ABSTRACT
Many of its oddities, no doubt, will cause little difficulty to ‘practical’ men of liberal and progressive persuasions. Indeed, the Declaration itself only asks that the freedoms it specifies shall be kept ‘constantly in mind’, and actually concedes that ‘economic, social and cultural rights’ can be secured only to the extent that ‘the organization and resources of each state’ permit. There is more than one sense in which freedom may be said to lie in the recognition of necessity. The possibility of having to put certain rights in cold storage, in order to preserve the social fabric on which rights themselves ultimately depend, is practically recognized by democratic nations in wartime; but the possibility is not one with which liberal political theory, even as refurbished by Professor Chapman, is conspicuously well-equipped to cope. Conservative political theory, particularly in its Burkeian form, has an answer of sorts to this problem; so has Marxist – and probably a better one.
