Showing posts with label liberalism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label liberalism. Show all posts

Wednesday, June 06, 2007

Liberal Republicans

From last nights Republican Presidential Candidates debate there were detectable liberal tendencies.

This gives a new meaning to neo-liberal as Republican candidates move left. Making them sound like Canadian liberal social democrats.


Brownback Is Pro-Labor Union!!!! In Iran that is...


And Mike Hucakbee embraced the social gospel....from the right

"Many of us who are pro-life, quite frankly, I think, have made the mistake of giving people the impression that pro-life means we care intensely about people as long as that child is in the womb. But beyond the gestation period, we've not demonstrated as demonstrably as we should that we respect life at all levels, not just during pregnancy. We shouldn't allow a child to live under a bridge or in the back seat of a car. We shouldn't be satisfied that elderly people are being abused and neglected in nursing homes."


Ron Paul sounds like Jack Layton.....

TEXAS REP. RON PAUL
called pre-emptive war the most pressing moral issue in the United States: "I do not believe that's part of the American tradition. We, in the past, have always declared war in defense of our liberties or go to aid somebody ... And now, tonight, we hear that we're not even willing to remove from the table a pre-emptive nuclear strike against a country that has done no harm to us directly and is no threat."


You can't tell the difference between the players without a program....

Obama, Brownback want Iran divestment


Congressman Duncan Hunter contested the myth that the reason to import foreign workers is because American workers don't want to do these menial jobs. He sounded like AFL-CIO President John Sweeney.

“If you had your way with immigration who would fill the jobs that no one wants?” asked Tom Fahey of the New Hampshire Union Leader. Hunter referred back to the employment “sweep” in a meat packing plant in Iowa. “There were American citizens lined up the next day to get their jobs back at $18 bucks an hour” said Hunter.
And of course Rudy Gulliani cannot hide his very Canadian view on abortion.

'My view on abortion is that it's wrong,' he said, 'but that ultimately government should not be enforcing that decision on a woman.'




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Friday, March 16, 2007

The Language Of Racism


Gee I guess it misses something in the translation. Say it in Quebecois and it isn't racist. It is only racist if you say it in English.

Mr. Boisclair was speaking French to a classroom of university students when he referred to "yeux bridés," which translates as slanted or slanting eyes. He suggested yesterday the term might have a more negative connotation in English than in French.

"I'm doing politics, not linguistics," he said, adding that he believes "Quebeckers are 100 per cent behind me" on the issue. Even Mr. Boisclair's rivals said they think he did not intend any malice.

"He might have used a better choice of words, but I know Mr. Boisclair enough to know his intention was not to be disrespectful," Liberal Leader Jean Charest said.

This is the height of unilinqual absurdity. But while the Quebecois Nation and its Nationalists, those Pure Laine unilinqual French speakers who proudly celebrate their colonial past as the French Imperialists in North America, but bemoan their later status as servants in their own house, try and cover up the fact that both Nations, those of the British and the French Imperialists are inherently racist.

This is the contradiction of Quebec Nationalism, as it is of English Canadian Nationalism. Of any Nationalism, period. This is not merely a matter of linguistics. It is a reflection of Imperialism. Canada being formed by two colonial powers, England and France, whose international battles for continental and global superiority over each other in the 18th and 19th Centuries shaped our country's political landscape.

The Quebecois of the old Pure Laine families despite their later poverty, remain a colonial petit-bourgeois ideological force. They were the founding families, the mercantilist and land owning classes. Today they are the farmers in Quebec, they live in the rural ridings of the townships and they gave their support to the Duplesis regime and later to the Creditistes, the Social Credit Party of Quebec. Just as their rural right wing counterparts in English Canada did with their support for the Social Credit party in Alberta and Federally across Canada.

The later slogan of the Quiet Revolution, Masters in Our Own House, belies this inherent old colonial French thinking. While touted by the left in Quebec as being progressive, it is not. It is a sop to the reactionary thinking of nationalism of pre-confederation, of the days before the battle of the plains of Abraham. The Quebecois of the townships today are the reactionary nationalists, who support the PQ, BQ and the ADQ as well as the Charest Liberals to a lesser degree.

