A rare critical look at “human rights”: a review of The Rise and Rise of Human Rights, Kirsten Sellars, Sutton Publishing, 2002, which (it appears) treats human rights as an unprincipled attempt to rule the world in the name of principle. “[H]uman rights have not just been on the rise: they have also been reformulated. Sovereignty used to trump human rights, now human rights trump sovereignty. It is this development that has transformed the human rights approach into the potent and destructive force that it is today.” At the end of the review there are several links to related Spiked articles.
“Sovereignty used to trump
“Sovereignty used to trump human rights, now human rights trump sovereignty.”
This represents the logical and practical culmination of Jacobinism, in which all intermediary human communities between the individual level and the totality of mankind are erased. The world now consists in effect of just two sovereign entities: the individual person, and the disembodied, unaccountable, transnational human-rights enforcers acting in his name.
Isn’t that what the modern
Isn’t that what the modern project is all about? Man has been separated from God, from woman, from family, from community, from tribe, from race, from nation. It’s very lonely.
Exactly.
The only thing
Exactly.
The only thing from which Man has not been separated is the State.