The following sites present criticisms and complaints regarding “human rights,” at least as now generally understood and institutionalized.
- What’s Wrong with Human Rights?. A general discussion by the author of this site (also available in Spanish that emphasizes the UDHR.
- Paul Treanor on “Why human rights are wrong.” The conception and its institutionalization, he says, are intrinsically imperialistic.
- Srdja Trifkovic on It’s Not Just the Balkans. Reflections on the New World Order, human rights, and the abolition of humanity.
- Andrew Heard on “Introduction to Human Rights Theories” and “The Challenges of Utilitarianism and Relativism.” Compendia of objections.
- Phillippe Beneton on The Languages of the Rights of Man. An historical perspective.
- Ralph McInerny on On natural law and natural rights. More history, in the form of a somewhat rambling review of two books.
- Mary Ann Glendon on “Rights Babel: Thoughts on the Approaching 50th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.” The views of a neoconservative—that is, of one who generally approves of liberalism through the mid-60s but not subsequent developments. Also see Rights Talk:The Impoverishment of Political Discourse (1991), her book on the exaggerated role of rights in American public life.
- A Statement of the Ramsey Colloquium, “On Human Rights: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights Fifty Years Later.” More neoconservative concern about the tendency of “human rights” to go astray, from a somewhat ecumenical religious point of view.
- Robert Hayden on Humanitarian hypocrisy. The human rights movement exempts itself from its own strictures. A discussion of one result, the war in Yugoslavia.
- A book review of The Rise and Rise of Human Rights, by Kirsten Sellars. More on humanitarian hypocrisy.
- Bernard Robertson on “Economic, Social and Cultural Rights: Time for a Reappraisal.” A detailed discussion from a generally libertarian point of view that emphasizes economics and the distinction between negative rights (good) and positive rights (bad).
- Eugene Volokh on Freedom of Speech vs. Workplace Harassment Law. An example of how dignity and equality, abstractly defined, tend to squash concrete freedom in human rights law. See Paul Fromm’s Canadian Association for Free Expression and Walter Olson’s Overlawyered.com for similar and related examples.
- Jared Taylor on Return to the Dark Ages, the rising tide of censorship in Europe in the name of tolerance and human rights.
- Elizabeth Wright on Punishing White Nationalists in America.
- David M. Smolin on Will International Human Rights be Used as a Tool of Cultural Genocide? The Interaction of Human Rights Norms, Religion, Culture and Gender. “[I]t appears that the majority of people on the earth are identified with a people-group whose cultural/religious practices violate certain international human rights norms.”
- Internationale Konventionen h?hlen die Demokratie aus. A discussion of how international conventions, on human rights and other matters, help governments free themselves from popular influence.
- Family Research Council papers relating to the United Nations (just check the block marked “UNITED NATIONS” and click on “Search”), mostly dealing with “human rights” developments touching on the family from a point of view generally consistent with neoconservatism. They have also put out a collection of essays on the subject, Fifty Years After the Declaration (University Press of America, 2000) edited by Teresa Wagner and Leslie Carbone.
- Patrick F. Fagan of the Heritage Society discusses How U.N. Conventions On Women’s and Children’s Rights Undermine Family, Religion, and Sovereignty.
- The Phyllis Schlafly Report on The New World Order Wants Your Children. Troublesome aspects of the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
- The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child: The Most Dangerous Attack on Parents’ Rights in the History of the United States, and David Horowitz on Even Alone, We Can Still Be Right. More of the same.
- Elliot Abrams on Rights, wrongs, and the assault on the family. It’s not just the Convention on the Rights of the Child, it’s the human rights movement in general.
- Families Worldwide, an advocacy group, has a collection of articles on family public policy, several of which deal with the relation between the human rights movement and the well-being of families and their members.
- The Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute is particularly concerned with the relation between the “human rights” activities associated with the UN and the Catholic understanding of family life. Also see their site TheFactIs.org.
- David L. Schindler on “Religious Freedom, Truth, and American Liberalism: Another Look at John Courtney Murray.” An intelligent discussion of the antireligious bias implicit in a constitutional order that claims to have no particular religious commitment.
- Janet Smith on “Rights, the Person, and Conscience in the Catechism.” How you discuss ethical issues in rights talk, and how you discuss them in a more perspicuous language.
- Dr. Samuel Gregg on “Dignitatis Humanae and the Catholic Human Rights ‘Revolution’: Past Successes, Future Problems.” Reconstructing human rights to accord with Catholic understandings.
- Julian Rivers on “Beyond Rights: The Morality of Rights-Language.” To what extent should Christians buy into such things?
- Peter D. Junger on “Why the Buddha has no Rights.” And neither does the Common Law, he says, at least not in an abstract universal sense.
- For an attempt legitimately to develop a theory of human rights from within a traditional religion, see The Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam.
- Jean Parvulesco on human rights. Not pleasant, respectable or responsible, but representative of another tendency of thought.