首页
外语
计算机
考研
公务员
职业资格
财经
工程
司法
医学
专升本
自考
实用职业技能
登录
外语
The past few years have been busy ones for human-rights organisations. In prosecuting the so-called war on terror, many governme
The past few years have been busy ones for human-rights organisations. In prosecuting the so-called war on terror, many governme
admin
2011-03-10
57
问题
The past few years have been busy ones for human-rights organisations. In prosecuting the so-called war on terror, many governments in Western countries where freedoms seemed secure have been tempted to nibble away at them. Just as well, you might suppose, that doughty campaigners such as Amnesty International exist to leap to the defense. Yet Amnesty no longer makes the splash it used to in the rich world. This is not for want of speaking out. The organization is as vocal as it ever was. But some years ago it decided to follow intellectual fashion and dilute a traditional focus on political rights by mixing in a new category of what people now call social and economic rights.
Rights being good things, you might suppose that the more of them you campaign for the better. Why not add pressing social and economic concerns to stuffy old political rights such as free speech, free elections and due process of law? What use is a vote if you are starving? Are not access to jobs, housing, health care and food basic rights too? No: few rights are truly universal, and letting them multiply weakens them.
Food, jobs and housing are certainly necessities. But no useful purpose is served by calling them "rights". When a government locks someone up without a fair trial, the victim, perpetrator and remedy are pretty clear. This clarity seldom applies to social and economic "rights". It is hard enough to determine whether such a right has been infringed, let alone who should provide a remedy, or how. Who should be educated in which subjects for how long at what cost in taxpayers’ money is a political question Best settled at the ballot Box. So is how much to spend on what kind of health care. And no economic system known to man guarantees a proper job for everyone all the time: even the Soviet Union’s much-boasted full employment was based on the principle "they pretend to pay us and we pretend to work".
It is hardly an accident that the countries keenest to use the language of social and economic rights tend to be those that show least respect for rights of the traditional sort. The rulers of some countries habitually depict campaigns concentrating on individual freedoms as a conspiracy by the rich northern hemisphere to do down poor countries. It is mightily convenient, if you deprive your citizens of political liberties, to portray these as a bourgeois luxury.
And it could not be further from the truth. For people in the poor world, as for people everywhere, the most reliable method yet invented to ensure that governments provide people with social and economic necessities is called politics. That is why the rights that make open politics possible—free speech, due process, protection from arbitrary punishment—are so precious. Insisting on their enforcement is worth more than any number of grandiloquent but unenforceable declarations demanding jobs, education and housing for all.
Many do-goading outfits suffer from baying too broad a focus and too narrow a base. Amnesty used to be the other way round, appealing to people of all political persuasions and none, and concentrating on a hard core of well-defined basic liberties. No longer. By trying in recent years to borrow moral authority from the campaigns and leaders of the past and lend it to the woollier cause of social reform, Amnesty has succeeded only in muffling what was once its central message, at the very moment when governments in the West need to hear it again.
As to Amnesty, the author’s attitude is
选项
A、nonchalant.
B、impartial.
C、repugnant.
D、compassionate.
答案
B
解析
态度题。由题干中的Amnesty定位至末段,第二句对Amnesty过去的表现高度评价:appealing to people of all political persuasions and none,and concentrating on a hard core of welldefined basic liberties.由No longer引出作者对其最近表现的评价:lend it to the woollier cause of social reform,only in muffling what was once its central message,由此看出作者既肯定了Amnesty过去的表现,又指出了最近该组织改良过程中存在的问题,可见作者能够一分为二地看待问题,[B]符合文意。作者明确提出自己的看法,nonchalant“冷淡的”与文章语气不符,排除[A];作者没有表现出强烈的厌恶情绪,排除[C];这里是对该机构发展情况进行讨论,不涉及“同情”问题,排除[D]。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/sDYO777K
0
专业英语八级
相关试题推荐
AcupunctureRecently,acupuncturehasbecomea【1】______wordinAmerica.【1】______Acupuncturewasperformedi
A、ThisisthebiggesttakeoverbattleforChinaB、China’sbidwillprobablytriggeracostlybidingcompetitionoverthecompany
A、Eta.B、al-Qaida.C、thesupportersoftheopposingparty.D、theterroristsfromtheMiddleEast.A
A、Itkilled60IraqiShias.B、Ithappened14milesfromthecapital.C、Nooneclaimedtheresponsibility.D、EvenIraqisfeltter
Thewaveofjobcutssweepingthroughtheutilitysectorgatheredpaceyesterdaywith800moreredundanciesplannedbytwoelect
A、federalgovernmentB、thehome-loversC、thepeoplewhokillthewildhorseD、thenativepeopleC
A、nativeEnglishspeakersnumberedB、thenumberofpeoplewithEnglishasasecondlanguagehasovertakenthenumberwhospeaki
PatentmedicineusedinAmericadatesbacktotheearlydaysoftheRepublic,whendrugsimportedfromEuropeweresoldbypostm
B语言学家及其代表理论。Firth是伦敦学派的代表人,他认为语言学研究的对象应该是实际应用中的语言。
随机试题
Theoverseasfoundthecityhas______greatchangessincetheyvisitedlastyear.
A、微球B、pH敏感脂质体C、磷脂和胆固醇D、毫微粒E、单室脂质体()为提高脂质体的靶向性而加以修饰的脂质体。
重建成本是指采用当前的建筑材料、建筑技术和工艺水平等,重新建造与原有建筑物功能效用相等的新建筑物所需支付的成本。
已知反应A+2B→2C的速率方程为r=kc(A)c(B),则该反应是()。
依据《中华人民共和国水污染防治法》,()根据本行政区域重点水污染物排放总量控制指标的要求,将重点水污染物排放总量控制指标分解落实到排污单位。
WhenItoldmyfamilythatIwasthinkingoftakingacookingjob,theroarsoflaughterwereratherdiscouraging.Noonebeliev
一个女孩毫无道理地被老板炒了鱿鱼。中午,她坐在单位喷泉旁边的一条长椅上黯然伤神,她感到她的生活失去了颜色,变得黯淡无光。这时她发现不远处一个小男孩站在她的身后咯咯地笑,她好奇地问小男孩,你笑什么?“这条长椅的椅背是早晨刚刚漆过的,我想看看你站起来时背是
蒙台梭利创办的幼教机构的名称是()。
下面关于S3C2410中断控制器的叙述中,错误的是()。
下列属于通知或警告用户的命令是
最新回复
(
0
)