On Civil Rights
Most of us hold that every human being deserves certain basic rights simply on the basis of being a human. In America, several of these rights are guaranteed to us by the Bill of Rights and the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. In Montana, there are even more rights guaranteed by our state Constitution. The U.N., in 1948, put together a Universal Declaration of Human Rights in an attempt to extend the guarantee to those rights to the rest of the world.
It is clear that a guarantee in writing, whether it be in the U.S. Constitution or the U.N.'s Declaration, is not a guarantee in practice. In America we must constantly question the actions of the government, the police, and our fellow citizens to ensure that they are not violating our human and civil rights. In much of the world, however, the situation is much more dire. In places like Nigeria, the Philippines, and Peru, the citizens and the world can see clearly that human rights are being violated on a daily basis.
In each case, both in our home town and on the other side of the globe, the question is how can we stop these violations, and how do we prevent further ones? Often times we have solutions at our fingertips, but we chose not to intervene because the human/civil rights violations in some way benefit us (by supporting our ideology by suppressing others, in money or goods gained by exploited foreign labor and goods, etc.). The real question that we as individuals must ask ourselves is whether human/civil rights of others should be more important than our own beliefs or material comfort.
If you would like to contribute a perspective to be included on this page, email us. Our goal is not to represent every viewpoint, but rather to highlight well-constructed arguments representing most viewpoints.
Philosophies on Human/Civil Rights
World:
Paternalism is the way - As an economic and military superpower, America has the right and duty to intervene in other countries whenever human rights are violated. Furthermore, as a free country with constant dialogue on human and civil rights issues, we are poised to recognize these violations even when others do not. If cultural activities such as infanticide and female circumcision violate our American interpretation of human/civil rights, then these cultural activities should be stopped.
America, as a largely Christian nation, ought to extend the Christian call to service to acting in other nations whenever their conduct violates our values. We ought not intervene only when economic or military interests are at stake, but should step in any time when our moral interests are violated.
Utilitarianism - Without actually violating human/civil rights ourselves, we should implement a foreign policy which seeks to enhance the greatest good of the most people, including ourselves. So, if extracting resources and labor from country X can be done in a way that appears to benefit both the people of that country without obviously harming them, and it benefits Americans and American companies, then it should be continued. Multinational corporations should only be censured when they directly harm more people in a nation than they help through jobs and such. If the corporation supports an oppressive regime in order to more freely extract labor and resources, it should be examined as a potentially detrimental relationship. However, not every multinational corporation that works in developing countries with oppressive governments is guilty of violating human/civil rights itself.
Cultural Relativism - We as Americans shouldn't have the last word in other culture's activities. Just because we see certain things as violating human/civil rights doesn't necessarily mean that they should be stopped. To some people, American activities such as abortion are obvious violations of human/civil rights. To them, our intervention in their activities is nothing more than hypocritical, narrow-minded bullying. Furthermore, our society, with rampant obesity, heart disease, cancer, diabetes, etc. is no exemplar to the rest of the world, especially to many "3rd-World" peoples who existed in relative ecological harmony, peace, and health prior to Western paternalistic interventions.
The Holocaust argument ("cultural relativism means doing nothing to stop such genocidal activities as the Nazi slaughter of non-Aryans in W.W.II.") is merely an argumentum ad absurdum of cultural relativism. Of course we should step in when such atrocities are developing or occurring - don't forget that most Americans were resolute to avoid entering the war before Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, despite knowledge of Hitler's genocidal intentions. Cultural relativism is simply the recognition that, apart from obvious violations such as genocide, we as Americans don't have it all figured out just yet, and we could in fact learn a great deal from cultures that appear on the surface to be "backwards."
USA:
Coming Soon.
Montana/Missoula:
Coming Soon.