
The case against human rights law - bmmayer1
http://www.theguardian.com/news/2014/dec/04/-sp-case-against-human-rights
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nl
I have mixed feelings about this article.

It's quite long, and it uses that length to highlight the problems a universal
set of human rights has. He makes some good points about the problems, but
nothing that anyone with some familiarity with the area won't already know.

Fine.

Then in the final section, where one might expect some kind of alternative to
be proposed he starts talking about development aid, and how that hasn't
worked either, and he points out that small-scale, less ambitious projects are
often more successful. I think few would disagree with the general thrust of
his argument here.

In the very final couple of paragraphs he attempts to say that because large
scale aid programs don't work then human rights treaties are "an act of
hubris".

I don't think he makes this case very well at all.

Finally - and my biggest criticism - is that he doesn't attempt to provide
alternatives to the idea of respect for human rights as a source of moral
imperative and authority.

If human rights have failed then that leaves only two main sources of
authority: raw power (in the military and economic senses) and religion. I
don't find that an acceptable framework to reason with when trying to decipher
"good" and "bad".

~~~
Afforess
> _In the very final couple of paragraphs he attempts to say that because
> large scale aid programs don 't work then human rights treaties are "an act
> of hubris"._

The author explained why large scale aid programs don't work - because large
scale programs treat foreign cultures like they are western cultures, or
aspire to be. Every culture's idea of "human rights" is different. For
example, Europe believes the freedom of speech does not extend to libel or
defamation. America does. Islamic states don't think freedom of speech extends
towards religions.

I agree with the article, and I would go one step further. There is no such
thing as human rights. They are just wishful ideals humanity invented.

~~~
danbruc
If you base your world view on religion and absolute moral values you may
believe that there are real rights but besides that I would assume that most
people agree that rights are just human conventions.

~~~
rayiner
Interestingly, HN seems to have a large number of people at the intersection
of athiesm and absolute moral rights.

~~~
jqm
I believe these are one and the same at the bottom of it all...

When humanity is the ultimate authority and life is finite, rights become of
paramount importance. When we start to assume justice or reward in a life to
come (or reward in the perfect communist state to come if we just make some
sacrifices now...), or we assume a higher unfathomable plan behind every
event, or when we start to think that the individual is less important than
the congregation, human rights tend to go right out the window. A casual
glance back through history seems to show this to be the case.

~~~
tptacek
Sure, I mean, the Cultural Revolution, Soviet Dekulakization, the Khmer Rouge
genocide... it's a good thing those were areligious genocides. Think of how
much worse they could have been.

~~~
jqm
Did you maybe miss an important point in my comment? Communism in those forms
is another type of idealistic extremism willing to sacrifice the individual
for the "higher purpose". And no surprise... the new religion preaching about
the life to come behaves in the same brutal way.

My opinion? There is nothing higher than the individual. No time more
important than now. Just my opinion.

~~~
tptacek
A rare appearance of the No False Scotsman fallacy.

~~~
jqm
Not a "true Scottsman" fallacy at all.

Organized group brutality appears when the individual becomes less important.
If this is because of social ideology, or because of a religion that is in
fact a social ideology, the effects are the same.

When these are discarded, the value of the individual re-appears.

~~~
tptacek
No, not a "true Scotsman" fallacy. The opposite fallacy: everyone is a
Scotsman.

~~~
jqm
Not everyone.

Just those who wear kilts and play bagpipes and come from Scotland. Even if
one has red hair and one has black hair.

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kijin
By the way, just found out that the author Eric Posner is the son of Richard
Posner, a federal judge who recently said that NSA should have unlimited
access to our digital data [1]. People don't always share the political views
of their parents, but two Posners coming out against rights in the same week
gives me the impression that this family isn't particularly fond of our
rights.