In another article I will deal with the so called social democratic and left wing of nationalist politics in Quebec and why they have been a failure as a socialist movement.

Boisclair's racist comments, his refusal to apologize, bespeaks the reactionary nationalism of the colonialist mentality of the petit-bourgeoisie of Quebec. It was clear in statements made by PQ leader Jacques Parizeau, after the 1995 referendum, where he blamed Anglophone,immigrant and Jewish Quebecers for the loss of the vote.

Boisclair's comments must be seen in this light. That nationalism in Quebec is like ruling class nationalism everywhere, it is based on a distinct linguistic or ethnic national identity. Despite not being Masters In Their Own House, once they became masters they became the oppressors. This can be seen with Bill 101, and the underlying politics of nationalism in Quebec.

There is the Quebecois, the national petit-bourgoise that dates itself back to the colonial period of Canada's history, and then there are Quebecers. The latter being the English and immigrants who are not Pure Laine. They are bilingual, if not multilingual, the Pure Laine Quebecois has one language, one heritage, and is one people; the French Speaking.

This is what underlined Harpers stunning about face last fall when he recognized this fact. His Transportation Minister Lawrence Cannon, a Pure Laine Quebecois, though bilingual, said as much. The recognition of the Quebecois, as a nation as a people, was not a recognition of the diversity of Quebec in its modern form, but of the real ruling class in Quebec, the petit-bourgeoisie whose roots are in New France.

In English Canada the counterparts to the Pure Laine Quebecois are the old school nationalists, the reactionaries of the right. Like those who in the 1930's supported the KKK in Alberta; the Orange Lodge of Protestants, and from the ranks of some of those in Freemasonry. They were more concerned with French Catholic influence in 'English' Canada then they were about blacks, jews, or other immigrants (though these too were part of their opposition to immigration of Non-English, that is non-British from the Grand Old Empire, to Canada).

In the 1960's and through out the following decades the defended the old Ensign, with it's union jack, against the New Canadian Flag. They viewed the Liberals as the party of infamy, being the party of Quebec and of immigrants. Theirs was the good old party of the Conservatives, Arthur Meighen's party, not the later Progressive Conservative party of Diefenbaker, that is not an English name is it?

During the 1970's the racist reactionary right embraced the less offensive language of promoting Anglo Saxon Values. They hid their anti-Bilingualism and their anti-immigrant racism, indeed even their antisemitism, behind their supposed support for all things English in Canada. The old Ensign, the term 'Dominion of Canada', the monarchy, the fact Canada was one country under the Queen and had one official language; English, and one religion Christianity.

They attacked bilingualism and bi-culturalism, and Trudeau, as a conspiracy to change Canada into something un-British. When Ukrainian Canadians in the Liberal party pushed for a broader definition of Canada as being multicultural, they opposed that as well. Again for being an attack on Anglo Saxon, British Canada.

Later in the 1980's they added another term to their definition of themselves as an oppressed minority defending the old Empire values; Celtic-Anglo-Saxons. All this was a clever cover for the fact they were the same old racists, anti-immigrants, anti-Semites and anti-Quebec.

What they hold in common, these modern reactionaries of the Pure Laine in Quebec and those supporting the Dominion of Canada,is they base their politics on the old days of Upper and Lower Canada. Key to this is their common wish to be pure, to be unilingual. To be members of the old Imperial Empires, be they British or French.

These movements are inherently reactionary and conservative, in a Burkean fashion.

Modern Canadian Nationalism arose in the 1960's as did its counterpart in Quebec. Both were ostensibly left wing and social democratic. Where the Quebecois saw English colonial power as the enemy, Canadian nationalists saw American Imperialism as the enemy, since the English Imperial power collapsed after WWII, replaced by the new American Century.

And while both the Quebec Nationalists and their Canadian counterparts were predominately progressive and left wing through out the sixties and seventies, the old right wing nationalists were still powerful social forces, especially in the rural West and in the Quebec Townships.

