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Social Justice and Human Rights - The Fragility of Social Justice and Human Rights in the World
Can social justice and human rights exist in a world without common decency?
As social justice and human rights become the subject of faith, rational avocation, and close examination around the world, we would be well advised to read the Constitution of the Soviet Union, written in 1924. The document assured the citizenry of freedom of speech and religion and freedom of assembly, but it neglected to address any inalienable rights that they might have been interested in.
Since the Communist Party was certain that the spread of Communism was the main goal of the nation, anything that conflicted with this goal was not allowed for the people. The Party also took upon itself the sole authority for managing the advancement of Communism.
In effect, the Party took control of the people by promising social justice while withholding human rights. In capitalism, social justice and human rights are side issues irrelevant to the central power of economics.
Most capitalistic countries follow a brutal economic principle called lassiez faire, or 'let it be.' This means that the best policy for the people and government of a nation to follow in terms of economics and money-making is to leave people alone to earn their money in whatever way they can, with whatever methods they choose, so long as they do not violate civil law.
If the individuals fail and starve, they are neither rewarded nor assisted. They simply fall by the wayside.
WHERE IS THE SAFETY NET NOW?
The public in general has rejected this pure free market in favor of a social safety net. In facts, the United Nations makes this safety net a central part of about two-thirds of its Universal Declaration of Human Rights. There is a right to food, a right to shelter, and a right to free speech.
The idea of a social contract constructed by Thomas Hobbes is perhaps the best source of the ideas of social justice and human rights. Hobbes envisioned human beings as requiring management of leaders to survive, and seeking out managers or leaders to help them in a brutal world.
The leaders would be the governors and the mass of people would be the governed, and this division of authority allowed efficient survival for all. Hobbes called this a social contract.
One aspect of the social contract carefully addressed by him was the consent of the governed. The people who served the directions of the leaders were not to lose their status as human or to be subjected to arbitrary and abusive rule.
They were to have what they always had, inalienable rights. If the leaders complied in this contract, they received the highest awards of the society they led.
John Locke would go on to state that the failure of leadership to respect the rights of the people justified the removal of these leaders from their positions of power. When social justice and human rights are addressed in political discourse, they are usually used without regard to the situation, and only to mean something good, just as a good Orwellian Newspeaker would have it.
In practice, there is currently a tremendous and dangerous tension between the pursuits of the two ideals. Social justice can be infuriatingly malleable.
Suppose a man who has led a life living in tents and riding horses to his pastures suddenly wants a car. Do the merchants who choose to sell cars only in cities far away cheat him, although that is the only way they can make a profit? What if there are laws that state that he may never drive a car? Is he being abused then?
LIFE AND LIBERTY ARE NO LONGER YOUR RIGHTS
It can be said that social justice and human rights are mutually exclusive, but that is simply wrong. During the Revolutionary War, the United States had the benefit of a leadership that was well educated and eloquent.
The writing of the Declaration of Independence was done by committee, which is usually a recipe for disaster. John Adams and Benjamin Franklin both worked intensively with Thomas Jefferson to successfully bring the ideas of Hobbes and Locke into a working frame and a statement of principles.
They brought about this construction of a blend of social justice and human rights... We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
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