Spheres of Life

I was never happy with some of the traditional distinctions in political theory such as state-church, state-society, etc. (The same is true for some of the traditional equations such as public and state). Don’t get me wrong, I think these two distinctions in particular are very important, but they tend to become simplistic in political [...]

Human Rights Quote (62): Balancing and Limiting Rights

“Genuine tragedies in the world are not conflicts between right and wrong. They are conflicts between two rights.” Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Some rights can cause violations of other rights or of the rights of others, which is why rights have to be balanced against each other.
In specific instances of rights that come into conflict — [...]

Human Rights Cartoon (89): Privacy

(source: www.boligan.com)
I’ve written about privacy before on this blog (here, here and here), with a particular attention to the importance of private property for privacy. The current post deals more generally with privacy.
There’s no light without darkness. By recognizing the right to keep certain thoughts, relationships and communications secret, one automatically recognizes the right to [...]

Human Rights Facts (7): Homelessness

On any given night in the U.S., anywhere from 700,000 to 2 million people are homeless, according to estimates of the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty. That’s approx. 0.7 % of the total population. The majority are single men and/or African-American. One fourth of homeless have been homeless for at least five years.
Take [...]

Human Rights Cartoon (55): Property

“The poor are getting poorer, but with the rich getting richer it all averages out in the long run.”
(Copyright: Joseph Mirachi)
Private property does not have a good press. It’s unequal distribution has often been criticized, also on this blog. However, there is a recognized human right to private property (or, more specifically, the right to [...]

Human Rights Quote (17): Privacy

When will politicians realize that George Orwell’s 1984 was a warning, not an instruction manual? DEREK CLARK, member of the European parliament, on a proposed law to question women about their sexual history to improve census data.
More on privacy.

Human Rights Cartoon (22): Gay Marriage

(by http://www.graphicclassics.com/pgs/konopack.htm)
Do homosexuals have a right to marry according to the international human rights standards? Not explicitly. They do not even have the explicit right to be homosexual, but jurisprudence has established that homosexuals should not be discriminated. First of all, all human beings, whatever their convictions, practices, behavior etc., have the same rights. So [...]

Human Rights Cartoon (4): Privacy

This cartoon (by www.comics.com/editoons/cardow) makes a joke of the invasions of privacy that the Bush Administration considered to be necessary in the fight against terrorism. The so-called “liberation” of Iraq and the import of democracy there are contrasted with the limitations on human rights imposed in the home country.
The Bush policies that followed 9-11 are [...]

Human Rights, the Public Space, and Immanuel Kant’s Theory of Thought

Human rights have many functions, but their most important one is perhaps the institution and the protection of a public space and a public life for every individual. This is especially true of freedom rights or civil rights (which of course also institute and protect a private space, in particular by way of the right [...]