The UN declaration of human rights - real rights vs fake rights
These are my thoughts on the UN Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) - which you can read online. The ostensibly reasonable ideas presented in the declaration are so thoroughly inculcated in young minds nowadays that they absorb the ideas without questioning or reflection. I outline below why I believe this is a serious problem.
First - What is a right?
Murray Rothbard gets to the heart of the question of what a fundamental right really is.
A “right,” philosophically, must be something embedded in the nature of man and reality, something that can be preserved and maintained at any time and in any age. The “right” of self-ownership, of defending one’s life and property, is clearly that sort of right: it can apply to Neanderthal cavemen, in modern Calcutta, or in the contemporary United States. Such a right is independent of time or place. [1]
Such rights are sometimes referred to as 'natural rights'.
The good
There are some commendable articles in the declaration. For example, Article 5 states that
No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
This, while not necessarily original, can probably be regarded as fundamental by almost everyone.
Part (1) of Article 20 is also unproblematic:
(1) Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association.
The problem, however, is that these reasonable statements are used - in a sense - as a Trojan horse for some seriously terrible ideas and goals.
Rights vs privileges, luxuries and desiderata
Many of the articles declare as 'rights' things which are really 'privileges'. Article 25, for example, states that
Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services ...
But this is nonsense. A human has no right to demand or expect these things. They have a right to grow or harvest their own food, build their own house - or to bargain, trade and share with others via voluntary arrangements to procure these things - but not to take or demand the finished products without any effort on their part.
And the declaration continues much in that vein - declaring as 'rights' things which have been largely unavailable to humans for much of history, which require large bureaucracies to allocate and administer, and which require the time, labor and expertise of highly-trained professionals to fulfill. Declaring 'medical care' as a right, for example, essentially negates the free will of the professionals - the doctors, nurses and surgeons - who are expected to provide this care.
Leonard Peikoff highlights the lunacy of this position very well:
The rule now is for politicians to ignore and violate men's actual rights, while arguing about a whole list of rights never dreamed of in this country's founding documents—rights which require no earning, no effort, no action at all on the part of the recipient.You are entitled to something, the politicians say, simply because it exists and you want or need it—period. You are entitled to be given it by the government. Where does the government get it from? What does the government have to do to private citizens—to their individual rights—to their real rights—in order to carry out the promise of showering free services on the people? [3]
Back in the declaration, the authors continue to argue for artificial 'rights' - the 'right to social security', to 'just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment', to 'reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay' - and so on. These are all very modern inventions - and now they are being bandied about as 'fundamental human rights'. It's not just silly - it's insidious and dangerous.
Why is it dangerous to regard these items or services as 'rights'?
This dogma is dangerous because any number of measures which violate fundamental freedoms can be taken to fulfill these so-called 'rights'. All of these 'rights' require a vast amount of human time and expertise - and an uncountable number of material resources - to deliver. These societal resources - as well as people's time and energy - might be better invested in other causes - rather than being commandeered in a militaristic mission to fulfill these imagined 'rights'.
And unfortunately there isn't really an 'opt-out' clause. When the authors of the bill write that
No one may be compelled to belong to an association
they really mean:
No one may be compelled to belong to an association (except ours)
Why else would they declare (Article 26) that
Elementary education shall be compulsory. ... Education ... shall further the activities of the United Nations ...
This was all about 'rights' - so why are they now talking about 'compulsions'? Truly, though, it's not possible to deliver most of the purported 'rights' in the UDHR without massive societal compulsion. The 'rights' that they declare as fundamental rely on complex trading and delivery networks that have developed over thousands of years - let alone the time, labor and expertise of craftsmen, laborers, scientists, couriers, engineers, doctors, nurses and countless other workers who never signed up for this dogma.
Even the most modest item required to fulfill the 'right to education' - a ball-point pen, for example - has an almost unfathomable number of dependencies. Where does the ink come from? The spring mechanism? The plastic that the pen is made from was formed using a reaction that chemists might not have even known about at the beginning of the last century. Yet, in such a short space of time, our rights to these things have become fundamental!
They say that compulsory education is 'for the maintenance of peace', but a more nuanced and realistic interpretation might be 'for the quelling of dissenting opinions'.
A certain standard of living != a right
A certain 'standard of living' is not, and never will be, a 'fundamental human right'. The proponents of this bizarre idea have proposed that medical care is a right, but where does it end? What else constitutes this minimally acceptable 'standard of living'? For example, will people soon boldly assert that household electrical appliances are a 'fundamental right'? Is 'internet access' a fundamental right. If so, before long we can expect the soft-headed ambassadors of this alternative reality to be proclaiming that contraceptives and their favorite takeaway dinners are fundamental rights too.