[1] [http://www.computerworld.com/article/2855206/give-nsa-
unlimi...](http://www.computerworld.com/article/2855206/give-nsa-unlimited-
access-to-digital-data-says-federal-judge.html)

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bayesianhorse
To me, human rights is the primary goal of a true democracy. Elections serve
mainly as a controlling factor in shaping the institutions necessary to
guarantee these rights. The article somewhat neglects that human rights have
to be defended not only against the government, but also against individuals
and groups of individuals. A right to property is not worth a lot if you have
to stop your neighbor from taking your stuff by shooting him.

But there can only ever be a compromise between these rights. Institutions
need taxes to work, but taxes mean taking money away from citizens, violating
their rights. A justice system needs to be able to punish offenders. Industry
must be regulated to avoid unnecessary deaths and suffering. These balance and
compromises are more complicated than any moral high ground.

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Sorgam
As well as being vague, human rights prioritize actions of the government over
those of ordinary people - the high murder rate in America is not a human
rights violation (what right could be more true than the right to not be
killed?) but the relatively less severe execution rate of political prisoners
in many other countries is a human rights violation. I live in a country with
poor human rights but very good safety against violent crime. I'd much rather
be here than in America where I won't be arrested for complaining about the
government but I'm likely to be robbed or threatened with a gun if I walk down
the wrong street at night. Different harm caused by different groups but one
is a human rights violation and the other is not despite both being ultimately
under the control of the government.

The effect of this is America can say "we have good human rights, we don't
torture political prisoners" and an authoritarian country can say "We have
good security, our people don't kill each other". The latter is usually more
directly helpful to more people, but the former has somehow become seen as
superior.

~~~
kijin
The reason government actions are often prioritized is that 1) governments
have the power to violate human rights more deliberately, systematically, and
effectively than most ordinary people, and 2) most people are utterly
incapable of defending themselves against governments.

A random thug can violate your rights as much as a government can, but he's
probably not doing it systematically, and it's usually much easier for you to
protect yourself from his actions. A shotgun will keep random thugs away from
your home, but it will do nothing to deter a SWAT team.

Human rights were designed to prevent systematic abuses that victims cannot
possibly protect themselves from, such as Hitler's persecution of ethnic
minorities. The UDHR of 1948 was a direct response to the atrocities committed
by Nazi Germany. The framework of human rights was never intended to protect
ordinary people from one another: that's what the police is for.

