Quote:
Originally Posted by Ian
Why are Congressmen allowed to march with banners saying they are congressmen? Why don't they just march with some other group?
You have to understand that in our day and age congresspeople (be careful--congress(men) could be sexually discriminative now) are more equal than the rest of us. They are a part of the ruling class. They set the agenda and the rules by which we live and the rights that we have.
When you pick and choose the associations you allow to be displayed in your parade and those choices match an increasingly unpopular side of a hot button human rights issue, whether intentionally or not, you are inviting criticism.
Associations, are by definition, a matter of choice. Without choice, association is irrelevant--everyone and everything are all one, without distinction. "Association" without choice loses its distinctive quality and becomes a redundant, unnecessary word.
Human rights issues can be of two kinds: prescribed or unalienable. If they are prescribed, they cannot be denied by "association." On the other hand, if "association" is an unalienable right, it cannot be denied by a prescribed right. So there must be an accommodation between prescribed and unalienable rights. All manner of prescribed rights do not interfere with the unalienable right of association.
Rights of free association, also, must not encroach upon each other. "Gay" rights, insofar as they are unalienable, cannot distort heterosexual rights, whatever those are, insofar as they are unalienable. Gay right to free association must not distort heterosexual, or any other group, right to free association. Each is free to associate on their own terms.
All human rights issues, when they conflict with one another, are hot button issues. Whichever may currently be more "popular" may get better press, but is no less "hot" to the less popular "right." And the latter may very well get criticized, but it is no less a human right.
At least, that is how it used to be.
If you looked back on the civil rights movements from the 60's I'm sure you could find a truck load of direct-line comparisons to race in public displays during that time. At the time they probably used the exact same defense, and nowadays history remembers those people as racists.
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The civil rights movements in the 1960's were about human rights. Not the unalienable rights to be black. No one was denying them the right to be black. What they wanted, initially, were the unalienable rights with which humans are endowed. Mostly those individual unalienable rights to free association, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and freedom to possess property. And, as well, the prescribed right of equality before the law.
They weren't interested in joining other than racially defined parades by touting their blackness. If a parade didn't appeal to their values, there was no need to participate. They wanted to enjoy participation in their own parades which celebrated their own culture insofar as that was distinctive from the rest of society. And to join in other parades which celebrated similar values to their own.
Government was not used to promote, initially, specific "black" rights, but to promote equal rights.
A lot of that has changed. There are now set asides, entitlements, and privileges which are targeted to specific groups. This has fostered the notion that government can be used to do so. And this is used as leverage for various groups to get specific treatment at the expense of other groups.
This was accomplished by first blurring the lines of distinction through the rhetoric of equality and fairness. The old unalienable rights were possessed by individuals. Equality in the old system was merely before the law and "fairness" was trumped by individual ability. Unalienable rights stood in the way of "fairness" and equality of outcome. Unalienable rights had to be dissolved and replaced by prescribed rights. Those rights which government prescribed and granted. Only then could true "equality" and fairness be achieved. The lines of distinction were not only to be blurred, but to be obliterated. The great divisive distinctions in gender, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, etc., etc., would be of little to no importance and replaced with equality. And the great division in wealth would be ameliorated, eventually to be erased. Again, true equality and fairness would be achieved.
Of course, those goals are still a work in progress. That there are actually even greater distinctions of wealth now--but that is only in the top 1%--is merely a bump in the road (even though this has always existed in top down authoritarian systems). And, also, the distinctions among us are even more delineated now, but that is merely because groups have been given a voice to demand. Those who were victims of racism are now the most vocal racists. Those who were gender or sexuality oppressed are now the most vocal and active sexual agenda activists. And we can surely see how that is right and necessary--eventually, we will all be the same and those voices will no longer be necessary.
This all became possible through the centralization of power to the Federal Government at the expense of the power once inherent in the States and the People. And much was done exactly in order to transfer that power. And the rationale for that transformation is to eliminate those problems that were fostered by the supposedly fuzzy notions of unalienable rights, and create a far more supposedly efficient system of governance. Individual "rights" beyond the reach of government is a by-gone nostrum of outdated enlightenment era thinking. The only way to effective "rights" is to define and prescribe them by those experts who have gone beyond a sort of organic "enlightenment" and have been progressively educated in the solution and administration of human needs.