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INALIENABLE RIGHTS VERSUS ABUSE by R.Q. Public

INALIENABLE RIGHTS VERSUS ABUSE

by R.Q. Public

Pub Date: March 20th, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5320-1045-3
Publisher: iUniverse

A comprehensive approach to public policy formulation oriented around the defense of inalienable rights. 

The Declaration of Independence famously announces inalienable rights as the natural foundation of civil society and the ultimate limit to governmental authority, but it doesn’t clearly articulate the socio-economic conditions for the equal exercise of those rights. Debut author Public (a nom de plume) argues that the U.S.’s promise of equality has been undermined by a failure to provide equal opportunity, a misstep that rises to a dereliction of duty: “Like many other countries, America has a culture of abuse in which abuses of and threatening attitudes toward inalienable rights seem almost commonplace.” The author catalogs typical abuses that span contemporary political issues, including environmental policy, fiscal management, poverty, immigration, foreign policy, and religious freedom. Public continues a long-standing progressive intellectual tradition in America of focusing on the conditions that allow for the meaningful protection of rights, a departure from a more threadbare version that extends from the British philosopher John Locke. The author avers that rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness logically include the concomitant rights to a “healthful lifestyle” and a “healthful living wage,” which lead, respectively, to single-payer universal health care and minimum annual incomes for the financially disadvantaged. Overall, Public’s public policy analysis—which carefully balances the demands of individual liberty with a proper deference to the common good—makes that liberty both morally defensible and meaningful. The author’s study is admirably bipartisan and free of ideological baggage. For example, despite his avowed personal distaste for guns, he acknowledges the importance of a right to self-defense. Also, he manages to navigate complex policy debates accessibly but empirically, citing statistical evidence when appropriate. However, this brief work far too ambitiously attempts to cover the totality of political conundrums and so has no choice but to often remain hypergeneral and simplistic. For example, there’s virtually no serious discussion of the criteria for a “healthful lifestyle,” but nevertheless, he offers a very specific target for a minimum living wage. 

A serious, openhanded discussion of contemporary American politics that forgoes specificity.