In the closing months of his presidency, Bill Clinton and some of his
entourage have taken to using the buzzphrase "human and political
rights" to replace the simpler "human rights." A call to the White
House press office produced no explanation of the coinage, but
assured me that "no policy change was implied." It's always nice to
know that it is business as usual.

One would like to think that some sense of the paradoxes and
complications of the term "human rights" had come home to the
administration, and that in consequence it was on its way to even
more qualifications: perhaps "human, political, economic, legal,
cultural, national, sexual and domestic rights." This may be too much
to hope for, but one gets the impression that President Clinton has
meant to restrict "human" to "personal and family" and so needs to
tack on "political" to cover all those "rights" that are to do with
the wider society and participation in it. But what does this mean?
That political rights are not human? That "human" has to do only with
our persons and families? Whatever happened to "natural rights",
which traditionally used to cover all of the above?

So much has now been written about "human rights" that, like
President Clinton, we tend to lose our perspective and get confused.
As with the classic issue of "natural rights" before it, the debate
becomes so infused with passion that straight thinking is almost
impossible. Argument about rights of one sort or another is both
possible and desirable, particularly given the current penchant for
using "human rights" as a basis for often quite brutal foreign policy
decisions. But we have to recognize that putting "human" in front of
"rights"-- when, for example, talking of the "human right" of people
to free elections--is simply to use a warm hurrah word as a
rhetorical device. In the same way, wars of political suppression
become "humanitarian interventions", and anything we do not currently
happen to like becomes "unnatural", even if it is something as
basically human as the hunting of game animals or investment in
multiple spouses.

Both "human" and "natural" do have a real content, and we can
identify that content. Given the all-too-free use of these terms,
perhaps we should ask ourselves what that content might be. The
trouble is that we have used them as hurrah words for so long, that
we balk at any result that is not consonant with our current
enlightened prejudices. We want to define what is natural; we do not
want nature to do it for us, for the result might not be pretty.

Thus, if anyone were to make an argument, however logical, coherent
and backed by evidence, that there was no natural or human right to
vote, for example, he would not be answered so much as ridiculed and
condemned as reactionary and anti-humanitarian. Yet a respectable
argument could indeed be made that there is nothing in nature, or
certainly in the nature of being human, that demands the right to
vote as such. That right is not so much a natural or human right as
one contingent on the fairly advanced economic and political
development of certain civilizations. This is probably the sort of
thing Clinton has in mind when he adds political to human in the
rights catalogue.

The natural/human right might be phrased as "a right to a say in the
affairs of one's group." How such participation in group
decision-making is to be ensured, however, is not defined by anything
in nature or humanity. Voting only becomes an issue at a certain
sophisticated level of political development. It may be possible to
argue that at such a level everyone has a right to vote (although
exceptions will rapidly be listed--children, lunatics, felons, peers,
exiles, non-residents, resident non-citizens, non-property owners,
unregistered persons), but such a right is scarcely natural or human.
It is more properly cultural, or social and political, deriving from
the nature of government so achieved rather than from facts of nature
or humanity.

On the other hand, a very good argument could be made, using basic
kin selection theory, that thereis a natural and human right to
revenge. If someone kills my nephew or grandson, he robs me of a
proportion of my inclusive fitness, that is, the strength of my
personal gene pool. To redress this imbalance, it could be argued, I
have the right to inflict a similar loss on him. I should be allowed
to deprive him of someone related to him. This could be satisfied by
killing two of his first cousins, or any such combination that would
level the balance sheet. It is remarkable that many systems of
vengeance in human society seem implicitly to observe the logic of
inclusive fitness. They do not, for example, necessarily prescribe
that I kill the person responsible: one of his kin or clan will do
just as well.

This system of vengeance is less efficient as a redress than a system
whereby I would get to impregnate one of the perpetrator's females,
thus forcing him to raise to viability a person carrying my own
genes. Actually, in the example cited this would amount to
overcompensation, since I would gain by half to a loss of
one-quarter. It would be more exact if my brother were allowed to
make the impregnation, thus restoring the exact balance. Either
method is of course impractical given intertribal or clan hostility,
but note how ubiquitous is the practice of impregnating captive women
or the women of defeated rivals. The advancing Russian forces in
World War II made a massive effort to redress the imbalance caused by
German depredations during Operation Barbarossa. Russian genes are
now being nurtured by the Federal Republic's economic and welfare
systems on a vast scale.

