An advocate of natural rights continues his/her presentation[1] …
This first entry in supporting the natural rights view – as it would be
used to guide civics curricular content – centers on William Schubert’s
commonplace, subject matter. In
terms of subject matter, the natural rights/liberalism approach would transmit
the following:
·
Teach a
view of government as a subservient institution which attempts to satisfy the
collective interests of individual citizens.
·
Teach the
philosophical basis of government’s role as defender of individual rights.
·
Convey the
legitimate needs of government to engender levels of support that maintain
political stress within the political system – in the form of competitiveness –
to manageable and even useful degrees.
·
Portray a
realistic account of political structures, processes, and functions that allow
students to internalize practical information about government to facilitate
their interactions with governmental agencies and offices in pursuit of their
political goals and objectives.
·
Express the
technical nature of political activities with ample respect for expertise held
by professional participants of the political system.
By accomplishing these elements, the natural rights argument claims that
the subject matter advances good citizenship and natural liberty. And liberty takes on a moral standing.
The Morality of Liberalism
According to Jeffrey Reiman,[2]
the natural rights perspective (he uses the term liberalism) is, at its core, a
moral conception. That is, the natural
rights approach, in its most fundamental sense, is a standard for right and
wrong behavior. As such, Reiman
explains, it is not a version or supplement to other views of governance such
as promoting caring policies or community.
Those that adopt a natural rights view advocate
a moral standard that instead promotes what is required from human beings
(assuming they are sane adults) to conduct themselves in such a way that maximizes
the scope of everyone’s freedom. Freedom
is seen as the ability to control individuals’ lives according to their own
judgment. Any extension of their freedom
that reduces the freedom of themselves or others is ruled as immoral
behaviors. This principle Reiman calls individual
sovereignty.
He contends that the role of education is to
prepare children and adolescents to make voluntary moral choices when they
become adults. Children and adolescents
are not judged mature enough to be given the level of freedom as defined by this
view. So, a qualifier to the general argument,
then, is that underaged individuals are not totally subject to this moral
standard.
Another qualifier is those situations in which,
because of human fallibility, people are not acting in line with their real
judgments. For example, people who are
about to commit suicide in reaction to traumatic incidents or bits of
information might, on reflection, choose not to kill themselves. Reiman would allow for what he calls
paternalistic coercion.
That is, it permits as moral for people to
intervene by preventing those suicides but only in obvious situations when the good
judgment by the distraught person would find it extremely difficult to practice
reasonable judgment. Of course, such
cases would seldom occur.
As far as government’s role under such a moral principle
or standard, Reiman argues that its interference in social and economic
activities is justified only in those situations when society, in the guise of
government policy or otherwise, does not allow for individual freedom. Ironically, government is to only act to
advance freedom by prohibiting those actors or policies that stand in the way
of such freedom. These conditions, in
turn, Reiman deems to be an empirical and measurable condition and not to be
determined merely by opinion.
Further, Reiman writes,
Rather,
the ideal of individual sovereignty is a standard against which economic
systems are to be judged. Free
enterprise economics with little or no governmental involvement will only pass
muster by this standard if they yield societies in which people in fact have
the maximum compatible individual freedom, and this will be an empirical matter
of what actually happens in such economies compared to the alternatives.[3]
Reiman provides a standard by which to distinguish between moral
requirement and subjugation. “To show
the validity of a moral requirement, then, we must show that they are binding
on people who disagree with them.
We must demonstrate their capacity to override the contrary judgments of
their recipients.”[4] Or stated another way, if moral judgments
stand because they can, not because they should, they are not moral
requirements, but subjugations instead.
In such cases, the
natural rights argument holds that subjugation is immoral and that subjected
people are not morally bound to obey those judgments. The only exceptions would be if people can
prove beyond reasonable doubts that moral judgments are moral requirements
irrespective of people’s judgments, which would be deemed impossible to do.
The
point here is a simple one, but, I think, quite far-reaching in its
implications. Any moral requirement must
be a matter of right not might. To
establish this, we must show – show, not just believe firmly – either
that the requirement is true beyond a reasonable doubt, or that it is needed to
restrict to a minimum the role of might in human affairs. This shows that the liberal ideal has an
advantage over all others. Unless and
until one of those others can be proven true beyond a reasonable doubt, only
the liberal ideal can satisfactorily rebut the suspicion of subjugation. It is only one that can withstand the charge
of being might not right.[5]
This posting will end on
this note. The next one will venture
into the question as to whether people have responsibilities to others, and if
they do, when would that be. To this
blogger, the basic claim of natural rights advocates is that humans have the
right to do as they please if they do not interfere with others having the same
right. Short of that, there are little
to no responsibilities assuming those involved, either in terms of acting upon or
receiving the effects of such interactions, are adults and sane.
[1] This presentation begins with this posting. The reader is informed that the claims made in this posting do not necessarily reflect the beliefs or knowledge of this blogger. Instead, the posting is a representation of what an advocate of natural rights view might present. This is done to present a dialectic position of that construct.
[2] Jeffrey Reiman, “Liberalism and Its Critics,” in The Liberalism-Communitarian Debate, edited by Cornelius F. Delaney (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publisher, Inc., 1994).
[3] Ibid., 22.
[4] Ibid., 23, emphasis in the original.
[5] Ibid., 24-25, emphasis in the original.
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