Human Rights Abuses In America (1 Viewer)

[Slidey]

Since so many people bring up issues in America as some sort of justification either for those of another country, such as China or Iran, or to make a point that such issues are unavoidable, here's a thread where they can be discussed without diluting a thread focused on another country or issue.

Discuss questions of morality; whether less human rights abuses is more acceptable even if they are as bad. Or discuss any recent human rights news you care to dig up. But keep the comparisons to America in this thread, because America is not the leader of the world, and America is not representative of 'the West'.

Or you can discuss America's appaling notion that schools are allowed to decide whether they teach contraception or the ludicrous "abstinence only" sex education, and the human rights problems the subsequent STD blooms cause. America has the highest STD rate of all the well-recognised developed Western countries, at more than 3 times that of the UK, and 6 times that of Australia and most other Western entities, and 1/40th of the world's HIV-suffering population, close to Russia.

Re moral absolutism: I don't contend American human rights abuses are any better than China's, but I do contend they are far less numerous. To me, and many people in this world, this matters. While I love idealism, in reality concessions must be made. China's abuses are more numerous per capita with no institutions in place to actively question them (which is actually one of its human rights abuses - supression). To me, this makes them the priority.

Further, plenty of people are at work (both in America and worldwide) to fix and criticise America's human rights issues, and this doesn't concern me because as a liberal democracy, America has constructs with which its people can hold their government accountable (which is currently being done on many fronts, one of which is the war with Iraq, as judges request the FBI hand over back-up records of emails sent about the Iraw war, a request they can't refuse, as a small example).

Another interesting point is planned revision of the government's ability to claim something beyond the law by stating documents are matters of national security and thus can't be used as evidence.

Any government whose people can hold her accountable without concern for their safety is not a huge concern of mine (unless said accountability isn't being enforced), regardless of how favourably you might view the processes of democracy.

 

[Iron]

because America is not the leader of the world, and America is not representative of 'the West'.

???
Is too

 

[Slidey]

???
Is too

Elaborate so I can respond. I'm not inclined to write a detailed rebuttal due to the consistency and prevalence with which you use sarcasm and light trolling.

 

[Enteebee]

Americas human rights abuses are not generally referring to domestic problems, more that they have in the past/continue to perform illegal operations that undermine the human rights of other people (propping up illegal regimes) and violate national sovereignty.

 

[Iron]

Where do these rights come from?

 

[Enteebee]

Where do these rights come from?

They're abstract deontological duties that come from the minds of people and are accepted as cannon in roughly the same way as international laws are formed.

Create a new thread if you want to bring this up, I'd say one of the accepted axioms for a discussion of human rights abuses should at least be that some human rights exist and it doesn't necessarily matter where they come from.

 

[Iron]

come from the minds of people

some human rights exist and it doesn't necessarily matter where they come from.

Fair enough. But the proposition that "human rights" are good, and "abuses" are bad, smacks of absolutism.

Can we talk about Guantanamo bay instead?

 

[Enteebee]

absolutes are necessary for human interactions, or at least the concept of practical absolutes. But yeah, Guantanamo bay is a better discussion in this thread... though I imagine the political prisons in China that no aid organisations have ever even visited are significantly 'worse'.

If we're going to start grading human rights abuses, I'd say the only segment where america are the world leaders would be in the political realm where they definately have done some terrible things covertly with their military/supplying military weapons etc.

 

[Iron]

Well it's interesting that China's the one beefing up the armory of African dictators and the like. They did it before the Rwandan genocide, and only very recently tried to send a bunch of guns to Mugabee

Also, practical absolutes was all I was trying to draw from you. I now retire that front until due season

 

[Slidey]

They're abstract deontological duties that come from the minds of people and are accepted as cannon in roughly the same way as international laws are formed.

Create a new thread if you want to bring this up, I'd say one of the accepted axioms for a discussion of human rights abuses should at least be that some human rights exist and it doesn't necessarily matter where they come from.

Agreed, perhaps a thread starting with a UN-style definition of human rights should be created & stickied, with critical discussion of the pros and cons of such a definition to follow (and free reign of the deeper metaphysical, philosophical and ethically questions that always accompany such discussion). It could be used as a reference on this forum in future, as for a topic that gets brought up and analysed so frequently with respect to various countries and institutions, there is a remarkable amount of confusion and miscommunication about its meaning.