What these reactionaries shared in common was a hatred of all things that were bi-lingual or multi-cultural. By their conservative nature they opposed all forms of modernization, of plurality, they wanted to retain their unique historical unilingual cultures.

There is an undercurrent of unilinqualism being promoted by the Conservative Federal Government in Ottawa today. And it is growing across Canada. English to be spoken in the ROC and French to be spoken in Quebec. A return of the two Solitudes.

The BQ in parliament speak in unilinqual Quebecois, several of Harpers ministers speak unilinqual Quebecois, just as many of his MP's are unilingual English speakers. Several of his cabinet ministers make a point of speaking English only though they are bilingual.

There is a transformation going on in Canada, that the parliamentary recognition of the Quebecois as a people, a nation, underscores, it is the death of bilingualism and bi-culturalism in the Federal State. This can be seen in the changes occurring in the linguistic programs in the Canadian Military, which the BQ and Liberals have pointed out in the house.


Minister O'Connor outlined the Department of Defence's new Official Languages Transformation Model. “During the last decade, the previous Liberal government never addressed the problems inherent to the previous universal approach to official languages within the Department of Defence. The Official Languages Transformation Model brings a new, more focused approach to bilingualism, which better takes into account the unique and distinct operational structure of the Canadian Forces. For example, senior officers will be held up to a much higher standard than in the past,” explained the Minister. “And the Model is in keeping with Canada's New Government's commitment to strongly defending our linguistic duality.”

“The goal of the Model is to ensure that National Defence personnel are led, trained, and supported in their official language of choice, thus better meeting the Department's legal obligations under the Official Languages Act. This will include requiring senior officers to be bilingual, when they are serving in units or functions designated as bilingual,” the Minister added.

The Conservatives are promoting two Canadian languages, not bilingualism and bi-culturalism, since that is a Liberal bugaboo, a much hated left over of the Trudeau era. The Harper Conservatives roots are in the old Social Credit party of Alberta, both provincial and Federal, the Reform party and its links to the reactionary right wing I spoke of earlier.

The are willing to accept two language groups in Canada, as long as they are unilingual. They have always opposed multiculturalism and bilingualism.

This new unilingualism can be seen in this recent incident in Alberta.

Poor English costs Quebecer his Suncor job

A Quebec ironworker is accusing Suncor of discrimination after he was fired for poor English, but a spokesman for the oil giant says poor communication can be dangerous.

The dismissal prompted a second Quebecer to quit Suncor in protest and has incensed the local ironworkers union, which is demanding Suncor do more to accommodate French-speaking tradesmen.

"They aggressively recruit labourers from China, Mexico and Germany, but won't hire us because our English isn't great," journeyman steelworker Marco Pelletier of Cowansville, Que., told the Sun in a French-language interview.

Iron Workers Local 720 will file a human rights
complaint against Suncor for firing a French speaking iron worker for speaking
poor English. Suncor's decision to terminate a qualified worker because of language is
discrimination based on ancestry and place of origin. Such discrimination is
prohibited under Alberta's Human Rights, Citizenship and Multiculturalism Act.
Carol Rioux, of Gaspesie, Quebec, was fired for failing English-language
orientation tests. He has been an ironworker for 25 years.

While Suncor claims that it is a safety issue, the reality is that they failed to provide instruction or training in both Canadian official languages. Something that is illegal under federal law.

One can find French and English on every cereal box in Canada, but Suncor claims it cannot provide the same for French speaking Canadians. Instead it fired the worker.This new uniligualism is the Asymmetrical Federalism being promoted by the Conservative government in Ottawa.

This unilingual asymmetrical federalism is racist, as Boisclair has shown, it is not the vision of Canada that the great Quebecois politician and classic liberal Louis- Joseph Papineau envisioned back in 1867, when he predicted a pluralistic Canada and Quebec which embraced new immigrants in particular the Chinese, whom he never called;
"yeux bridés".

