Human 'Rights'
Jan. 9th, 2009 05:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sobriqueA Right is a legal or moral entitlement or permission.
We have the Human Rights act, which is a definition of a list of rights.
Actually, it's more like a wish list. Or rather, the other way around. It's not a list of _rights_ at all. It's a list of _obligations_.
They are no such things as 'rights' for those who'd not treat them as obligations as well.
Which is part of the problem with Human Rights - you can't really protest and whine that you have a 'right' to anything, if you're not prepared to stand up - both for your own sake, and for others - to say that this is a right worth fighting for.
And so we have the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. They're quite safely ignored. As they say: "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." (Edmund Burke)
These are not rights at all. They are obligations upon us all. To say 'hang on, this is wrong' when you see them violated. To take action if necessary. A right that's 'optional' might as well not be there at all.
We have the Human Rights act, which is a definition of a list of rights.
Actually, it's more like a wish list. Or rather, the other way around. It's not a list of _rights_ at all. It's a list of _obligations_.
They are no such things as 'rights' for those who'd not treat them as obligations as well.
Which is part of the problem with Human Rights - you can't really protest and whine that you have a 'right' to anything, if you're not prepared to stand up - both for your own sake, and for others - to say that this is a right worth fighting for.
And so we have the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. They're quite safely ignored. As they say: "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." (Edmund Burke)
These are not rights at all. They are obligations upon us all. To say 'hang on, this is wrong' when you see them violated. To take action if necessary. A right that's 'optional' might as well not be there at all.
