborers who don’t earn a lot nor the unemployed will consume many of your products or services. I can see the appeal of the statement that generous unemployment benefits discourage people from finding a job, but such benefits do have advantages that go beyond the mere self-interest of the direct beneficiaries.

An ideal policy … would allow people to collect unemployment insurance indefinitely, and let the unemployed borrow or save money. This way, unemployment insurance would not merely be a financial band-aid letting people take risks on the job market and endure some jobless spells, but a critical source of “liquidity,” allowing the unemployed to keep spending reasonable amounts of money — which in turn helps create demand, something sorely lacking from the economy at the moment. (source)

And here’s another example, related to gender discrimination. In many countries, there’s a son preference: male offspring is considered more valuable than female offspring, for reasons to do with gender discrimination and social, cultural or religious views regarding the proper role of women in society. One of the consequences is the “missing girls” phenomenon. The sex ratios in many countries – India and China stand out - are out of balance. Some estimates say that 90 million women are “missing” worldwide. In somewhat overwrought rhetoric this is called gendercide.* Girls are often aborted in selective abortions (a one child policy can make this even more widespread), and young girls are often prejudiced against when it comes to nutrition and health care resulting in higher mortality rates.

The son preference and the missing girls phenomenon have their roots mainly in cultural beliefs, but economic considerations also play a role. Some professions are open only to men; girls marry “into” other families and hence can’t continue the family business; there’s the dowry problem etc. However, these economic considerations don’t stand on their own and are often the result of discriminatory cultural beliefs.

When we accept that gender discrimination and the will to sustain patriarchy is the cause of the son preference and the missing girls phenomenon, then we are dealing with a human rights violation. And also this rights violation can come back to haunt those responsible for it.

A societal preference for boys here has become an unlikely source of power for Indian women. The abortion of female fetuses in favor of sons — an illegal but widespread practice — means there are more eligible bachelors than potential brides, allowing women and their parents to be more selective when arranging a match. (source)

Rather than cementing patriarchy, the son preference and the resulting unbalanced sex ratios give women more bargaining power.

These and other boomerang rights violations are variants of what I’ve called self-inflicted rights violations: people violate other people’s rights, and in so doing they ultimately violate their own rights. I guess I msut be attracted to self-destructive and self-defeating behavior.

* The word is overwrought in my view because, contrary to genocide, there’s no centralized plan to exterminate women.

Iconic Images of Human Rights Violations (37): Muslim Prisoners in a Serbian Detention Camp

Read the whole story here, as well as the general story of the war in ex-Yugoslavia. Other posts on this topic are here. More iconic images of human rights violations are here.

Update January 12th, 2010: commenters tell me that this is a fake…

Religion and Human Rights (20): Should a Liberal Society Tolerate Illiberal Religious and Cultural Practices Within That Society?

By a “liberal society” I mean, of course, a society respecting the equal human rights of all its citizens. By “illiberal cultural practices” I mean practices that have a cultural origin and that violate the rights of some of the members of that particular culture. An example would be certain instances of gender discrimination in Muslim migrant communities living in a Western democracy.

Such cultural practices are a dilemma for a liberal society. On the one hand, the society’s commitment to equal rights drives it towards interference within subcultures that violate these rights. This isn’t only a moral imperative. There’s also a legal aspect to it. Equal rights are enshrined in the law of the society, and the equal application of the law is a separate imperative.

On the other hand, a liberal society wants to respect cultural diversity and doesn’t require that migrant or minority communities assimilate to a dominant culture. Freedom of religion, another liberal imperative, also forces a liberal society to accept and tolerate non-mainstream cultures. And, finally, human rights are seen as individual choices: people are allowed to freely abandon their rights if they so choose.