I probably do not have the right to demand that any superordinate
entity carry out this vengeance for me (although I may call on
supernatural agencies, and will commonly use sorcery to harm an
offender). In strict fitness theory I am bound to redress my own
wrongs and either succeed or fail, thus determining my own ultimate
fitness in terms of the genes that I, and those who have genes in
common with me through descent, contribute to the pool. Perhaps the
most basic claim we have against a collective entity is that it leave
us alone to settle our affairs. It is generally observed, however,
that as human societies evolve, many of the self-help functions are
delegated to some superordinate authority.

This is the essence of the social contract: for the sake of harmony
within the group, certain basic rights to individual action are
delegated to the group itself. Hence, compensation comes to
substitute for vengeance. Again, this is often framed in reproductive
terms: compensation for a murdered man is that which will enable his
kin to raise another child to replace him. In many systems before the
advent of the monopolistic state, there was no question of personal
retribution through the execution of the murderer. Just compensation,
which would enable the genetic replacement of the victim, was
considered sufficient. This can be seen as a humanitarian advance in
human morals, or as a retrograde step depriving individuals of the
right of vengeance, but either way there is no question that it
preserved the idea of redressing the genetic imbalance caused by a
human-activated death. The monopolistic state, however, declares that
there is no individual right to vengeance, and reserves that right to
itself. Thus the state exacts retributive justice, but leaves the kin
of the victim without compensation, and the imbalance permanent. It
is not clear how this is an improvement on the older systems of
self-help or compensation ("blood money").

The Woody Allen Question

It does, however, raise an interesting question: At a certain point
of development in human social complexity, does the collectivity
acquire "human rights" over the individual? This is important because
so much of the above-mentioned writing on human rights assumes them
to be by definition individual rights. This often goes to the length
of seeing no rights as inhering in any collectivity--except, perhaps,
the family--and even as seeing the collectivity as the automatic
enemy of human rights. Such rights are almost by definition rights
against the state. But there have always been human collectivities;
we are, as F.H. Bradley observed, following Darwin, following
Aristotle, a rootedly social animal. In fact, Bradley argued, we
could show that individuals did not exist: the social was real and
the individual the abstraction. Take away from any so-called
individual everything contributed to his nature and person by society
(starting with the genetic contribution of his parents, grandparents
and so forth) and what is left? Nothing. The whole idea of rights
being peculiar to individuals only becomes possible with
self-conscious creatures, of which humans are the only example.

What sense does it make to attribute individual rights to ants? Woody
Allen's neurotic worker, oppressed by the collective morality of the
colony in the movie Antz, is only funny because it is impossible: an
anthropomorphizing of the ant condition. But it is interesting
because that is precisely what has happened in the human situation. A
mammal living in socially complex colonies, like baboons or
chimpanzees, suddenly (in evolutionary terms) became conscious of its
own condition, probably by evolving powers of speech with which to
talk about it. Baboons cannot have individual rights any more than
ants. They simply do what they have to do to be baboons and produce
more baboons. But once a primate is conscious of its condition, then
it can start to ask the Woody Allen type of question: "Why must I
always do the things the group wants to do? Why can't I decide for
myself what is good for me?" In this way it can formulate the notion
first of "individuals" and then of certain things owing to
individuals: just as the group has a "right" to a territory, so an
individual has a "right" to . . . the answer is pretty much anything
it can think up. Once started on this delusional pathway there is
ultimately no limit except that of the imagination.

The individual "rights" that a primitive, self-conscious, but of
necessity group-living primate would claim would of course be based
on its individual needs to feed and procreate successfully. But it is
important to note that at this level the need to claim rights over
the demands of the group would not arise, since the group would be
the individual's inclusive kinship network. All individuals feed,
struggle for dominance, mate and raise young. In this process, the
existence of the group is a necessity like the existence of natural
resources. Individuals will make altruistic sacrifices for the group
since it is essentially a group of kin, and thus represents the
repository of their inclusive fitness. There is no way in which the
small group of relatives could be seen as somehow having different
interests from those of the individuals composing it. In Bradleyan
terms, there could be no distinction between the society and the
individual.

