Thoughts On Human Rights
The standard liberal criticism which states that group rights are problematic because they often treat individuals as mere carriers of group identities rather than autonomous social agents is overstated or oversimplified. The actual problem of minorities and how they should be viewed in liberal democracies is much more complex. There is a distinction between good group rights, bad group rights, and intolerable group rights.
- Bad Group Rights (internal restrictions) are rules imposed by the group upon intra-group relations. Most often take the form of the group restricting the liberty of individual members in the name of group solidarity. Indigenous groups try to protect themselves from women's movements on the basis that they threaten the social and traditional role of indigenous populations. He contends this raises the danger of individual oppression. Internal restrictions can be used to uphold violent, dominant, absolutist systems. Legally imposed internal restrictions are thus bad and almost always unjust. Not to mention they go against liberal ideals.
- Good Group Rights (external protections) involve inter-group relations. Indigenous groups need protection in terms of their nationals identities by limiting the vulnerability of that group to the decisions of external groups or society. Therefore, they should have the right to their own taxation, health care, education, and governance.
Read more about this topic: Will Kymlicka
Famous quotes containing the words thoughts, human and/or rights:
“But have you wine and music still,
And statues and a bright-eyed love,
And foolish thoughts of good and ill,
And prayers to them who sit above?”
—James Elroy Flecker (1884–1919)
“In the United States, it is now possible for a person eighteen years of age, female as well as male, to graduate from high school, college, or university without ever having cared for, or even held, a baby; without ever having comforted or assisted another human being who really needed help. . . . No society can long sustain itself unless its members have learned the sensitivities, motivations, and skills involved in assisting and caring for other human beings.”
—Urie Bronfenbrenner (b. 1917)
“To exercise power costs effort and demands courage. That is why so many fail to assert rights to which they are perfectly entitled—because a right is a kind of power but they are too lazy or too cowardly to exercise it. The virtues which cloak these faults are called patience and forbearance.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)