Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uwm.edu!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!ginosko!usc!aero!mangoe@mimsy.umd.edu
From: mangoe@mimsy.umd.edu (Charley Wingate)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Re: Advocacy and What Is Advocated
Message-ID: <8910190033.AA17087@mimsy.UMD.EDU>
Date: 19 Oct 89 19:50:56 GMT
Sender: nadel@aerospace.aero.org
Followup-To: talk.politics.misc
Organization: U of Maryland, Dept. of Computer Science, Coll. Pk., MD 20742
Lines: 38
Approved: nadel@aerospace.aero.org
In-Reply-To: <1989Oct16.000134.1218@rpi.edu>
Status: R

[This is moving too far out of the charter of the group.  I've set the 
followup line to talk.politics.misc because I think that's the most appropriate
place to discuss what the meaning of political rights is.  - MHN]

>hmm... In other words, Charlie, rights not only dont exist, they can't even be
>defined in a non-"political-rhetoric" way?

Well, this is starting to move outside the purview of this group, but ...

Sorry, Keith, but these are your words.  People assert rights all the time,
but asserting them doesn't bring them into existence.  Most references to
"rights" in this era are really moral statements, statements which can be
couched in other terms.

I didn't say that rights "dont exist".  I did say that I was suspicious of
claims for them, as anyone should be.

>Then, you speak of "advatages people are allowed..." This makes no distinction
>between a mob boss who became rich by crime, and a businessman who became
>rich by selling a better product at lower prices...

Sure it does.  We would prefer to take away the advantages of the mobster;
we *might* think of trying to limit those of the tycoon.  ("We" here is
naturally loaded as all hell-- it is *very* important who gets to be in the
"we", and who thus gets to set the agenda.  One problem at a time.)

If individual rights are utterly paramount (i.e., that people can do
whatever they want to), then any kind of discrimination is permissible.  I
don't think individual rights are *utterly* paramount; people do not live in
a vacuum, and they can be held responsible for the effects of their actions.
By the same token, I don't believe that problems should only be addressed in
terms of group conditions, desires, and the like, without consideration for
the often considerable differences between the members of the group.
-- 
C. Wingate          + "Our God, to whom we turn when weary with illusion,
                    + whose stars serenely burn above this earth's confusion,
mangoe@cs.umd.edu   + thine is the mightly plan, the steadfast order sure
mimsy!mangoe        + in which the world began, endures, and shall endure."