Freedom? The Battle Over America\'s

¶ … Freedom? The Battle Over America's Most Important Idea" by George Halcoff argues that the word "freedom" is highly contested among the American people -- the word symbolizing radically different ideas to, for example, progressives and conservatives. Halcoff explains that political conservatives use this ambiguity to promote and propagate their agenda to the American public (3-11). What follows, then, is a preliminary discussion of what freedom 'actually' means. Halcoff contests that there is an uncontested "core" within the broader definition of "freedom," and explains each facet of the core in detail (Halcoff 22). He begins with the simplest definition of freedom: freedom to behave how you want, or to pursue a goal unimpeded (25). But the definition turns out to be not so simple; it implies freedom from harm. Freedom from harm negates an individual's freedom from imposing harm (Halcoff 39). Such an individual can be a person, corporation, or government. Harm is quite a contested term (i.e. physical harm vs. harm to a reputation). Halcoff goes on to expound on all the contested aspects of freedom (Halcoff 39-61). For brevity's sake, they will not be listed here. Halcoff's point, with this detailed explanation of the term's contested characteristics, is to introduce the idea that freedom means different things to different people, and that these differences can be exploited to promote political agendas. Specifically, politically conservative agendas. Here, in relation to the traditional Western view of human rights, this article suggests that ideas that form the basis for the view are under question, and can be manipulated to gain political power and in fact deny those rights. In other words, Halcoff shows us that Western human rights, as a result of their definitional ambiguity, are fragile and need to be protected.

The first chapter of "Human Rights: Literal and Ideological Perspectives" by Adamantia Pollis and Peter Schwab makes the case that a universal consensus on human rights does not exist, and that furthermore, the Western conception of human rights, maintained in doctrines such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, is exactly that: Western (1-5). As such, it does not take into account the political and economic situations, as well as cultures, of non-Western and Third World countries (Pollis & Schwab 7). The authors make this case with two main arguments. First, doctrines such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights were created in response to the 'coming-of-age' experiences of France, England, and the United States, and are thus predicated upon the belief that Western values are the 'right' values (Pollis & Schwab 4). Second, the economic goals of 3rd world countries are often mutually exclusive to certain Western human rights, but to guarantee these rights in the future first necessitates the realization of these economic goals (Pollis & Schwab 7-9). Pollis and Schwab thus argue that the Western notion of human rights needs to be reexamined -- specifically upon the basis of the relationship between human rights and socioeconomic development -- and reformulated (17). The moral superiority of typical Western human rights cannot be taken for granted.

Chapter VI of "The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism, Hobbes to Lock" by C.B. MacPherson analyzes social assumptions in relation to preeminent seventeenth-century political theories of writers such as Hobbes and Locke, among others, and how these theories are relevant to later liberal-democratic society. MacPherson first lays out the common themes of these theories, which create the basis for possessive individualism: a man is human if he is free from dependence of the will of others; freedom from the dependence of others means a man is not obliged to enter relations with anyone (only those he voluntarily chooses); and the individual is "proprietor" of his own capacities, and owes no debt or action to society (263-264). MacPherson goes on to point out how different seventeenth century theorists -- Leveller, Hobbes, and Locke, to name a few -- included these ideas in their philosophies. MacPherson further illustrates that a main similarity in these philosophies was the belief that human society was a series of market relations (266). At this point, these theories have "failed" liberal-democratic theory (MacPherson 270) because it has made impossible a valid theory of obligation. As such, MacPherson poses the question whether liberal-democratic theory and Hobbsian can be realigned and made to not be mutually exclusive (277). In relation to Western human rights, these theories recognize the certain aspects of freedom (unsurprising, as we have seen from Halcoff's piece) 'create' a man, in a sense. As such, it might be argued that these seventeenth century philosophers were some of the first to recognize, implicitly, a Western notion of human rights.

In their article, Bunch & Frost explain the usefulness of positing "women's rights" as "women's human rights." This approach came from the situation where "women's rights" -- labeled as such -- consistently took a back seat to human rights as the result of male-dominated human-rights organizations (Bunch & Frost). As such, the framing of "women's rights" as "human rights" forces human-rights organizations, such as the UN, to address, in their symposiums and policies on human rights, the rights of all women (Bunch & Frost).