As a result of all of this, a liberal society usually reacts to illiberal cultural practices in the following way: as long as individual members of groups within that society have a right to exit (e.g. a right to apostasy) the state, the law and social forces have no right to interfere with the internal norms and practices of those groups, even when these norms and practices constitute (gross) violations of human rights. If people stay in the groups, then this is assumed to be an expression of their agreement with these norms and practices. Any rights violations that occur are then deemed to be voluntary and no one else’s business. For example, if a Christian church discriminates against its homosexual members, this is deemed to be no reason for intervention as long as homosexuals can freely enter or leave the church.

cartoon by Simanca Osmani

(source)

The problem with this is that there’s not always a free choice to stay within a group, or leave. Choice is often socially constructed. Certain elements within a culture use narratives and other means of pressure in order to encourage other members to “willingly” comply with norms and practices that oppress them. People’s beliefs and preferences are, continually and from a very young age onwards, influenced by the norms and practices of the group they belong to. Hence it’s often very difficult for members of a group to view oppressive cultural norms and practices as illegitimate, even if they are the ones suffering from them. So it’s even more difficult for these members to openly defy these norms, reject them and act to change them. And even when members do understand that the norms and practices of their group are oppressive, it’s often very difficult to leave the group. Leaving may cause an identity crisis. For example, is it realistic to expect an oppressed Muslim woman to negate Islam? Leaving may be too costly, even compared to the gains that result from the end of oppression.

So, the standard liberal solution – let minorities be internally oppressive as long as they allow their members an easy exit – isn’t a solution at all. Personally, I would recommend a stronger insistence on equal rights, even at the cost of intolerance of illiberal diversity.

Continue reading…

Religion and Human Rights (19): Between Equality and Diversity – The Rule of Law, Except When…

One of the principles of liberal democracies is the equality before the law. The law shouldn’t protect or harm some citizens more than others (and to some extent this even applies to non-citizens within the jurisdiction of the democracy). The law applies equally to all.

Diversity

This principle, however, can be put to the test by another principle that is important to liberal democracies, namely tolerance of diversity. Most democracies are multicultural in the sense that they are made up of many different groups that have often radically different and incompatible beliefs, customs and norms. Liberal democracies value this diversity and have mechanisms to protect it, such as rules on tolerance, religious liberty, freedom of association etc. They value this diversity and try to protect it for at least three reasons:

• They believe that group identity is an important source of individual identity and well-being.
• They believe that group diversity offers a plurality of perspectives, and that this is necessary if deliberations on fundamental issues are to progress towards the truth.
• The believe that national unity isn’t only or primarily a matter of assimilation or convergence towards a single, national and official doctrine, but rather of peaceful coexistence in diversity.

Rules and exemptions

This tolerance of diversity can be burdened by equality before the law. Many liberal democracies have been forced to accept certain exceptions to the principle of the equal application of the law, and have exempted some groups from certain generally applicable laws. Some  examples:

• Anti-discrimination laws: groups have been allowed to discriminate, for example regarding their membership rules, or their internal operating rules, on the condition that they allow a right to exit of members who come to find this unacceptable.
• Because of their religious obligations, Sikhs have been exempted from the obligation to wear crash helmets for motorcyclists or safety helmets for construction workers, or from the prohibition to wear knives in public.
• Certain indigenous peoples have been exempted from prohibitions to fish or hunt or to slaughter animals in a certain way.

The rationale for such exemptions is that a “neutral” law, which is by definition equally applicable to everyone, may not have the same effect on everyone. It may unintentionally place a relatively heavy burden on a very specific minority because it unintentionally prohibits or compels a certain practice which has special significance for that minority. Such exemptions may be deemed necessary to preserve the distinctive identity and way of life of the minority, and to preserve the diversity and harmony of society as a whole.

This opt-out right, which allows minorities – usually cultural or religious minorities – to not apply or respect the general law, is similar to the right of conscientious objection. In many countries, refusal to serve in the military – otherwise a general legal rule – is a legally recognized option. (However, the opt-out right is not the same as civil disobedience, which isn’t a legally recognized option and the disobedient usually accept the consequences of breaking the law. Breaking the law and publicly accepting the consequences is precisely their purpose. They want to create a public spectacle showing the injustice of the law).

Possible objections against the opt-out right

1. Illiberal consequences

Exemptions are often granted for rules that are not really intended to protect third parties (such as crash helmet rules) or that do not create substantial harm when occasionally they are not applied (e.g. hunting exemptions). However, if we accept the general possibility of an opt-out right, can we not end up in a situation in which minorities are allowed to disrespect fundamental rules such as human rights, either internally in the group or externally? The classic example is the possible right of Muslim minorities in liberal democracies to apply Shari’a law within their communities.

