thoughts in and out of season
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 … More ...
Atrocities in a shrinking world create a demand for clear principles of human rights. Recent developments have made clear the necessity of limiting attempts to enforce them directly, and placing them in a system that recognizes the human need for particularity and substantive concrete loyalties. To facilitate discussion, we have put together a proposal for … More ...
Here are links and discussions relating to human rights from the perspective of the human rights movement:
The following sites present criticisms and complaints regarding “human rights,” at least as now generally understood and institutionalized.
At present there are practical limits to the effects of human rights theory. However, it is in principle an absolutist ideology that enjoys the support of elites worldwide. In order to safeguard its beneficial aspects, principled limitations are necessary to make it consistent with tradition and subsidiarity.
What is to be done about human rights?… More ...
The current human rights movement proposes a comprehensive system of social morality. That system demands forcible action to promote universal equality and guarantee the well-being of everyone in the world. Universal empire is therefore its natural organizational form, and opposition to empire, in the name of limited government and particularism, is opposition to what now … More ...
What follows is the text of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, with comments regarding aspects of the document that foreshadow the present state of overreaching and confusion, and suggestions for a more modest and coherent understanding. The comments and suggestions should be read in conjunction with our discussion of the current human rights movement … More ...
Contemporary liberalism honors diversity and tolerance above all, but what it calls by those names is different from what has been so called in the past. Its diversity denigrates and excludes ordinary people, and its tolerance requires speech codes, quotas, and compulsory training in correct opinions and attitudes. Nor do current liberal totems and tabus … More ...
James Kalb
Yale Law School
Supervised Analytic Writing — Charles Gray, supervisor
January 10, 1978
In the course of this draft I refer to a number of books and articles on the benefit of clergy and the privilege of sanctuary. While helpful to anyone wanting to understand these institutions, these sources tend to … More ...
The Patriot is a popular entertainment about the American war for independence that tells the story of Benjamin Martin, a South Carolina planter and widower, and his struggles on behalf of his large family and against the British. The film is a Hollywood entertainment, and as such … More ...