Michael Lissack groups, each brimming with rights, inevitably turns into a society over- burdened with conflicts. Rights talk polarizes debate; it tends to suppress moral discussion and consensus building. Once an agenda is introduced as a “right,” sensible discussion and moderate positions tend to disappear. It is one thing to claim that you and I have different interests and see if we can work out a compromise; or, better yet, that we both recognize the merit or virtue of a common cause, say, a cleaner environment. The moment, however, that I claim a right to the same piece of land or property or public space as you, we start to view one another like the Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland or the Palestinians and Israelis in the Middle East. For many people rights can be conclusions masquerading as reasons, simply as- serting that some position is a right gives it a preeminence, as if its evocation closed off all debate. But to society, an individual’s entitlement can only be established in details that weigh the “right” at issue against the “rights” of those who are hurt by the given act. Our failure to speak in a language of social virtues, interests, and, above all, social responsibilities only produces contentiousness and diminishes the opportunities for social cooperation. In the current environment of drugs crime and festering race relations being inside becomes a powerful symbol for being protected, buttressed, coddled, while being outside evokes expo- sure, isolation and vulnerability. In an increasingly blighted urban landscape these code words become loaded, bearing meanings far beyond their pro- saic origins. The symbolic power of bridges and tunnels in the discourse of public space is such that, though their purposes are couched in seemingly neutral terms, their very physical properties pander to some of our deepest fears. It is an unspoken terror for many white middle-class Americans to be surrounded by hostile blacks in an open street. We will go to considerable lengths to avoid these zones of potentially frightening friction outside. We are no longer as likely as in the past to consider ourselves members of the American community, much less members of a community defined in terms of state, city, church, school, profession, or neighborhood. Now, we are more likely to define ourselves in terms of what we own, or what we drive, or the house we live in.
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