Very blind are those who speak of the creation of a new nationality, strong and harmonious, on the northern bank of St Laurent and the Great Lakes, and who are unaware of or denounce the major and providential fact that this nationality is already very well formed, great, and growing unceasingly; that it cannot be confined to its current limits; that it has an irresistible force of expansion; that in the future it will be more and more made up of immigrants coming from all the countries of the world, no longer only from Europe, but soon of Asia, of which the overpopulation is five times more numerous and no longer has any other outfall than America; composed, says I, of all races of men, who, with their thousand religious beliefs, large mix of errors and truth, are pushed all by the Providence towards this common rendez-vous that will melt in unity and fraternity all of the human family.

1867 Speech of Louis-Joseph Papineau at the Institut canadien


For related articles see:

Racist ADQ

Whipping Boy

White Multiculturalism

The New Conservative Racism

Shameless

Does Bilingualism Matter?

Should Liberal Leader Be Bilingual

PET Would Not Be Amused

Asymmetrical Federalism

Destroying the Federation

Another Fascist Bites the Dust

A History of Canadian Wealth, 1914.


Historical Memory on the Eve of the Election


Social Credit And Western Canadian Radicalism

The Bankruptcy of Liberal Federalism

Rebel Yell

Social Credit

Western Canadian Populism



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Saturday, February 03, 2007

Habermas


Some Notes on Habermas and the Public Sphere of Politics.

Habermas draws a distinction between two types of action: communicative action, where the agents base their actions on (and coordinate their interactions by) their mutual recognition of validity-claims; and instrumental/strategic action, where the coordination of actions is linked to the their successful completion. Habermas argues that instrumental and strategic actions are (conceptually and in reality) always parasitic on communicative action. Hence instrumental and strategic actions alone cannot form a stable system of social action.

Habermas’s conceptual distinction between communicative action and instrumental action is paralleled by his distinction between lifeworld and system in his social ontology: his description of the nature of social being. The lifeworld concerns the lived experience of the context of everyday life in which interactions between individuals are coordinated through speech and validity-claims. Systems are real patterns of instrumental action instantiated by money (the capitalist economy) and power (the administrative state).



In his later work, Habermas made a distinction between "lifeworld" and "system." The public sphere is part of the lifeworld; "system" refers to the market economy and the state apparatus. The lifeworld is the immediate milieu of the individual social actor, and Habermas opposed any analysis which uncoupled the interdependence of the lifeworld and the system in the negotiation of political power-it is thus a mistake to see that the system dominates the whole of society. The goal of democratic societies is to "erect a democratic dam against the colonizing encroachment of system imperatives on areas of the lifeworld" (Further Reflections).


Habermas argues that the self-intepretation of the public sphere took shape in the concept of "public opinion", which he considers in the light of the work of Kant, Marx, Hegel, Mill and Tocqueville. The bourgeois public sphere eventually eroded because of economic and structural changes. The boundaries between state and society blurred, leading to what Habermas calls the refeudalization of society. State and society became involved in each other's spheres; the private sphere collapsed into itself. The key feature of the public sphere - rational-critical debate - was replaced by leisure, and private people no longer existed as a public of property owners. Habermas argues that the world of the mass media is cheap and powerful. He says that it attempts to manipulate and create a public where none exists, and to manufacture consensus. This is particularly evident in modern politics, with the rise of new disciplines such as advertising and public relations. These, and large non- governmental organizations, replace the old institutions of the public sphere. The public sphere takes on a feudal aspect again, as politicians and organizations represent themselves before the voters. Public opinion is now manipulative, and, more rarely, still critical. We still need a strong public sphere to check domination by the state and non-governmental organizations. Habermas holds out some hope that power and domination may not be permanent features.

Enlightenment Democracy, Relativism, and the Threat of Authoritarian Politics

A central issue in Habermas's effort to sustain the Enlightenment project is the problem of relativism. This problem underlies several postmodern critiques of modernity, the Enlightenment, and Habermas, and is thus a useful first path into Habermas's thought.