A Profoundly Unfair Process

As levels of social complexity increased after the Neolithic
revolution, some 10,000 years ago, organisms would increasingly be
dealing with (relative) genetic strangers who made demands on them in
the name of social units whose genes were not identical by descent
with theirs. It is at this stage that true conflict would have
occurred, as organisms started to feel the need to assert their
"rights"; that is, the things they needed to do in order to ensure
their fitness: the means of reproduction.

In a strict sense, this is the upper limit of the natural or human
claims that an organism (read: individual) can have against any
collectivity of genetic strangers. It is the area Clinton seems to
have in mind when using "human." It is a claim based on the
functional necessities of reproductive competition. It cannot be a
claim to reproduce successfully, only a claim to be allowed to
compete for reproductive success. It is not a claim for fairness:
something that Rawlsians would like to write into the "original
position." Natural selection is a profoundly unfair process; indeed,
that is the point of it. Some start with a genetic advantage over
others; all menare not created equal. But all have a right to play
their hands to the best of their ability. The group has no obligation
to level the playing field unnaturally, but it has an obligation to
let the players play.

So we might say that the only basic human rights are those that allow
individuals to compete in the reproductive struggle. These would be
rights of access to potential mates, and to the resources needed to
acquire, hold and breed with them; and the right to raise offspring
to viability. (This would underline the claim that the right to
"equality" refers to equality of opportunity, not equality of
outcome. The outcome has to be unequal or natural selection would not
take place.) We could speak of a "human right to procreate", although
I would prefer to state it as the "right to engage in reproductive
competition." For it is important that we recognize these basic human
rights not as claims to some kind of benevolence or handouts from the
collectivity (even though we may decide such benevolence is due for
other reasons). They are claims to be allowed to take part in the
reproductive struggle. Insofar as we fail, we fail, and as long as we
were not artificially restricted in our attempt we have no cause for
complaint.

To take a currently contentious issue: Is there a "human right" to
free choice of one's marriage partner? (I am sure Clinton would
regard this as a "human" and not a "political" right.) To those of us
reared in a relentlessly individualistic society, such a right seems
obvious and basic. But it is so only in such a society. In a society
where the clan or extended family is the basic unit--and note that
this itself is the basic "human" unit--then it is equally obvious
that such a choice is too important to be left to individual whim.
What is at stake is the continuing reproductive success of a group of
genetically close individuals. The parents of any potential couple
carefully monitor the match in light of the probability of a
successful reproductive outcome. In doing so, they are acting not
only in protection of their own inclusive fitness, but also, in terms
of their greater experience and predictive ability, in protection of
that of the young couple.

There is nothing either unnatural or inhuman here. On the contrary,
our attitude of allowing whimsical affections and passions to decide
the choice of partner, with the often subsequent consequences of
divorce, step-parent abuse, one-parent family problems and the like,
can be seen as inhuman, unnatural and reprehensible. But so high in
our value system have we elevated individual choice that it appears
to us simply "self-evident" that arranged marriage is unthinkable. It
is an infringement of "human rights." It may be an infringement of
something, and there may indeed be good moral arguments against it,
but the "human rights" argument will not wash.

You might counter that I have just said that the group should not
interfere with the right to compete for reproductive success. But in
the case just cited it does not do so. Rather, it seeks to re-inforce
the chances of individual reproductive success, and we could
forcefully argue that the group has the "human right" to do so.
Societies with arranged marriages are easily out-reproducing those
with free choice, despite the access to better medical care,
sanitation and nutrition in the latter. There is nothing in the "laws
of nature" that says the kin group (the pool of genes related by
descent) should not seek to enhance the reproductive success of its
members. On the contrary, it should seek to do so, since
individuals--given imagination, intelligence and free will, and hence
the capacity for delusion--as often as not act against their
reproductive self-interest.

Thus, non-kin collectivities, while certainly often acting against
the interests of their members, will also often move in to prevent at
least self-destructive behavior that might injure individual
reproductive success: drug misuse, suicide, child abuse, infanticide
or abortion. More positively, they support those whose behavior has
reduced their chances of raising children to viability. Monastic
institutions in the Middle Ages, while manned by celibate "brothers
and sisters", were homes for a staggering number of otherwise doomed
infants deposited by those unable to support them. Social welfare
systems operate on the same principle: although we have no natural
right to their assistance, they have a natural right to assist us.
Here non-kin collectivities are taking over the functions that
originated, and have their logic, in the kin group. If we support
them and they support us it is because of a natural extension of
mutuality from the "original position" of kin support.

