Both the disability-rights movement and the conservative tradition point toward a common policy goal: shifting the research agenda from one that seeks to remake society to one that aims to improve the opportunity for all citizens, regardless of disability, to make the most of the lives they have. Conservatives have been strong on the first part; a skepticism of utopian central planning, whether economic or scientific, is a central conservative value. However, the right has a mixed record on the latter. A common criticism of conservatism among proponents of disability rights is that it is hypocritical to view advocacy for the sanctity of human life as including only issues like assisted suicide and abortion; issues such as human dignity over the full course of the lifespan must enter the equation as well. To disability-rights advocates, the ADA and similar pieces of legislation are civil rights laws intended to remove people from government dependence and encourage employment for a population previously denied the access needed to pursue it. Recent support by the business community for a strengthening of the ADA is ample proof of this. It is no accident that the ADA was crafted by Reagan appointees and signed by the first President Bush—there is something very friendly to conservatism in the legislation that serves as the bedrock of the modern disability-rights policy agenda
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Politics, Ideology, and Autism
Ari Ne'eman has shrewd political observations in an article in The New Atlantis:
