Chapters 2 & 3

Wellman talks about at the beginning of chapter two, three generations of human rights: Civil and political rights, social welfare rights and solidarity rights. First generation rights are civil and political rights; civil meaning every citizen possesses these rights and political meaning they are enabled to participate in the establishment of government. And he says that this idea has come from ancient lineage. Why then has it taken our country so long to establish these rights amongst our own people? As we grow as a country it is almost no-wonder why we have had this proliferation of rights, “moral rights”. For the longest time our society has not treated all human beings equally as our very own constitution has stated. We have amendments after amendments giving the same rights to different genders, races of people. If our society just followed the moral principle by which we were founded on, that all men were created equal then we might not have this proliferation.

When citizens enter into a society they essentially enter into a social contract and by that they limit certain rights to which they may have previously held for the betterment of society to secure these fundamental moral rights, Wellman states. Associated with the first generation of rights is that of the right to asylum, if certain other social groups throughout the world such as the United Nations were effective then certain human rights might not be in place. The right to asylum is a key right to be able to survive if someone “country, government” is after you for an unjust reason then this particular right I think is good. But why establish rights after the base is corrupt. Wouldn’t it be more effective to establish certain rights and enforce certain laws on all peoples internationally then to establish rights by which the right itself shouldn’t exist because the problem shouldn’t exist?

The second generation rights Wellman talks about are social welfare rights. The right to work is part of this; I think that work is a privilege and a legal right and not necessarily a fundamental human right. If one kills another and is imprisoned does he loose his right to work or his privilege to work? I would argue that he loses his privilege to work and perhaps even a legal right associated with that. If these were a human moral right and there is a possibility it could be. then we as a social network on earth have failed many peoples, maybe even the majority of people in this aspect of welfare rights. Even though there are no economic, social, or cultural human rights under existing international law. Wellman says that the primary test for a moral right is practicability, is this practicable?

The third generations of rights include solidarity rights. Whether this is an actual human right is debatable. As some have argued and I agree that adding this generation of human rights would devalue the currency of human rights. If these rights exist it seems to me that they would fundamentally alter human rights as we know them. Because what may seem best for a group of people might not always be best for an individual person, this view is utilitarian to me. Because if these rights exist then the better part of society would choose which groups are right and which are wrong. It would leave many individual people out of what the majority calls right and wrong. As Wellman talks about this would call for worldwide action immediately. Not that this would be bad but again is this plausible? If we actually established an international organization which effectively orchestrated the moral action around the world then this may be within reach. But given that organizations such as the UN or NATO have not been the most effective by all means then solidarity rights to large groups seems to me to hinder the actual goal of human rights. Solidarity rights seem as Wellman puts it incompatible with the “nature of human rights”.

Civil rights are rights one possesses as a citizen. And the civil rights movement focused on three areas of rights: non-segregated public education, interracial marriage, and preferential admissions. It is a little crazy to me to not allow children of different skin colors or adults of different skin colors to be granted the same education or the right to marry. But when it comes to the “legal” right to marry whatever color one is, it opens the door to many more questions dealing with marriage. The first whether or not people of the same sex should be allowed to marry, the second how many spouses one should be allowed to have. Because it seems to me that allowing one of these should be tolerant of the other. Why does our society view that marriage between a man and woman the only legally binding way to marry. And once married why one is allowed only one wife. If these views are based on the Judao-Christian point-of-view then why haven’t we established more laws based on this view point? If we were founded as a country on Christian values then why are some areas permissible and others not. And if these laws are established where it ends perhaps it is a proliferation of human rights. How far will it go? Until all are happy? Until everything is acceptable? Our founding fathers left the church in the state and as we are headed toward a secular system, is there room for God and if so where?

Preferential admissions to universities is not a progressive way to think. Bakke was rejected out of the medical school he wanted to get into while others were accepted into the school with lower tests scores then himself. To me this is a major problem within our colleges and universities or any place/organization that uses preferential admissions. It is almost like saying to the people nowadays that because your great grandfather were treated poorly that we are going to grant you compensation for the actions our grandfathers did to them. if we are progressing toward human rights then this seems to put us in almost a reverse sense. It is still racism just directed at a different race. One question Wellman asks is “US institutions have a legal right but do they have a moral right?” I would say no they do not. Because as he goes on to say it is morally wrong to engage in any form of racial discrimination and I happen to agree with him. He talks about how this is reverse racial discrimination. It is like the government providing funding for Native Americans, as we can all see that reservations are not very well sought after. The government granting funding for the wrong doings the white grandfathers did to the red grandfathers, this is obscene. Again if we allow preferential admissions to continue then we have already begun to cripple the civil rights movement.

Too many rights have been established for too many people groups. We need to have rights for all peoples and not just certain groups. If we are a society that does not allow racism in our government and laws than reverse racial discrimination is just as bad as racial discrimination. At the end of the chapter he asks if the proliferation of rights has improved our legal system and I would say, NO. It has not and if we continue down the road we are on then like I said we will paralyze our very own human rights and ones that should be seen as moral.