It is in the interest of a nation, for example, that it reproduce
itself. It tends, in its delusional-ideological system, to pass
itself off as a super kin group. At the primitive level of evolving
humanity (99 percent of our existence as a species) there was no need
for such pretense. The kin group was, in essence, the social
collectivity. This is why I have argued above that at the most basic,
and hence most "human", level there would be no "rights" issue. In
promoting the success of near kin we are promoting the success of our
own genes (or, more correctly, they are using us to promote their
success).

Still within the purview of basic kin selection theory, we have
another human right: the right to nepotistic assistance. We have the
right both to assist close kin and to receive assistance from them in
the pursuit of our own reproductive success. Until the advent of
meritocratic bureaucracy, the world lived by this principle. It is
what "kinship" is all about: all those gentes, clans, sibs, septs,
moieties, phratries, lineages, houses, kindreds and extended
families. There is no human society that does not map out, often in
alarming detail, its universe of kin, the better to calculate the
degree and kind of help and obligation expected. The term nepotism,
from the Latin nepos (grandson, sister's son), was first invented to
describe the hypocritical (but most certainly "natural") tendency of
prelates either to favor their nephews or to hide their illegitimate
sons under the nepotic title. In another stunning reversal of natural
values, we have now made it one of the worst crimes against
"equality"--which it most assuredly is. This does not prevent us,
though, at all levels of society up to the very top, from wallowing
in the hypocrisy. The most basic feature of social evolution is not
so easily defined away.

The point of the above examples is to make us wary of a free and easy
use of the terms "human" and "natural." It is not to say that there
are no other rights than those that exist in some guttural,
shambling, scavenging state of proto-human existence. Of course there
are. But we should be more careful in the logical underpinning we
choose to give to these rights, if for no other reason than that we
render the terms meaningless and empty and rob them even of
rhetorical value.

Also, as we have seen, human rights may be rights to all kinds of
behaviors that our sophisticated and sensitive liberal natures may
abhor. Hunting is a good example, given the current threat in England
to ban fox hunting on "humanitarian" grounds, which seem to have more
to do with puritanical objections to the hunters' enjoyment than with
the supposed suffering of the fox. A very good case could be made
that the "right to procreate" (which has now been established in U.S.
common law) includes the right to polygamy (polygyny and polyandry)
for those who can afford it and want it. Why should the state--on
grounds that are always fuzzy and derive largely from religious
prejudice--limit the number of spouses? The overwhelming majority of
human societies (approximately 85 percent) have allowed or enjoined
polygamy. Again, the "advanced" societies have reversed this
tendency, which is wholly "natural" in a sexually competitive species
of large land mammals with moderate sexual dimorphism and
late-maturing young. As with the Romans, the argument for monogamy is
egalitarian. But as we have seen, nature is not egalitarian: if some
succeed and some fail in the polygamy stakes, then the same is in
fact true of monogamy, where some will always outbreed others. And
yet again, the monogamous societies, while banning multiple marriages
as "unnatural", hypocritically allow all kinds of multiple
mating--serial monogamy being the most common example in modern
Western society.

It is a pretty safe bet that almost anything we have condemned as
"unnatural" is something that we know will flourish if we leave it
alone. For if something is natural we have no need to buttress it
with sanctions; it will take care of itself.

Nature's Neutrality

What, then, should we call these rights that are not basic, natural
or human, but which we "know" to be desirable? (Thus we may not know
what human rights are, but we certainly know when we have lost them.)
Surely, you say, we should not give in to relativism and suggest that
they are simply local preferences without universal validity. At
least I hope you are saying that, because that pernicious doctrine
has achieved a sinister grip among the scribbling classes. It is
perhaps strange that the triumph of relativism should come at the
same time that the pursuit of "human rights issues" has come to
dominate international affairs and foreign policies. Yet the two
trends are not unrelated. In a world of relativistic morals, we would
have no basis for attacking offenders against "rights" if these could
be dismissed as mere cultural preferences. We therefore have to
underpin certain rights as "human" to stress their universality. If
they pertain to all humans--on what grounds is not always clear--then
they are impervious to the relativist's objection. What is truly
strange is that a good many theory-befuddled academics and activists
hold both views at the same time, lauding relativism in defense of
"multicultural" agendas while denouncing, say, female circumcision as
contrary to "universal human rights." Logic is usually the first
fatality in ideological warfare.

