Basic rights vs. Cultural norms

That was the question raised by Secretary Rice's statement to reporters:

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Tuesday she had no interest in promoting the high-profile cause of giving women in Saudi Arabia the right to drive, saying the administration's push for Middle East democracy needed to respect cultural traditions.

"It's just a line that I have not wanted to cross," Rice told reporters traveling with her as she flew from Riyadh, the Saudi capital, to attend an international conference on Iraq here in the Belgian capital on Wednesday. "I think it is important that we do have some boundaries about what it is we are trying to achieve."

What I find very interesting is that the Bush administration has previously set a lower boundary that governments must allow girls to be educated as a basic human right. So now we have an upper and lower boundary for where the Bush administration stands on promoting women's rights as they push for democracy. Basic education is a human right. The right to drive can be determined by cultural norms.

Now knowing what the boundaries are, some reporter should ask about situations that fall in between. Is it a human right or a cultural norm that women be allowed to own property? Run a business? Have access to higher education? Vote? Write a newspaper? Buy a newspaper? Publish a book? Own a gun? Travel without a male? Shop for food? Change her religion?

Will the answers to these questions change on a case-by-case basis? Are there several rankings of rights, with speech, education and voting being at the most basic level, property and an independent criminal justice system at a slightly less basic level, and driving even less important than that?

I'm not trying to be cynical here. If we're going to work to push democracy we may need to define what we believe to be a basic (God-given?) human right and what we believe should be determined by cultural norms. I may be willing to accept that the right to drive should not be put on the same basic level as freedom of speech, but I've never heard the US government spell out in one document this balance between rights and culture. Are there any reporters out there willing to push the issue with the State Department or the White House?