Nathan Key

I hope it doesn't look like I come here to pick fights. There's really interesting thoughts going on in this blog. I don't think I'm very good at finding interesting ways to say "Right on, I really agree with that." So if I stop by and seem to only disagree, it's perhaps a symptom of laziness on my part, that I'm not putting the effort out to find an interesting way to say "I agree" on the stuff I agree with.
At any rate:
It seems to me that much of the usefullness of the entire question of "What is a right?" Centers around bringing those rights to someone being denied them. The student protestors in Tianamin Square, China, certainly did not possess the various rights they were fighting for. American slaves did not possess the freedoms they deserved and fought for these. The British, at the time of the American Revolution, would have been quite foolish to say "Representation is only a right that belongs to people residing in England herself. We don't owe you representation." And if they did say this, the American Revolutionairies would not have bought it.
I think two seperate questions need to be teased out in this debate. The first is "Is X a human right?" The second is "How can we bring this right to as many people as possible without violating other rights?"
I think everything a country asserts as rights, it ought to assert as universal human rights. I think that There's nothing inhernent to my being American that implies I deserve extra rights in principle.
I guess, in short, I'm disputing the funamental claim that there are "universal human rights" and "other rights"
Having said all that, I do believe that we can not be expected to unhesitatingly export every single right that we have to every single country in the world at this very moment.
If we did, we would violate a variety of other rights. Other countries have rights of soveriegnity, for example. And people within our country have the right to reap the benefits of what they sew.
It seems to me that if we assert that people have a right to life, we are asserting that they have a right to recieve health care. If we had some sort of machine that instantly healed everyone, we'd be immoral to not share it with everyone in the world. I'd suggest that health care is a universal human right.
But sense health care comes at a cost, I think that a moral response to this question requires weighing the cost to us with the benefits to others.
If we simply pointed at a bunch of doctors, and said "You, over there. You're going to Guatamala to help their dying, or you go to jail." We would be violating the doctors rights to liberty. If we said "You Americans over there, you're each going to pay an extra $25 a week to build a Hospital in Thailand." We're violating their rights to choose how to spend the money they earn.
I think a debate that happened in this way would lead to some differences. Though I have earned my money I have done so in a context that was built on the backs of others. My $4.00 iced coffee would cost more if it hadn't been brewed from the beans of exploited labor. They, for example, have a right to some of the wealth that I have effectively stolen from them. My right to use "my" money as I see fit I think needs to be curtailed to some extent.
It's a very difficult thing... But I think this is the logical way to proceed, rather than claiming that some rights are universal and others particular.