The cherished rights enshrined in the Constitution, the Declaration
of the Rights of Man, the UN Charter and human rights declaration,
and all the treaties and commissions up to the Helsinki Accords and
the establishment of the International Criminal Court--all of these
are highly evolved political and social rights that derive from the
Western Enlightenment tradition, with its basic values of equality
and universalism. Many of them are peculiar to the Christian
tradition. Despite attempts to base these rights on "nature", in most
cases they--by their very design--either run counter to nature or, at
best, concern things about which nature is strictly neutral.

We have looked at some of the former. As examples of the latter we
might suggest that "nature" gives us no clues about what form certain
institutions might take, only about the rules of engagement, as it
were. We should be able to accrue resources so as to take part in the
reproductive struggle. But exactly how we should accrue those
resources (whether they include that Enlightenment favorite,
"property", for example), to what lengths we should go to prevent
others (our reproductive rivals) from accruing them, and to what
extent we should assist our close kin by passing resources to
them--on all these matters nature is silent. The winners will be
rewarded, but they will be rewarded if they cheat as well as if they
play fair. They will be rewarded if they kill and torture, if that is
what gets more of their genes into the pool. They will be rewarded if
they cooperate, if that is what gets it done. We can see that some
behaviors will be self-defeating--too many cheaters will leave too
few suckers--and probably self-limiting as a strategy in the long
run. But in the short run, a cheater can perfectly well manage a
respectable score in the inclusive fitness stakes. We still celebrate
the con man and the huckster, and especially deride the cuckold. The
law may take one view, but popular opinion is not fooled.

Inclusive fitness theory--preserving and enlarging one's personal
gene pool--is only one way into the issue of what is basically human.
I have taken it here simply as an example. Take another approach,
say, the findings of psychology into the basic list of human
motivations. Certainly we shall find some that suit our warm and
compassionate version of "human", but there will be a list of others
that we would not want on any list of things to be fought for and
protected and promoted.

Take again those things we have in common with our nearest animal
relatives, the chimpanzees, whose genetic material is 98 percent our
own. There is the warm and fuzzy list all right, but there is also,
as Jane Goodall discovered to her warm-hearted horror, warfare,
genocide, cannibalism, homicide, female beating, infanticide,
violence, domination and more.

Take, say, those features that have been found common to all human
societies by comparative ethnography. Once again, the list of saintly
characteristics is overbalanced by the dark features that seem so
inescapably human. It is a pure act of judgment to say that the dark
features, all of which can be shown to have contributed to survival,
are to be regarded as less "human" than the ones we have selected as
worthy of promotion. And there will be yet others that have served
survival purposes and are regarded as benign by even a majority--and
have been so regarded throughout history--such that in our
enlightened judgment they must be added to the list of the truly
human.

Aspirations, Not Needs

So where are we left with our rights problem? Does it really matter
if the term "human" is wrongly applied to rights? It does, because
this is an area that is too important for us to indulge in systematic
self-delusion. We are moving into a period when the pursuit of "human
rights issues" is filling the vacuum in foreign policy left by the
disappearance of clear-cut "national interest" issues (for example,
Robin Cook's much-touted "ethical foreign policy" for the UK). This
has already been the excuse for us to break the rules of
international behavior established in the "national interest" period,
to bomb a sovereign nation into submission and kill at least one
thousand people. This stance threatens to start another and more
deadly war with China. It is moralistic, self-righteous and
aggressive. It is dangerous as well as hypocritical in its selective
action. Yugoslavia was in the end massively bombed to preserve "the
credibility of UK." How useful that "human rights" could be invoked
as a cynical justification. (See also the human and "national" rights
of Kuwaiti sheiks that were so gallantly protected in what otherwise
might have seemed to be an old-fashioned war to protect our vital oil
interests.) And given the moral state of our politicians, this is
about all we can expect.

Robert Benchley was of the opinion that whenever a government began
shouting "spies!" it was inevitably trying to divert attention from
its own shady business. Perhaps we can be forgiven for suspecting
something of the sort when we hear politicians chanting the mantra of
"human rights"--usually to cover some hypocritical, and inevitably
blundering, manipulation of the UN by the powers in the Security
Council.

