Inherent human rights - inherent means something rather profound -
existing in someone or something as a natural and inseparable quality, characteristic, or right; innate; basic; inborn.
Innate, basic, inborn, inseparable, natural. In the natural order of things, in a sane culture, a sane world human rights wouldn't even be a topic to discuss. It's like discussing whether or not people have a right to mitochondria. If it's in your cells it's going to be hard to debate your right to it.
I'm not driven by a particular respect for the Constitution, although I view it as an amazing document, written by men with flaws who nevertheless had grand ideas that created a new way for Europeans to govern themselves.
I'm not driven by ideology, or Rule of Law although I don't dismiss the importance of either.
I'm driven by the experience of my brother, troubled young man who enlisted in the Marine Corps at age 18 because he was such a problem for everyone he hoped the Marine Corps would build him into a man. My parents were scared, the Vietnam War was raging, the death toll rising, but they were also at a loss and willing to let him make this decision. He came home from boot camp bald (my hippie long-hair brother looked so wrong), very fit, and dazed. On the last day of his leave he sat with me and my parents and sobbed, describing his experiences of being taught to kill gooks. He knew it was off, it was propaganda, he was being taught to dehumanize people in order to make it easier to kill them, and he didn't understand why killing would make him more of a man. My dad took him to Canada the next day, and we all pretended we had no idea where he was. My dad got involved in Clergy and Laymen Concerned, and with the Quakers. We become politically active after years of laying low, which is what Lutheran ministers are supposed to do. Chris eventually came home, addicted to many drugs and in need of help, and he did some time in the brig. It was rough. He has an inherent right not to be trained to kill.
I'm driven by my father's despair and confusion when he was targeted by the John Birch Society after writing a letter to the editor of the Grand Forks paper that was picked up by the New York Times. It was called "Less Than a Megadeath", and he wrote about driving around the countryside (he had 2 small country churches in addition to the town church), seeing the missile sites and pondering being one of the acceptable million that would die if the Cold War got hot. He wasn't sure how that was okay, that he and his family and friends were less important than people in New York City or LA or even Minneapolis. He wondered why we spent so much on war and so little on peace.
He was asked to resign after the Birchers started calling him a commie, and left the ministry altogether at that time. Nothing made sense to him, that he could be asking why Christians weren't demanding that we follow Christ's teachings and stop tolerating war without receiving death threats and demands that he leave town. (I think one of his sermons in response to the Birchers mentioned that he'd been unable to find anything in the Gospels about "If your neighbor doesn't have a nuclear warhead, provide one for him and it will be as if you had done this to me." He was a bit of a smartass.) He also had an inherent right to ask why he was negligible.
I'm driven by the memory of a very young me, trying to make sense of my first real job after HS, a corporate job with a major insurance company that still exists. The pay was so-so, but I had scored higher than anyone in the history of the company on the pre-employment testing and was assured that I might be Underwriter material. I started as a file clerk. After 6 months I asked about the process of becoming an underwriter. It was vague. After 3 more months I was promoted to Unit Clerk, secretary to 6 agents. The workload was intense, and dull. I asked again about training. I was told that they generally kept underwriting positions for men, because they had families to support. I replied that I had myself to support and I could use a car and a place to live with my own bedroom and a closet. Then there was a mention of the fact that I'd leave after I married, and it wasn't worth it to invest in training women. In shock I returned to my desk, picked up my purse and my coat and left. They called a couple of times to find out where I was. I never told them I was in feminist angst for the first time, facing the reality of being a woman in this country in the late '60's. I have an inherent right to be an equal human being.
I'm driven by remembering Dennis and Keith, longtime friends of my husband who partnered with us in a new business venture. About 2 years after we opened Dennis started to lose weight rapidly. No one could figure out what was wrong with him until it was too late to start a treatment protocol. He was the first of 3 close friends who died of AIDS in the 80's. Our tanning business took a hit because we had gay men at the desk, and the anti-gay slant to AIDS coverage terrified even nice people. I didn't give a shit about the business, I was livid that it was so easy to vilify people who were dying horribly.
It was after we all knew Dennis was dying that they started telling me more, more about their lives, the process of accepting their sexuality, the cruelties they faced, the threats when they tried to buy their house. They told me how important people like David were to them, people who just took them as they were. It was an interesting friendship - David was a cocky little tough guy, Keith was a screaming queen, Dennis was a computer nerd who kind of got a kick out of seeing people react with shock to finding out he was gay.
