The Hypocrisy of Modern, Liberal Civil Society

I finished Stephen Hopgood's article, "Reading the Small Print in Global Civil Society" (Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 2000. 29(1): 1-25) today and he raises some interesting concerns about the displacement of morality and virtues from discussions in civil society to a position of sub-text that underlies the more acceptable "rights" discussion occurring in the world today. The idea is that back in the 1800s and early 1900s, in order to be a citizen and acquire the rights of that position, one would have to meet certain criteria of civilization. Those criteria would include certain moral values, in the United States these would mostly be the Protestant virtues of "industry, piety, parsimony, and self-reliance" (16).

Today, it is accepted that it is incorrect to expect everyone to have the same values so instead we talk about universal human rights. The trouble is that within this distribution of rights is the assumption of a certain moral basis - instead of openly constructing societies with the same moral basis, liberals now try to sneak them in the back door, at least, according to Hopgood.

It makes me wonder if there is any chance for a truly open space of discussion (or discourse) to exist. If we all bring our own moral choices to the discussion, how can we remain open to what others will say? Moreover, if global power elites insist that all those included in the discussion have the same sets of values, how will we ever move past the ideas that divide us? How can we come up with truly universal rights when only a select group of people with similar values is allowed to participate in the discussion?