This semester I am not only teaching classes, two IT related classes at the University of Maryland University College (UMUC), but also taking graduate classes, two Government and Politics graduate classes at the University of Maryland College Park.
So every Tuesday afternoon and evening I attend two almost three hour classes, the first focusing on Political Institutions (which I will talk about in a later post), and the second focusing on Political Theory, specifically about human rights. These are both seminars associated with getting a PhD, so in large part I am surrounded by young people, almost all of whom are younger than my two daughters, who are extremely bright and already know the difference between positive and negative rights, natural law, the implications of the Enlightenment, and so on, all of which I had to look up to understand when I came across all of these terms in the weekly readings.
I am a Golden ID student. Which means I am over 60 years old and a resident of Maryland and am retired. Regarding that latter point since in my opinion, I will never really retire, I noticed the definition of retirement for the Golden ID program was working 20 hours or less each week. Since I do not track time either for my UMUC classes or for my consulting business (normally I charge on a fixed price/task basis), I decided 0 recorded hours was less than 20. The deal is that I get to take up to three classes, if there is room, each semester for almost free – just paying student fees and parking. AND I get a Golden ID student card so what could be better than that.
In the more accurately titled Contemporary Political Theory class, we started with talking about Friedrich Nietzsche, and have worked our way through a number of more contemporary theorists, such as Alasdair MacIntyre, John Rawls, Richard Rorty, and others. Nietzsche, per my comprehension, took the stance that there were no inherent human rights, that in the end some people were more powerful or ended up more powerful than others, and that was the realistic way of looking at things. His position was that defining rules of society was basically an attempt by the weaker members to restrain the stronger. And from Nietzsche’s perspective why should the stronger in the end agree to such an arrangement.
Sadly human history provides a lot of support to that perspective.
The rest of the readings, again only from my perspective, attempt to refute that position providing different basises and rationales for some version of a basic set of human rights which should be followed. Some authors pushed for Natural Rights inherent to all people, some focused on the premise that the rights existed because of the society that we are part of. The Natural Rights approach was part of the basis for the Declaration of Independence and the thinking of many of the founders of the United States. Some authors focused on proving these rights existed, others used different approaches such as using the power of stories to illustrate why they exist. The latter stance would say that it is through discourse that we show how societies with a lack of human rights end up with worse results than those who have robust established systems of rights that are followed.
The last couple of classes dealt with some of the political implications. One book we looked at was written by Michael Ignatieff, who is a professor at Harvard and previously a political participation in the Canadian government. He discussed practical aspects of implementing human rights. A phrase he helped popularize was Going Global by Going Local. His point was that it was not possible to implement human rights everywhere without getting local buy-in by individual communities and nation-states. We also read a wonderful book about the creation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, by Mary Ann Glendon. The focus of the book was the roll of Eleanor Roosevelt in providing leadership to that effort.
One anecdote from that last reading. A couple of the students who were leading the discussion on the Glendon book indicated they were surprised that the book was so well written and nuanced since the author was a George W Bush appointee and a strong pro-life conservative. They said they had never met such conservatives who did not always express extreme viewpoints all the time. I noted to both of them, who typically sit next to me in class, that I while I was not a pro-life peson, I was a Bush appointee also, followed by silence. I am not sure if the silence meant that they felt their point was proven or that they were surprised. Regardless it did illustrate, once again the divide that seems to exist these days in all kinds of political discourse.
In general the class has been really wonderful, the students brought great diversity of thought, with people of color, students from a variety of foreign countries, and with both men and women in the class (though I suspect, re-enforced by the story I told earlier, I would be the only one who was somewhat/very right-of-center). The professor is extremely bright and thoughtful and has provided many insights into the more difficult parts of the theoretical constructs we have been looking at.
Having said all that, I have been thinking about what I personally have learned from this semester. That is, looking from the perspective of a somewhat right-of-center conservative, though my wife would probably argue that the word ‘somewhat’ should be replaced by ‘very’, what do I now think about the broad issue of human rights.
I have been wrestling with how a small-government leaning person deals with human rights issues. As someone who tends to focus on equality of opportunity as opposed to guaranteed equality of result, I start-off suspicious of using the cohersive force of Government as a solution. Yet, it seems to me, using a local analogy, that someone who grows up in the poorer parts of lets say southeast Washington DC, who likely comes from a one-parent relatively poor family, and who attends a poorly performing school clearly starts off with less opportunity than a child growing up in Potomac who is sent to private school and is a legacy Ivy League school child based on who his or her parents are.
Conservatives need to solve for that problem, not doing so feeds into some very negative narratives about the inapplicability of what America stands for. At a minimum, I believe Conservatives who are politically active, should participate in this discussion. Nominally, people on the right are supposed to support human dignity and the authority of the individual. Yet, too often, their focus is on minimizing the involvement of Government, but not dealing with how to solve the human dignity issue in a different fashion. I do not have a very detailed set of answers, but the class has helped focus, at least for me, some of the questions that I feel need to be addressed.