The Enlightenment project of justifying democratic polity (and thus justifying emancipation from non-democratic polities - e.g., the prevailing monarchies of the time) rests on these key conceptions:

    1) however diverse cultures and individuals may vary from one another in terms of religious convictions, traditions, sentiments, etc. - reason (at least in potential - a potential that must be developed by education) stands as a universally shared capacity of humanity;

    2) such reason is characterized first of all as an autonomy or freedom - a freedom which, for such central figures as Locke and Kant, is capable of giving itself its own law;

    3) just as this reason seems capable of discerning universal laws in the domain of mathematics and the natural sciences (witness the success of the Copernican Revolution and Newton) - so reason, it is hoped, is capable of discerning universal laws and norms in the moral and political domains.

      As an example of such a universal norm: if I am to exercise my freedom by choosing my own goals and projects - this freedom requires that others respect these choices by not attempting to override them and make use of me for their own purposes. (In Kantian terms, others must never treat me simply as a means, but always as an end.)

      But if I logically require others to respect my freedom as an autonomous rationality, then insofar as I acknowledge others as autonomous rationalities - reciprocity demands that I respect others' freedom as well.

This norm of respect then issues in the political demand for democracy: only democracies, as resting on the [free and rational] consent of the governed, thereby respect and preserve the fundamental humanity of its citizens ( i.e., precisely their central character as rational freedoms). [This argument, initially launched by John Locke, finds its way into Jefferson's Declaration of Independence, and from there into the arguments for women's emancipation in writers such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and the arguments for civil rights as articulated by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in his Letter from the Birmingham Jail.]

On The Living Wage/Guaranteed Income

To give this idea a more radical twist, we could endorse a general, state-guaranteed citizen income, as originally proposed by Andre Gorz and now backed by Claus Offe, among others. Severing the link between income and employment would place the current "economic society"--now centered on the traditional role of full-time wage labor-on a new footing and create an equivalent for the disintegrating welfare system. This "basic income" would absorb the capitalist world market's destructive impact on those who slide into the increasingly "superfluous" population. Such a radical redistribution program requires, however, a change in deep-rooted values that will be difficult to orchestrate. Also, under present conditions of global competition, we might wonder how the program could be financed within the budgetary limits of individual nation states, since the target income would have to be above the lowest level of welfare support.

The globalization of the economy ends the history of the welfare-state compromise. While it by no means ideally solved capitalism's inherent problems, this compromise had at least succeeded in keeping social costs within accepted limits. Despite the bureaucratization and "normalization" so convincingly criticized by Michel Foucault, the scale of social disparities under this compromise was limited sufficiently to avoid the manifest repudiation of the normative promises of the democratic and liberal tradition.



Religion in the Public Sphere

What is most surprising in this context is the political revitalization of religion at the heart of
Western society. Though there is statistical evidence for a wave of secularization in almost
all European countries since the end of World War II, in the United States all data show
that the comparatively large proportion of the population made up of devout and religiously
active citizens has remained the same over the last six decades.5 Here, a carefully
planned coalition between the Evangelical and born-again Christians on one side, the
American Catholics on the other side siphons off a political surplus value from the religious
renewal at the heart of Western civilization.6 And it tends to intensify, at the cultural level,
the political division of the West that was prompted by the Iraq War.7 With the abolition of
the death penalty, with liberal regulations on abortion, with setting homosexual
partnerships on a par with heterosexual marriages, with an unconditional rejection of
torture, and generally with the privileging of individual rights versus collective goods, e.g.,
national security, the European states seem now to be moving forward alone down the
path they had trodden side by side with the United States.

Against the background of the rise of religion across the globe, the division of the West is
now perceived as if Europe were isolating itself from the rest of the world. Seen in terms of
world history, Max Weber’s Occidental Rationalism appears to be the actual deviation. The
Occident’s own image of modernity seems, as in a psychological experiment, to undergo a
switchover: what has been the supposedly “normal” model for the future of all other
cultures suddenly changes into a special-case scenario. Even if this suggestive Gestaltswitch
does not quite bear up to sociological scrutiny, and if the contrasting evidence of
what appears as a sweeping desecularization can be brought into line with more
conventional explanations,8 there is no doubting the evidence itself and above all the
symptomatic fact of divisive political moods crystallizing around it. Irrespective of how one
evaluates the facts, there is now a Kulturkampf raging in the United States which forms the
background for an academic debate on the role of religion in the political public sphere.

