4 ms·
No, it goes deeper than providing services. If the goal is only to provide services then that can simply be done for the sake of it. We can run welfare programs
by homonculus1 7y ago
No, it goes deeper than providing services. If the goal is only to provide services then that can simply be done for the sake of it. We can run welfare programs because it makes society run better or even just because it makes us feel warm and fuzzy.
But when we elevate those services to the status of faux "human rights" then it weakens actual rights. If your right to association is on the same playing field as my "right" to public housing, then disbanding right-leaning political parties is on the table because they threaten my human rights.
This may seem like an absurd example but we already have absurd arguments like the "right" to feel safe outweighs the right to bear arms, or the "right" to not hear hate speech outweighs the right to free expression. Balancing positive "rights" that must be supplied by the government against actual freedom-from-coercion negative rights is a monumental expansion of state power. Enshrining positive rights, as desirable as the ends are in themselves, is a serious and fundamental distortion to the ideological foundations of liberalism.