Golden girls like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and golden agers like Bernie Sanders are seen by most Americans as curiosities rather than as serious political figures capable of leading us into the sunny uplands of the social welfare state. Indeed, most Americans really don't know what socialism is since it's advocates are often vague or misleading about what their proposals would actually entail, and when they're told what it is they declare that they want no part of it.
The article is informative and makes for good reading, but there's one passage in it that caught my attention even though it's actually only incidental to Continetti's theme. In it he quotes Bernie Sanders telling an interviewer that,
...socialism "means economic rights and human rights. I believe from the bottom of my heart that healthcare is a human right. … To be a democratic socialist means that we believe—I believe—that human rights include a decent job, affordable housing, health care, education, and, by the way, a clean environment."This strikes me as a very odd thing for Mr. Sanders to say because according to CNN Sanders is thoroughly secular, i.e. he has no belief in any transcendent source of human rights.
If this be so, has he never wondered where human rights come from or how there could even be such things?
If there's no God from whence comes a "right" to a decent job, affordable housing, healthcare, education and a clean environment? If one has no belief in a divine provenience of our rights, what does it even mean to say that something is a "human right"? Why do humans have rights and how do we decide what they are?
The concept of human rights arose out of the thinking of Christian canonists in the Middle Ages and gradually evolved to its current state of development. It was predicated on the belief that human beings are created by God in His image, that we are loved by God, that we are all equal in his sight and that God demands that we treat each other in accord with those facts of our existence. It was also based upon the belief that we'll be held accountable for how justly we treat our fellow man.
Do away with this suite of theological premises and we're left with nothing upon which to base the notion of human rights except subjective sentimentality. Certainly, there's nothing in the evolutionary process nor any other naturalistic source that's adequate to ground objective notions of equality, dignity and accountability.
On Sanders' secularism human rights are a fiction, an illusion, something we fabricate to make the country easier to govern, but they're no more substantial than a mirage. They're like the arbitrary rules of a game which can be changed, or even dispensed with, by anyone who has the power to do so.
One wishes that the next time he does an interview someone would ask Sanders what he thinks it is which provides the foundation for his belief in human rights, but unfortunately such questions never seem to occur to interviewers, or, if they do, perhaps they're thought impolite or impertinent.
In any case, they never get asked which is a pity.
