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One factor explaining the weak COVID response in the USA, but also here in Canada. A quick thread: 1/n
My very first academic journal article explores the concept of 'rights talk' - the increasing tendency to invoke rights in the context of political debate, to employ rights as a conversation-ending 'trump card',... 2/n
the inflationary understanding of rights as no longer about fundamental inviolable norms but our tendency to apply rights to everything, such as a right to let our front lawns grow out of control, or a right to do whatever... 3/n
The consequence of rights talk is that it makes collective action more difficult. By invoking rights rather than debating competing policy ideas or values, we transform political disagreement into a zero-sum game, we take compromise and caring about each other off the table. 4/n
Not surprisingly, most scholarly attention to the phenomenon has been applied to the American context. That is where rights talk flourishes. And of course we see it in the reaction to the pandemic... 5/n
Where a significant portion of the population refuses to do something as simple as wearing masks to protect others, and protest restrictions of any kinds, even those that constitute mere minor inconveniences. They invoke their liberty or 'freedom' to justify their selfishness.
My in my article, "Terms of Entitlement", I explore how rights are conceptualized in the Canadian media. Do we tend to recognize that rights have limits? The results were mixed, and there was sufficiently worrying signs that Canada is not immune from problematic rights talk. 7/n
And we do see some of the same resistance to collective action predicated on rights grounds (see Randy Hillier, for example), though it does not seem as widespread as in the US. 8/n
But I think it's an important factor in our unwillingness to do what is necessary to crush the virus. Even in the face of the obvious - that letting the virus spread is what hurts our freedoms, hurts the economy - you still see rights talk at place. 9/n
Jason Kenney is a key example of someone who has, during the pandemic, presented the Charter in absolutist (and false) terms. How we conceive of rights has massive implications, especially in the context of an ongoing crisis. 10/10
Addendum: you can find my original paper, published in @CJPS_RCSP way back in 2008, here: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/canadian-journal-of-political-science-revue-canadienne-de-science-politique/article/abs/terms-of-entitlement-is-there-a-distinctly-canadian-rights-talk/D1119001071C7AD1F60F4CDF08AA87EF