They used to play bits of classical recordings for me, and quiz me about who the composer was. I was always smarter when I was with them - why? I loved them and I miss them. They had an inherent right to live as equal human beings, without being marginalized, mocked, beaten bloody, or vilified.
I'm driven by what I learned from my best friend after she decided to improve her Tango skills by spending a few months in Buenos Aires. While exploring she came across the Madres of the Paza de Mayo, started out photographing their marches and quiet protests, ended up visiting the camps and detention centers and learning everything she could about the Dirty War and American involvement in all the dirty wars in South and Central America.
Here's a link to text and photos : Sylvia Horwitz, Madres photos
My favorite of her pictures
The Disappeared had an inherent right to live out their lives, their mothers and grandmothers have a right to know what happened to them.
My dad probably deserves most of the blame for radicalizing his kids. He used to lecture/sermonize on
Thorstein Veblen:
From Wikipedia: Veblen is famous in the history of economic thought for combining a Darwinian evolutionary perspective with his new institutionalist approach to economic analysis. He combined sociology with economics in his masterpiece, The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), arguing there was a basic distinction between the productiveness of "industry," run by engineers, which manufactures goods, and the parasitism of "business," which exists only to make profits for a leisure class. The chief activity of the leisure class was "conspicuous consumption", and their economic contribution is "waste," activity that contributes nothing to productivity.
(Daddy loved to rag on about conspicuous consumption, although he was not altogether impressed with many of Thorstein's ideas.)
He quoted Jefferson on the dangers of unbridled capitalism, Eisenhower on the destructiveness of the MIC, Epictetus on
Be[ing] careful to leave your sons well instructed rather than rich, for the hopes of the instructed are better than the wealth of the ignorant.
and
First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.
and my favorite
If thy brother wrongs thee, remember not so much his wrong-doing, but more than ever that he is thy brother.
I'm driven by remembering a 14 year old girl who had a baby when I was about 5. I was fascinated by this chaotic household and would sneak over to visit. It was the baby in the dresser drawer that drew me. It was so peculiar. Decades later I found out that the real peculiarity was that everyone in town "knew" that this man was raping his children, and no one took any action. She had an inherent right to a safe childhood, to a life in which she never gave birth to her own sister.
I'm driven by the client of a friend who was murdered by her husband the day before she was to enter a shelter. She had an inherent right to live without terror and violence, her children had a right to be raised by their mother in peace and safety.
I'm driven by the cantor who sang with such passion, who had the numbers tattooed on his arm, who rarely spoke of his past. He had an inherent right to live without memories of holocaust, to raise his children and celebrate 50 or 60 years with his wife, to have brothers and sisters, not just memories.
I'm driven by a need to know why violence is so casually acceptable. Like Gary Trudeau, I want to know why we spend trillions and sacrifice hundreds of thousands of lives to avenge 3000 deaths, but spend nothing and say nothing to prevent the 270,000 gun deaths in America that have occurred since 9/11/2001.
This is about so much more than whether or not Dick Cheney and George Bush get punished. These sad little assholes are just the latest in a long line of neo-cons who promote violence, who get off on torture, who spend taxpayer dollars putting right wing lunatics into power all over the world to protect American business interests and don't give a shit how many of their own people they murder, torture, destroy, intimidate, or deprive.
This is about the reality that our country is built on a genocide that continues to this day, that its growth and success are built on slavery and waves of immigration xenophobia that provided us with the same cheap labor force we're making use of today - the micks and chinks and wetbacks who work in fields and factories, on highways, railways and McMansions for a pittance because they believe things will be better for their children.
This is a country that worships guns, glorifies violence, uses women and children as toys and pawns, despises and abuses anyone who isn't white, male, wealthy. I'm reading things in LTEs in 2011 that come straight from the Berlin of 1931.
Ranting about it won't change anything. Addressing it directly might. At this point I'm far more interested in the growth of manufacturing than I am in Dick Cheney's ultimate end. He'll die, and a new Cheney/McCarthy/Coughlin clone will arise unless we take responsibility for the future of this country.
The future of this country is Sarah Palin, the new sockpuppet in the White House unless we focus up on fighting the people who think it's just fine to let granny starve to death, but not before they make use of her to energize their base.