Faith and Knowledge
First of all, the word "secularization" has a juridical meaning that refers
to the forcible appropriation of church property by the secular state. This
meaning has since been extended to the emergence of cultural and societal
modernism in general. Since then, the word "secularization" has been
associated with both of these opposed judgments, whether it is the
successful taming of ecclesiastical authority by worldly power that is being
emphasized or rather the act of unlawful appropriation.

According to the first interpretation, religious ways of thinking and living
have been replaced by reason-based and consequently superior equivalents.
According to the second, modern modes of thinking and living are to be
regarded as the illegitimate spoils of conquest. The "replacement" model
lends a progressive-optimistic meaning to the act of deconsecration, whereas
the "expropriation" model connotes theoretically-conceived corruption of a
rootless modernity.

But I think both interpretations make the same mistake. They both consider
secularization as a kind of zero-sum game between, on one hand, the
productive powers of science and technology harnessed by capitalism and, on
the other, the tenacious powers of religion and the church. This image no
longer fits a post-secular society that posits the continued existence of
religious communities within a continually secularizing society. And most
of all, this too-narrow view overlooks the civilizing role of democratically
enlightened common sense, which proceeds along its own track as an equal
third partner amid the murmurs of cultural conflict between science and
religion.

>From the standpoint of the liberal state, of course, religious communities
are entitled to be called "reasonable" only if they renounce the use of
violence as a means of propagating the truths of their faith. This
understanding stems from a threefold reflection on the role of the faithful
within a pluralistic society. First of all, the religious conscience must
handle the encounter with other confessions and other religions cognitively.
Second, it must accede to the authority of science, which holds a social
monopoly on knowledge. Finally, it must participate in the premises of a
constitutional state, which is based on a non-sacred concept of morality.
Without this reflective "thrust," monotheisms within ruthlessly modernizing
societies develop a destructive potential. The phrase "reflective thrust,"
of course, can give the false impression of being something that is
one-sided and close-ended. The reality, however, is that this work of
reflection in the face of any newly emerging conflict is a process that runs
its course through the public spaces of democracy.

As soon as an existentially relevant question, such as biotechnology,
becomes part of the political agenda, the citizens, both believers and
non-believers, will press upon each other their ideologically impregnated
world-views and so will stumble upon the harsh reality of ideological
pluralism. If they learn to deal with this reality without violence and
with an acceptance of their own fallibility, they will come to understand
what the secular principles of decision-making written into the Constitution
mean in a post-secular society. In other words, the ideologically neutral
state does not prejudice its political decisions in any way toward either
side of the conflict between the rival claims of science and religious
faith. The political reason of the citizenry follows a dynamic of
secularization only insofar as it maintains in the end product an equal
distance from vital traditions and ideological content. But such a state
retains a capacity to learn only to the extent that it remains osmotically
open, without relinquishing its independence, to both science and religion.

Of course, common sense itself is also full of illusions about the world and
must let itself be enlightened without reservation by the sciences. But the
scientific theories that impinge on the world of life leave the framework of
our everyday knowledge essentially untouched. If we learn something new
about the world and about ourselves as beings in the world, the content of
our self-understanding changes. Copernicus and Darwin revolutionized the
geocentric and anthropocentric worldviews. But the destruction of the
astronomical illusion that the stars revolve around the earth had less
effect on our lives than did the biological disillusionment over the place
of mankind in the natural order. It appears that the closer scientific
knowledge gets to our body, the more it disturbs our self-understanding.
Research on the brain is teaching us about the physiology of our
consciousness. But does this change that intuitive sense of responsibility
and accountability that accompanies all of our actions?

