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- The
American Declaration of Independence eloquently sets
out the rights with which we are born:
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"We
hold these truths to be self-evident, that
all men are created equal, that they are
endowed by their Creator with certain
inalienable Rights, that among these are
Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." |
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- But a close encounter
with an alligator in the Everglades will soon show
that our Creator forgot to tell it about man's
inalienable right to life. To say to a woman living
in Darfur that she was born equal, with a right to
liberty and the pursuit of happiness would be met
with a look of despair rather than hope. The reality
is that we have ‘rights' only if we as voters decide
that the law of our country should give them to us
and then only to the extent that they can be
enforced against those (including governments and
alligators) who would try to take them away. Rights
are not somehow intrinsic to our lives. There is no
gene for human rights. In the absence of an
enforceable law, ‘rights' are, at best, aspirations
- a rallying cry. And sometimes they are an
imperfect formulation of what we want to be the
case. I cannot see for instance the justification
for the recent decision that a life prisoner, in the
name of a right to family life, should have access
to artificial insemination facilities so that his
wife can become pregnant. Prison should bring with
it the natural results of physical separation.
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- There is a considerable
difference between the view of the majority of
people and liberals as to how others should be
treated. Amongst readers of the Guardian and the
Independent, human rights legislation is seen as
obviously ‘a good thing', whilst readers of the
Express, the Telegraph and the Daily Mail are far
from sure. Liberals would consider it completely
unacceptable to deport an illegal immigrant back to
a country where he would probably be tortured or
killed. Most others, by contrast, would look at what
the person had done and, if he had committed a
serious crime, would be likely to say ‘tough' and
send him back anyway. Their view would be that
receiving humanitarian treatment is dependent on
compliance with your obligations as a ‘guest' here.
Both views are, of course, merely assertions
incapable of justification on purely logical
grounds. All cows eat grass, this is a cow and so
therefore it eats grass is not a formulation which
can be used to settle this particular issue. There
are no premises which would be universally accepted
as true from which a deduction could be made.
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- If logic cannot be
used, then we have to look at the claims of
morality. But the rights set out in the 1950
European convention on human rights or in the 1948
United Nations Declaration do not come from a
generally accepted source of moral authority, such
as the Church or the Mosque or even from the
founding fathers of a new country or as a
consequence of a revolution against an oppressive
regime, such as in France. And so for most people in
this country they have no religious or emotional
force. Indeed, the fact that we have adopted the ‘European
Convention on Human Rights' makes it even more
suspicious, even though eminent British lawyers had
a leading role in writing it after and because of
the atrocities committed in the second world war. It
is now seen simply as an unconvincing attempt to
create a secular morality out of nothing - and by
Europeans as well! It is interference by do-gooders.
The fact that, according to the newspapers, rights
seem mainly to benefit undeserving people underlines
this.
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- And yet as individuals
we each want most, if not all, of the protections on
which these ‘rights' are based. The history of
communism amply demonstrates that without them my
life would be intolerable, if I actually still had a
life. It is then a simple exercise of pragmatism to
realise that if I want that protection then, unless
I happen already to be the supreme ruler, it will
have to be part of a package giving everyone-else in
the same position as me the same rights as me.
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- But it is an emotional
thing as well. I and my fellow liberals could never
be instrumental in sending anyone living here back
to suffer what goes on in a repressive regime. My
mirror neurons wouldn't let me. This is perhaps
where the great divide exists in society. We
liberals are obviously too soft - or the others are
too hard. But then I shed a tear when I watch ‘the
Railway Children'.
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