Obviously, such far-reaching exemptions sound outrageous to those of us for whom human rights are very important. Yet I believe that even those exemptions can be justified in certain cases: they would only be acceptable if the following three conditions are jointly met:

• The groups in question do not violate the human rights of people outside of the group.
• The groups provide the right to exit in a substantial way. “Substantial” means that they do not only provide the formal right to exit but also provide members the educational, intellectual, moral, financial and other resources necessary to make a free and conscious choice about staying or leaving. However, it’s often very difficult to say whether a particular group is a truly voluntary association and whether members have a real choice to leave. Only when this is indeed and obviously the case can such far-reaching exemptions be allowed. There’s also the case of group members that are incapable of making a real choice, e.g. children. Exemptions cannot be allowed to produce violations of their rights, since they cannot exit.
• The rights violations are an essential part of the group’s identity rather than an opportunistic policy of the group’s leadership.

2. Exemptions for what?

This third condition leads to a second possible objection to the opt-out right: which elements of a group’s identity are strong and central enough to warrant an exemption from a generally applicable law? Who decides which are these elements? Do we trust the spokespersons of the group? But how are they appointed and do they speak for the group? Or is it not likely that they have some selfish reasons for exemptions and the possible rights violations resulting from them, given that they are likely to be in a position of power inside the group? If not the spokespersons, should it be outside elements, engaging in anthropology, or cultural exegesis?

3. Domino effect of exemptions

Another objection: every law puts more burdens on some citizens than on others. Smoking bans put a heavier burden on smokers, shoplifting laws on kleptomaniacs etc. If we provide exemptions for laws which burden cultural, ethnic or religious groups, why not also for kleptomaniacs? And if we would do so, wouldn’t the whole construction of the rule of law tumble under the weight of exceptions? Of course it would, but that’s not the reasons why we limit exceptions or exemptions (one can argue that these are not the same, but I’ll bracket that for the moment) to those which protect group identity. As stated before, group identity – contrary to kleptomania or other possible reasons for exemptions – is deemed to be a very important value in liberal democracies, and important enough to override in some cases the other important value of equality before the law.

Citizens who do not belong to a group that has received an exemption to a general rule may complain that they are discriminated against, compared to the members of the group. These citizens may also want to opt out of the rule – for example a rule imposing military service – not for religious or cultural reasons, but for other reasons, and not necessarily for opportunistic reasons. Indeed, it may seem arbitrary to limit exemptions to cultural and religious groups. But we have to admit that such groups are more likely to suffer from  special burden imposed by general rules, and that they are particularly important to the diversity of liberal societies.

4. Calcification of groups

Exemptions or the opt-out right require strict identification of group members. It must be possible to decide which individual citizens in a society are free to not respect a certain law, otherwise law enforcement becomes impossible. This may may have consequences for the exit right. The state fixes group membership. Not only should the state not do such a thing, but it shouldn’t be done at all. The exit right is important, especially when we decide to allow controversial practices. And this right can be harmed if group composition is officially sanctioned.

Moreover, this strict identification of membership implies a simplification of human identity and group identity. Groups are often complex and internally contradictory. Opt-out rights fix not only membership but also group identity: the state decides once and for all, by granting a legal exemption for a certain practice, that this practice is typical of a group. Internal dissent within the group, and directed against the practice, is then stifled. The state has then sided with the most powerful factions within a group, and that’s not something a liberal state should do.

One could object to this objection by claiming that the “losers” of the internal struggle to determine the group’s identity still have the right to leave the group. However, that also isn’t a choice that the state should determine. It should allow dissenting group members – such as feminist Muslims or gay Catholics – to continue to dissent within the group, rather than impose the limited choice of either accepting the dominant doctrine of the group – a doctrine elevated to dominance with the help of the state and the opt-out right granted by it – or leave the group.

The effort to protect groups from external pressure can inadvertently promote internal pressure. In other words: the effort to protect a group from externally imposed change can stifle internally promoted change. By recognizing a practice as typical of a group and worthy of an exemption to a general rule, the state helps to cement this practice, perhaps against the wishes of minorities within the group that work against the practice.

5. Opportunism

It’s often difficult to tell if an exemption is demanded by a true group member for identity reasons, or by a wavering member for opportunistic reasons. Or, for that matter, by an individual who decided to join the group, not for substantial reasons but to escape the law.

Conclusion

I believe exemptions are sometimes justifiable, especially if the risk of harm created by the exemption is relatively small compared to the benefits for the groups enjoying the exemption. But there are many practical problems related to the decision whether or not to grant an exemption.