The demand for control of opinion, incorporated into human rights conventions and increasingly enacted into law, calls the coherence of human rights thought into question. Human rights forbid prosecution of those who deny God, but demand it for those who deny the gas chambers.They require stamping out advocacy of sexism, but favor advocacy of sexual immorality. Isn’t this just special pleading?
The problem is presented most vividly in the case of criminal prosecutions for the mere expression of opinion. Unfortunately, most relevant materials on the net are either highly polemical or abstract and conclusory. The following are therefore only random items I have come across. If you have others, please let me know!
- The following materials on suppression of Holocaust revisionism are from a site maintained by David Irving. While Irving has a personal interest in the matter, on the whole they are documented.
- Criticism of the EU as “blasphemy”, and the xenophobia Europolice. Since “human rights” break down particular allegiances they are integral to construction of superstates and thus an instrument of new forms of power.
- Undercover agents listen for comments in British restaurants.
- Criminal charges against 11-year-old English boy for schoolyard name-calling.
- Other newsclips on European prosecutions in the name of human rights for thought and speech crimes.
- Virginia man given 10 years for burning cross. He was 19 years old at the time, and if it had been an American flag, the act would presumably have been constitutionally protected.
- Michigan housewife jailed for rude advocacy of official English.