(Oh wait ... I think some of them are saying that already.)
They give little thought to what exactly is required to fulfill these rights of course. Of course not, why would they? They already know that they are fundamental rights, so why does the question need to be analyzed?
Essential != a right
Just because something is essential, this does not mean it is a 'right'. The necessity of something - whether it be housing, food or clothing - implies your right to pursue it, not to take, demand or expect it.
Housing
What I have written above about 'housing' might seem particularly callous. I certainly don't want it to seem this way. As someone living in Ireland, I am keenly aware of the housing crisis.
But the relevant 'fundamental right' in this regard is the right to build a home (or - more likely in the modern context - to solicit the assistance of others to help you this). An auxiliary right is access to land and / or space to do this. The fundamental right in question is not a 'right to a home' - it is the right to build a home. (Or at least that is a far better approximation to the relevant 'right'.)
How this right should be recognized and fulfilled is an interesting and possibly eternally contentious question. I have strong reservations about the stance maintained by many libertarians - their rejection of the idea that land / space is something that people have a right to. To reject this idea is tantamount to denying the afore-mentioned right (to build a home) - which I genuinely believe is fundamental.
One of the main problems, as I see it, is Government control of land and its excessive planning laws and regulations regarding new homes. (This has a long and shameful history in Ireland - which would be a serious digression here.) Coupled with increasingly tight restrictions on lending criteria for people who want to buy land or houses, bureaucrats are making it effectively impossible for many people to ever actually build a home.
Where's my compassion?
My compassion is right where it is supposed to be - and as real as ever - not delegated to the state to exercise on my behalf. I don't believe that compassion and empathy should or can be mediated by the state in a consistent and meaningful way - or any sort of over-reaching bureaucracy consisting of people who don't really know you, or who are ever likely to find the time to get to know you - amidst their endless form-filling and their box-ticking exercises.
Do you think that the state cares for you? Some of their representatives may indeed be genuinely caring individuals who develop compassion for the people they deal with, but any compassion (and - incidentally - any practical assistance) they offer could just as readily - and probably more effectively - be exercised without being mandated by the state or, ultimately, the UN.
Declaring something as a fundamental 'right' doesn't 'spread compassion' - it only obscures things, and makes it far more difficult to discern and appreciate the nuances of individual circumstances. With perhaps occasional exceptions, you're not going to 'squeeze any more compassion' out of people - or inspire them in any way - by insisting that people have a 'fundamental right' to the fruits of their labour; it's far more likely that you'll just annoy them. A doctor, a nurse, a scientist, an engineer, a lawyer, an artist - or any other trained professional - probably has a lot more discretion to exercise their 'compassion' without bureaucracy getting in the way.
You want people to exercise compassion? The best thing, in a lot of cases, would be to simply stay out of their way - and let them figure out the best way to do that by themselves.
Trying to elevate professional care to the status of a 'right' is both immoral and counterproductive. It cultivates an attitude that looking after each other is the government's business only - something to be left only to trained and licensed 'professionals'. It cultivates a mindset where - when we witness human suffering - we tend not to act to redress it directly, because it's 'not really our place' to be dealing with these things. That's what the government, their public services and the government-approved 'professional' charities are there far. Thus genuinely charitable sentiments and a willingness to look after others has been co-opted.
Summary
The authors of the UN declaration of human rights give a perfunctory nod to the importance of liberty and individual human freedoms, but relegate them far below the allegedly more important (and far more ambiguous) goal of the 'social good'.
A right is not 'fundamental' unless it can be asserted by any person in any time and / or place in history - a fundamental right is not contingent on societal supports.
All but of a handful of the things listed in the bill are truly 'rights'; others - while essential - can still not be regarded as 'rights' (we have the right to pursue and work for them - but not to demand or expect them). Lastly, the remainder are merely desiderata.
The few articles in the UDHR that are morally acceptable are mainly unoriginal. Many of the remaining articles are dangerous - in the sense that they open the door to endless societal meddling. I honestly believe that the declaration is a terrible reference for a free and moral society.
Links / References
[1] https://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/
[2] Murray Rothbard, For a New Liberty
[3] Leonard Peikoff, Health care is not a right, http://www.afcm.org/hcinar.html
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