Given the inevitable skepticism about governmental honesty (or at
least competence), we should at the very least insist on being clear
about what we are doing and on what grounds we are doing it. We
should not take action on the grounds that what we are supporting or
suppressing is in some sense essentially "human", when it is no such
thing. A great deal of what is human is in fact what is at the root
of what we are opposing, suppressing, killing and destroying in the
name of human rights. To achieve the kind of world envisioned in the
treaties, charters and commissions, we must indeed suppress and
destroy--or at the very least control--human nature. We are not
acting for it, we are acting against it, or we are supplementing it
in those cases where it gives us no guidance. As Katherine Hepburn
said to Humphrey Bogart in The African Queen: "Human nature, Mr.
Allnut, is what we are put on this earth to rise above."

Human rights theorists are often quite honest about this. They
disclaim any attempt to base these rights on human nature or human
needs and define them as "the best to which we can aspire", or as
based on "a moral vision of a dignified human life." This is fine,
but it is not then plausible to claim at the same time that these
rights are "based on the very fact of being human." They are not;
they are based on the fact of individuals being trapped in oppressive
collectivities. This is why they must, by definition, be individual
rights.

There is nothing wrong with defining rights in terms of high human
aspirations, but they will then require a very different
justification from rights based on human needs. They involve, in
effect, a purely teleological justification: human rights become the
rights we need in order to achieve a certain desired end state of
society, not rights derived from the elusive state of true humanness.
Thus rights involving inclusive fitness are more likely to be
respected currently in fundamentalist Islamic societies than in
Western democracies. But societies based on Islamic law are usually
the ones most offensive to human rights activists.

It can be argued that human rights based on aspirations are no less
human than those based on needs. But the problem is that we can
aspire to virtually anything, and how do we choose between competing
aspirations? Needs at least give us some criteria of arbitration, and
very necessary ones, since many liberal-democratic-individualist
aspirations, however laudable, have the quality we observed of
running counter to basic needs and thus defeating their own
objectives. Is there any point in aspiring to a state of affairs that
is so inhuman that it is unsustainable, however ethically desirable?
The true hair-splitters will want to argue that such impossible
aspiration is also very human, and so it is; we are nothing if not a
paradoxical animal.

Human Rights and the National Interest

ONE OF THE major paradoxes surrounding the human rights issue is that it became central to foreign policy as part of a deliberate strategy to protect the national interest. Human rights activists will not like this claim, of course. They prefer, as is their way, to think they are acting from nothing but the highest and purest moral considerations. But even they will admit that these explicit concerns--as opposed to a general U.S. urge to be the world's good guys--had a definite beginning in the Ford administration. They prefer, however, to forget that this stance was deliberately engineered by Daniel Patrick Moynihan to counter the hypocrisy of the Third World communist bloc.

Moynihan, as ambassador to the UN, was tired of just sitting there and taking it when the bloc used anti-capitalist moralizing as a basis for attacking the policies of the democracies at the behest of the USSR. So he developed the strategy of counterattacking (or even getting in the first punch) on the rounds of the abuse of "human rights" by these regimes. This brilliantly put the democracies on the attack, reversing their previously defensive stance of continual apology. It put the onus of explanation and justification on the totalitarian dictatorships and their bullyboy leaders. It was not, however, something that arose out of humanitarian concern for the benighted inhabitants of these Third World terror regimes, but out of the need to combat their governments' belligerence in the UN, and hence to curtail the influence of our major competitor.

I am not saying that anything Senator Moynihan did could have been totally cynical, but he was quite clear about the development of this as a strategy of foreign policy first and foremost. In A Dangerous Place (1978), he describes this as his "jujitsu principle": "to use the momentum of the majority against the majority." It was in the defense of the national interest and in the interest of the Western alliance. As one strategy among many to promote our collective ends, it had its place. As an excuse for foreign policy today--given the huge amount of post-Cold War military hardware available, and the compelling urge presidents and premiers seem to have to use that hardware--it deserves a close and skeptical scrutiny. This involves both a scrutiny of its practical dangers, best left to strategists, and of its theoretical underpinnings. With this latter enterprise, some otherwise useless academics can at least show that even if the emperor has new clothes, they are woven of dubious synthetic fibers.

Robin Fox is University Professor of Social Theory at Rutgers University. His most recent book relevant to this subject is Conjectures and Confrontations: Science, Evolution, Social Concern (Transaction Publishers, 1997).