That and I'm sick of skipping posts about absolutism and 'inferior'/'superior' philosophical stances which IMHO drag the topic so far into metaphysics there is little tangible connection to the topic that spawned it (for example Iron says highlighting human rights abuses "smacks of absolutism"... whatever that means; in reality humans concur human rights abuse = bad for a simple selfish reason turned altruistic through utilitarianism: any human entity desires to avoid pain, to express itself freely physically & mentally, and to satiate its basic physiological needs. When you couples such desires with biological altruism and the knowledge that preserving the rights of others in turn preserves yours, you naturally create a remarkably firm and near universally enforced ideal of 'human rights' to strive for.

 

[Iron]

Stick to topic pls

But (if you insist) some would say that "preserving the rights of others" will always involve limiting some people's rights, and increasing others'. It's a balancing act which, perhaps, maybe, potentially, leaves greater individuals with the drive, initiative, strength to create their own rights worse off.
If this worrying trend is to continue, what incentive, I ask you, will there be to strive for any progress, greatness at all?

It never works out anyway. Stalin created a country based on total equality of all individuals, and what was the result? The cult of personality.
Does anyone actually imagine that our political leaders think themselves no better, no more superior than their electors they praise as average, mainstream, mediocre?

That's all I have.

 

[melanieeeee.]

Slidey makes awesome posts

 

[chicky_pie]

Slidey makes awesome posts

So true, I think most of us have a crush on Slidey.

 

[chicky_pie]

* Hurricane Katrina, I mean when aid first arrived there, it wasn't from the U.S government, it came from Canada.

* Teen pregnancies. America's out of control, lol.

 

[abbeyroad]

Human rights theory is a form of moral absolutism. A violation of human rights is a violation , regardless of the circumstances under which it is performed. Try as you may, you can never justify it.


Oh and re teenage pregnancies:

Don't be a dummy, come on her tummy.

 

[JaredR]

Rights are stupid. Throw rocks at them.

In all seriousness, you have to love these rights activists: the type that advocate the rights of killed terrorists and criminals. Fact of the matter is the greatest right is the 'right to life' and if preserving more life means killing one person then I'm all for it.

Fact is that everyone views rights differently, and at the end of the day rights of some people are worth more than rights of others and rightlly so.

 

[Iron]

In any ethical situation you will have answers that seem better from one point of view, to the other. You will also have answers that have measurable outcomes that are beneficial to not having them.

If we're measuring it on a 'human suffering' basis, then why is it wrong to claim that pragmatism allows (by its own nature) a more stoical basis for morality than any alternative?

Well my problem has been finding a foundational basis, or bus terminal, from which to make valid moral judgements. Pragmatism, positivism, utilitarianism, all sort of miss the bus for me, because they're really just vehicles of escape. They miss a lot of stops and only take you so far, which leaves you unfulfilled and lost. They take truth for granted. Their bus driver is the same old asceticism, a man in denial and full of considerable self-hatred because he is impotent. His reality, his road, is built by strangers and he has no power to make his own path. He's a slave to the bus company because he's convinced that he needs the job for survival.

 

[Iron]

If we don't have any foundational basis to purport an absolute morality about very few things, then we don't really have a debate, we just dissolve into semantics and wordgames

THEN WHAT'S THE BLOODY POINT OF IT ALL schro
All we're left with is a nihilism which leads to either a kind of Nazism or suicide
Who's with me!?
..
guys?

 

[banco55]

Well my problem has been finding a foundational basis, or bus terminal, from which to make valid moral judgements. Pragmatism, positivism, utilitarianism, all sort of miss the bus for me, because they're really just vehicles of escape. They miss a lot of stops and only take you so far, which leaves you unfulfilled and lost. They take truth for granted. Their bus driver is the same old asceticism, a man in denial and full of considerable self-hatred because he is impotent. His reality, his road, is built by strangers and he has no power to make his own path. He's a slave to the bus company because he's convinced that he needs the job for survival.

You could just adopt the Straussian position that there is no solid foundational basis for morality but that it is vital that the masses believe there is a a solid foundational basis for morality. They also believe that it's irresponsible to tell joe bloggs that there is no god etc. That's why straussians are closet atheists who actively promote religion.

 

[Iron]

I admire your courage, but my god, here we are staring into the abyss. Maybe our satire is a madness, a coping mechanism, the only reasonable response.

edit, yeah, look, liked Strauss at first, but what's his foundation? order? It's not power, because he's too much of a coward to admit that god is dead. Too conservative