Pluralist Societies

The expanded concept of tolerance does not remain restricted to the sphere of religion but can be generally extended to tolerance of others who think differently in any way. Within today’s pluralist societies where the traditions of various linguistic and cultural communities come together, tolerance is always necessary "where ways of life challenge judgements in terms of both existential relevance and claims to truth and rightness" (J. Habermas)



Multiculturalism and the Liberal State

My article, n1 which provides the basis for our discussion, is a response
to my friend Charles Taylor's The Politics of Recognition. n2 The
controversial issue is briefly this: Should citizens' identities as
members of ethnic, cultural, or religious groups publicly matter,
and if so, how can collective identities make a difference within
the frame of a constitutional democracy? Are collective identities
and cultural memberships politically relevant, and if so, how can
they legitimately affect the distribution of rights and the recognition
of legal claims? There are many aspects to multiculturalism, but the
present debate focuses narrowly on normative questions of political
and legal theory. Without any attempt to summarize the arguments of
the book, I would like to remind you of the two opposed answers to
the question at hand - the liberal and the communitarian positions
- and of my own response, which is critical of both. n3

I cannot go into the details of the argumentation here, but it might
help just to mention both the philosophical and the political contexts
in which my response to Taylor was embedded.

As to philosophical themes, those familiar with discussions in political theory will have discovered two controversial issues at stake. First, I am defending liberals against the communitarian critique with regard to the concept of the "self." The individualistic approach to a theory of rights does not necessarily imply an atomistic, disembodied, and desocialized concept of the person. The legal person is, of course, an artificial construct. Modern legal orders presuppose abstract subjects as carriers of those rights of which they are composed. These artificial persons are not identical with natural persons, who are individuated by their unique life histories. But legal persons, too, should and can be constructed as socialized individuals. They are members of a community of legal consociates who are supposed to recognize each other as free and equal. The equal respect required from legal persons pertains, however, also to the context of those intersubjective relationships which are constitutive for their identities as natural persons.

Together with the communitarians I am, on the other hand, critical of the liberal assumption that human rights are prior to popular sovereignty. The addressees of law must be in a position to see themselves at the same time as authors of those laws to which they are subject. Human rights may not just be imposed on popular sovereignty as an external constraint. Of course, popular sovereignty must not be able to arbitrarily dispose of human rights either. The two mutually presuppose each other. The solution to this seeming paradox is that human rights must be conceived in such a way that they are enabling rather than constraining conditions for democratic self-legislation.

Turning to political themes: The idea of a "struggle for recognition" stems from Hegel's Phenomenology. n8 From this perspective, we can discover similarities among different but related phenomena: feminism, nationalism, conflict of cultures, besides the particular issue of multiculturalism. All these phenomena have in common the political struggle for the recognition of suppressed collective identities. This good is different from other collective goods. It cannot be substituted for by generalized social rewards (income, leisure time, working conditions, etc.) which are the objects of the usual distribution conflicts in the welfare state. But those struggles for recognition, fought in various forms of identity politics, are also different in many other respects. One such aspect is law: Since of these groups only women and ethnic minorities have been recognized as objects of constitutional protection, only feminist and mul- [*853] ticulturalist claims can be, at least in principle, settled within the frame of the constitutional state.

Finally, an example. The immediate political context in Germany at the time of my article was the debate on "asylum," which in fact was about immigration. Applying the principles above, one can arrive at the following conclusions: First, there are good legal reasons for defending a right to political asylum. n9 On the other hand, there are only moral reasons, albeit rather strong ones, for establishing a liberal immigration policy. The claim to immigration and citizenship in the receiving country is a moral claim but, unlike political asylum, not a legal right.

Second, immigrants should be obliged to assent to the principles of the constitution as interpreted within the scope of the political culture: that is, the ethical-political self-understanding of the citizenry of the receiving country. Once they become citizens themselves, they in turn get a voice in public debates, which may then shift the established inerpretation of the constitutional principles. The obligation to accept the political culture may not, however, extend to assimilation to the way of life of the majority culture. A legally required political socialization may not have an impact on other aspects of the collective identity of the immigrants' culture of origin.

Public sphere - Does Internet Create Democracy

Luhmann, Habermas, and the Theory of Communication

Habermas Forum

The Frankfurt School and “Critical Theory”



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