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Some time ago, I sat in on a tenure-track sociology job talk. The candidate researched something about "universal human rights" through examining UN declarations. I pay a lot of attention to definitions, and I remember that this candidate did not define "universal human rights" during the talk yet talked about the study of UN declarations through a framework that assumed that "universal human rights" had some particular meaning. During Q&A I tried to get some clarification on the matter:
"What, exactly, makes something a 'universal human right'?", I asked.
The candidate replied that a right is universal if it's applicable to everyone.
So I followed up, "For example, would it be a 'universal human right' to save one's soul through worship Jesus Christ in the one-true-way of Catholic faith?"
The candidate replied, "You mean the right to religion? Yes, the right to religion would be a universal human right."
And I said, "No, I mean specifically the right to save one's soul through, specifically, converting and adhering to Catholic faith."
The candidate, showing some confusion: "But that's specifically a Catholic perspective..."
And I replied, "But it's nonetheless universal. A devout Catholic truly believes that the only way for any human being to save their immortal soul from eternal damnation is by converting to Catholic faith, and, out of sheer compassion for all fellow human beings, declares the universal human right to convert and adhere to Catholicism."
"I'd have to think about that," said the candidate, but I have clearly monopolized enough of Q&A time, another colleague jumped in with a different question, and the discussion moved on.
Later, in a more informal setting and without the candidate, I was chatting with some of my colleagues about the job talk and my question. Some thought that it was indeed an interesting and important question, whether we can define 'universal human rights' without supposing a particular framework of values. But the most common response was: Look, we all know what he means by 'universal human rights', and editors in sociology journals know what he means, and reviewers know what he means, so it doesn't matter that he defined the terms so poorly as to include the Inquisition, because it will in no way impede his publication record.
(This was the tenure-track position where the sociology department deliberately cast a wide net to diversify the research within the department. I asked if that means they are looking for a conservative candidate, and we all had a laugh.)
To bring it back to "competitive authoritarianism": I am not at all surprised that two social scientists swimming in the liberal-left bubbles of Harvard and U-Toronto would fail to consider how their abstract terms for "competitive authoritarian" techniques instantiate from a conservative perspective. The specific examples you bring up may have not even crossed their path, like the IRS investigations into politically conservative non-profits a few years back, though more likely the authors don't feel like the examples fit their "competitive authoritarian" framework because the authors agree with the aims of those instances of techniques--they therefore feel simply like the correct application of law. Prosecution of J6 participants? Surely it's right and proper to prosecute insurrection. Same for that county clerk who refuses to follow the new marriage law. Same for going after conservative news--must stamp out misinformation. It takes someone outside of that bubble to notice the similarities.
A big part of The Motte's value is giving cross-bubble perspectives, a place where someone posts "Just keep swimming", someone else goes: "Running gets you further", and yet another pipes in: "Fly, you fools!!"
"Yes, that is a subset of the right to one's religion. If you have come to the conclusion that Catholicism is true, wish to join the Catholic Church, and they wish to welcome you as a baptised and confirmed member, you have the right not to have that interfered with."
Catholic, quite literally, means universal in the sense that everyone ought to be a member, and to put aside other religions. Starting assumptions matter, that was the point of his example.
Now, you and I have quite different starting assumptions. But from my starting assumptions allowing other religions to proselytize undermines the universal human right to salvation through the Catholic church, and error does not have natural rights at all. It might incidentally be tolerated to avoid a worse evil(eg false conversions at gunpoint), but you simply happen to believe that Catholicism is not true and that the UN universal declaration of human rights are a reflection of natural law.
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That's how the candidate first took it, too: if someone reaches a decision to convert to Catholicism, don't interfere.
But from a perspective of, say, a devout 16-century Catholic, the "if" part is not there: If you come to the conclusion that you don't need to convert to Catholicism, you are deeply mistaken (and probably being lied to by the devil), and your immortal soul is still in danger. That perspective is what drove so many missionaries to risk their lives in the Americas and Africa. That perspective stroke the fires of Inquisition: what matter a few minutes of physical agony if it helps you see the light?
But all I was trying to determine is whether this perspective fits the candidate's definition of "universal human right" as "a right that's applicable to any person". I think it does.
I think I see where you're coming from. I suspect that the candidate may have been grasping at the concept of universalisability, in the Kantian sense. (See "You Kant Dismiss Universalizability", Slate Star Codex, May 2014.)
Catholicism and Protestantism are the type specimens for freedom of religion in Western political thought, precisely because 16th- and 17th-century Catholics believed that 'everyone has the right to save their souls through converting to Catholicism, adhering to Catholic faith, and worshiping Jesus Christ according to the teachings of the Holy Roman Church', and 16th- and 17th-century Protestants believed, just as strongly, that 'everyone has the right to save their souls through converting to Protestantism, adhering to Protestant faith, and worshiping Jesus Christ according to the principle of sola scriptura'; they also both believed that they had the right to impose the true religion by force on those who did not accept it willingly.
This culminated in the Thirty Years' War, which caused a six-foot decrease in altitude for 4-12 million people; seeking to avoid further bloodshed, Europe and its descendants arrived at today's conventional understanding of religious freedom; that if Mary believes in Catholicism and Elizabeth believes in Protestantism, Mary has the right to be Catholic without interference from Elizabeth, and Elizabeth has the right to be Protestant without interference from Mary; each doing unto the other as she would have the other do unto her. (This is the 'reciprocal liberty' of the Quakers, described in Albion's Seed.)
Good point: at least, if I were to go back in time and steelman my own question, I would use 'universalizability' to convey my notion, despite the ugliness of the term. I mean, it has both the -alize suffix that turns a noun into a verb, and then the -ability suffix to turn it back to a noun.
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But Catholicism is a monotheist faith, which denies that any other religion has validity and it is the one true path to salvation.
To get away from the analogy, it would be like say that Wokism is a tolerant and diverse sociological lense, but it doesn't consider any other interpretation to disparate impact other than racism.
It is trivially easy to assert that your parochial views are actually universal unpartisan principles. Or 'just being a good person', as I've heard it being told.
That was the idea behind the question. The catholic part was a proxy for the presuppositions of any world view. What happens when you give someone the right to choose but only if they accept the presuppositions that lead to that conclusion you want them to draw?
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I feel like this is getting at why the political divide has become the way it is: a generation ago I suspect even lay members of the public would understand and (broadly, if not uniformly) agree on "universal human rights", for Americans probably citing either the Constitution or Declaration of Independence. Today, the ivory tower definition has moved on at least a bit, and while the academics probably agree with each other, the lay public has started noticing when The Powers That Be have tweaked the definitions to mismatch the populace and they don't feel like they've been consulted or heard on how it impacts them through issues like refugee status or (youth) gender medicine.
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I obviously didn't sit in on this talk, but when someone says "Universal Human Rights" in reference to the UN, they probably specifically mean the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which is a specific document.
As always on the topic of authoritarianism, I have to beat my usual drum. It is unlikely for someone to swim in a bubble so enclosed that they wouldn't notice the covid-related authoritarianism. It is exceptionally unlikely if those bubbles are US academia rather than red state small towns or Sweden. More likely is that they agree with that particular kind of authoritarianism.
I'm a mathematician, so I get antsy when someone doesn't clarify their definitions of key terms. I would have accepted something like "By universal human rights I mean whatever was declared in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948". But no, this candidate was presenting a framework that (and I won't do it justice here) kind of assumes some platonic version of "universal human rights" that international bodies like UN can discover, even if imperfectly, and this framework was intended to model the process of such a discovery. So understanding what this Platonic stuff is was kind of important, I thought.
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