~~~
Sorgam
If it's only systematic abuses, then the rogue police torturings in Brazil
that the article described would count as "crime" and not be human rights
violations. I think it's a grey area between the government allowing it to
happen and actively doing it. Is a policeman breaking his rules really worse
than a powerful gang? The latter may do more systematic harm and be more
inescapable.

~~~
danbruc
If you violate national law, it is a crime, otherwise it is a human rights
violation. If you violate national law but the law is not enforced, you end up
in the grey area. I this case I would say if the state actively looks away it
is a human rights violation, if the state is just overwhelmed it remains a
crime. This of course again leaves a smaller gray are around looking away
because you are overwhelmed.

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lentil_soup
"[before 2001] The United States was a traditional leader in human rights and
one of the few countries that has used its power to advance human rights in
other nations"

Sure, what about the political and military support for the (very brutal)
dictatorships in latin-america in the 70s and 80s?

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kijin
Sorry for the wall of text, but this article exemplifies a lot of things that
are wrong with contemporary Western political theory.

> _Given that all governments have limited budgets, protecting one human right
> might prevent a government from protecting another._

That's not an excuse to dismantle human rights, only a reason to talk _more_
about how to define and balance competing rights.

Just because it is impossible to protect every right all the time doesn't mean
that the rights are not valuable. To take a familiar example, consider the CAP
theorem. It is impossible to achieve consistency, availability, and partition
tolerance at the same time. But that doesn't mean that we should ditch any or
all of them as a goal. We just make do with as much consistency as we can
achieve, as much availability as our budget allows, etc. according to our
specific needs. As our hardware and software improve, we'll get even better at
balancing those three, though we'll never reach perfection.

There's a tendency for philosophically minded people to try and come up with a
single, internally consistent set of interpretations and set it up as eternal
truth. But politics doesn't work like that. In politics as in database design,
you always tinker with this and that, adapt to new material constraints, and
make different compromises as you go along.

> _If a government advances one group of rights, while neglecting others, how
> does one tell whether it complies with the treaties the best it can or
> cynically evades them?_

Philosophically, yeah, that might be a pesky distinction. But in practice,
it's often easy to tell when a government is evading its responsibilities
instead of trying the damnedest to make do with what's available here and now.
Because most governments in evasion mode don't even try to test the
alternative.

In the early 1990s, Lee Kuan Yew, the long-time leader of Singapore, made
waves in the political philosophy community by arguing against human rights.
Naive philosophers took Lee's arguments at face value and tried to construct
all sort of elaborate theories in an attempt to respond. After only a few
years, however, it became clear that Lee was only trying to justify his own
dictatorial rule.

> _China cites “the right to development” to explain why the Chinese
> government gives priority to economic growth over political liberalisation._

Just because somebody invokes some right to justify violating some other right
doesn't mean that anyone else needs to take them seriously. I'll take China
seriously when they can present compelling evidence that "the right to
development" is truly, fundamentally, utterly incompatible with the right to
criticize the Communist Party. Until then, what they're saying is worth less
than cattle manure. (See? They're not even trying.)

Trading human rights against one another is something we should do as a last
resort when we really, seriously can't have both after years of trying hard.
It's not something that we should accept by default.

> _international human rights law does not require western countries to change
> their behaviour, while (in principle) it requires massive changes in the
> behaviour of most non-western countries_

Unless you've been living under a rock, it seems that Western countries must
change their behavior just as much as others do. Torture and mass surveillance
in the United States! Censorship in various EU member states, oh my! No
country even comes close to respecting all human rights, and the fact that
some score better doesn't mean that the rules are unfair to others.

On the other hand, as a citizen and resident of a very non-Western country, I
fully agree that the behavior of my country must undergo "massive changes".
Seriously, fuck this authoritarian, chauvinistic, intolerant culture. If it
needs to be changed beyond recognition in order for the people of this country
to enjoy some human rights, by all means change it. Good riddance, I won't
miss it.

> _With the benefit of hindsight, we can see that the human rights treaties
> were not so much an act of idealism as an act of hubris..._

With the benefit of hindsight, what I can see is that political theorists are
too easily swayed by temporary turns of economic fortune. Do you know what
finally made googly-eyed Western philosophers realize that Lee Kuan Yew's
criticism of human rights was a load of bullshit? It wasn't any profound
philosophical realization, it was the Asian financial crisis of 1997. As soon
as the Singaporean economy crashed, nobody gave a damn about what the leader
of Singapore had to say about human rights. His economy crashed, so he must be
wrong, right? Duh.

Western political theorists are getting nervous these days because China is
growing fast. But I wonder what all those professors would say if the Chinese
economy crashed tomorrow. Likewise, Western scholars are getting nervous
because most of them are good ol' progressives who don't like the U.S.
meddling in the Middle East (so far so good), but somehow feel like they need
to support their opinions with favorable depictions of those poor, victimized
Middle Eastern communities. But wait, you don't need to glorify the victim in
order to condemn the aggressor! Go to Afghanistan or Saudi Arabia and ask the
women whether they like being oppressed. They're Arabs, so they can't be too
hungry for Western-style human rights, right? riiiight?

The recent surge of doubt about human rights among Western scholars is, at
best, little more than an extension of white guilt, and at worst, playing into
the self-serving rhetoric of rich dictators in China and other developing
countries. It does a disservice to the countless non-Western, non-white
activists who are risking their lives this very moment to bring free speech,
due process, gender equality, and other basic human rights to their own
neighbors.

~~~
Wildgoose
Well said. It's not a wall of text, it's an eloquent response.

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jimmytidey
John Gray making a similar case:
[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-25505393](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-25505393)

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bh3244
What you call human rights is just using force(violence) to make people behave
the way you want them to. A democracy is a tyranny of the majority.

