Marcotte is quoted as saying This is such a broad, general, and non-quantifiable statement. A right is something that "people's lives are made worse if they don't have them"? I don' t have a million dollars and when compared to someone who does, I'm sure my life is worse. I don't own a house. I have student debt which, thank god, I can pay, but I don't have the right to declare bankruptcy on. Can I get a house and discharge my student debt please? My life is much worse without these things. I think she means "significantly worse off" but it's still completely unquantifiable and subjective. And there are a lot of people who ride the bus 2-4 hours a day whose lives would be made a lot better if they had either better transportation or their own transportation. I don't see the gov't getting ready to assert that a car is basic human right though.We respect these rights because we know that people’s lives are made worse if they don’t have them.
I cringed too, but took solace in Sen's definition, which seems appropriate: As for any religious claim for the origin of "human rights," it's very much a chicken and egg question. I'm of the mind that we've invented God, in part, to justify that which we've deemed our "human rights."it is just a strong way of making a normative claim. So when someone says “health care is a right,” they are really saying in a stronger voice something like “health care is really important, everyone should have the freedom to access it..
I agree with those reasons but I would add to it; there is an innate spirituality that most people have. You feel it most often when you are face-to-face with the wonders of the natural world. Hiking in the mountains etc. Meditation can bring this about too. I feel like this is a uniquely human quality that comes when we are overwhelmed with awe for our natural world and the human condition. People feel the need to ascribe this to God, some people may call this feeling God. I have no problem with that. I have a major problem with the forming of a religion that is solely of human construct based around those things: explaining the natural world, the moral code and spirituality. Also, fear of death is certainly a reason people create religion/god. There are plenty of reasons people create God/religion.
Loneliness is probably an inevitable consequence of understanding. If you see what other people don't, it sets you apart. On the downside, it's common consequence of serious mental illness too. Buck up though -- I'm betting you're an instance of the former rather than the latter...
Excellent points. I agree entirely with your position on the concept of rights. I do have a different, though not incompatible, observation to add though. Both liberals and conservatives tend to see their opponents as a monolithic mass. Notably, both you and Marcotte blithely take for granted that the position that rights come from God is uniformly accepted by conservatives. Such a religiously-based position is, after all, easy to refute. As an atheist, I agree -- but as a political conservative who believes in limited government, I think it’s a position I’m not obligated to identify with. The world is not divided neatly into ignorant conservatives and intelligent, coherent liberals. I suspect that what offends you about Marcotte, really, is that she fails to live up to the expectation that it does. I sympathize. I wish everyone could argue rationally. In reality though, at the terrible risk of sounding elitist, most people’s worldviews have more to do with a sort of tribal affiliation than they do with rational understanding. Most conservatives support their tribe – and most liberals are doing nothing more than supporting theirs. You, I, and (I hope) most of the people reading this comment are unusual because we are capable of using a more rigorous set of epistemic standards. The best of us fail at times, but we do at least have the capacity. It may be that, at least at this point in her life, Marcotte is simply too caught up in the passion of her convictions to think about them seriously.