"All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood."
--Article 1, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, United Nations, 1948
Is this obsession with rights creating a better society?
Rights, then, are often in the eye of the beholder, with some of them clearly demonstrating a perplexing and perhaps even contradictory side.
Could it be that by privileging rights over responsibilities we have lost sight of a fundamental fact?
"This lack of common sense has led inevitably to a rights revolution, where only selfishness and personal interest seem to reign supreme."
--W.A. Borst, Liberalism: Fatal Consequences
Our narrow and selfish preoccupation with our rights threatens to engulf and destroy us.
Human rights. We hear about them constantly these days, often in a global context. Yet according to Eleanor Roosevelt, they begin "in small places, close to home--so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world."
She went on to say in her address at the 1948 UN Commission on Human Rights that "they are the world of the individual person; the neighborhood he lives in; the school or college he attends; the factory, farm, or office where he works. Such are the places where every man, woman, and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination. Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere."
The UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, now more than 50 years old, was not the first attempt to legislate human rights on an international scale. The post-World War I League of Nations Covenant required members to "endeavor to secure and maintain fair and humane conditions of labour for men, women, and children," "secure just treatment of the native inhabitants of territories under their control," and "take steps in matters of international concern for the prevention and control of disease." Out of these provisions grew the work of the UN's International Labor Organization.
Since 1948, much has been said and written about human rights, and organizations such as Amnesty International have worked tirelessly to combat flagrant violations.
Yet it never seems enough, and so the laws continue to roll out like ripples in a pond, ever wider in scope. The U.K. Human Rights Act, for instance, incorporated the 1950 European Convention on Human Rights into British law in late 2000. About a month later, the Charter of Fundamental Rights was adopted at the European Council in Nice. These complement the European Court of Justice and the European Court of Human Rights, the latter of which is based on the European Convention on Human Rights.
Michael Whatley of Prettys Solicitors, a specialized British law firm, offered a broad view of human rights as determined by the U.K. Human Rights Act. "Human Rights," he observed, "are often thought of as a narrow concept of individual rights, such as the right not to be discriminated against on grounds such as race or religion but . . . included within the Convention's concept of Human Rights are social and economic rights. . . . The protections afforded by the Convention can apply to individuals, companies, non-governmental organisations and groups of individuals in both criminal and civil court cases."
RIGHT OR WRONG?
Legally, rights have never been so extensively defined. For starters, there are the rights of ethnic minorities. Then we have the rights of women. The rights of children. The rights of homosexuals. The right to terminate an unwanted pregnancy or, depending on your viewpoint, the rights of the unborn. The right to claim compensation when your rights are violated. The rights of workers. The rights of consumers. The rights of the "unwaged." The rights of single parents. The rights of companies and organizations. Even the rights of animals and, believe it or not, plants. It's a list seemingly without end.
The situations in the United States and the United Kingdom are parallel in many respects. American society has a reputation for being the most litigious in the world. Lawyers often offer "no win, no fee" inducements, so the attraction of a quick, opportunistic buck can be alluring to those who believe their rights have been trampled. Compensation demands are also increasing in Britain. In both countries, the growing likelihood of compensation claims has had the effect of pushing up employment costs such as insurance.
Germany, too, is now plagued with what was once referred to as "the British disease." Most companies must now have a workers' council, and companies with more than 200 employees must release at least one employee from other duties to work full-time on the council. The larger the company, the larger the prescribed council. Such councils expect to take on an enhanced advisory role, covering anything from planned job cuts to the introduction of new technology. This is, of course, a financial and administrative burden to companies, and German employers now look enviously across the channel to Britain, where labor laws are not as restrictive and the economy is buoyant.
The prosperous nations of the Western world have never been more focused on rights. Many people would therefore say we've come a long way since the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
But have we? Is this obsession with rights creating a better society? Surely a focus on rights should have made us all happier. But is society any better and are we any happier?
WHO'S RIGHT ABOUT WHOSE RIGHTS?
Certain concepts of human rights appear self-evident: the rights of people not to be tortured or abused, freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom of political association.
But what happens when perceived rights conflict with one another?
When Britain's parliament earlier this year considered a bill to ban foxhunting as a cruel sport, for example, animal rights activists--never more vociferous--were jubilant. Some of them were overtly, unashamedly, physically violent toward those they saw as enemies and therefore fair targets, such as employees of medical research laboratories that experiment on animals.
On the flip side of the coin were the country dwellers, who have for centuries taken their fox hunts for granted and who suddenly found themselves in a direct head-to-head with those who see animal rights as paramount.
Animal rights campaigners make no secret of their next prime targets: hunting and fishing. Even one particularly British institution, the fish-and-chip shop, has come into the battle zone; one owner was recently lucky to escape severe injury from a letter bomb.
Rights, then, are often in the eye of the beholder, with some of them clearly demonstrating a perplexing and perhaps even contradictory side.
Sexual freedom is another area of ever unfolding and often conflicting rights. Britain recently passed legislation to lower the age of consent from 18 to 16 for an act still linguistically associated with the biblical city of Sodom. In some nations the age of consent is 12.
Then there is the cherished right to adopt the lifestyle of one's choice and to freely cohabit without a commitment to the formality of marriage.
Even Britain's once family-oriented Girl Guides Association, in a move to update itself, has shed practically any attempt to further traditional views on marriage. When the latest edition of Look Wider, a handbook for older Guides, featured a photograph of a grinning teenage girl holding up an unrolled condom, the message was clear. "Rather than offering a wholesome alternative to the interests that draw Guides away from the organisation in their early teens," said an article in London's Daily Telegraph, "Look Wider tries to appeal to those interests with references to, inter alia, sex, smoking and highly paid jobs. No way of life, however outlandish, can be criticised. All sorts of subjects are covered--teenage pregnancy, single-sex marriage, prostitution--but it is never said that there is anything wrong with these things. There is only one concrete warning in all 128 pages: 'Hitch-hiking is not allowed.'"
The article continued, "The desperate desire not to put Guides off means that the handbook fails to advocate anything of value that might demand any responsibility--such as, say, marriage. . . . The emphasis is switched from helping others to helping oneself" ("A Very Bad Guide," December 16, 2000).
Lamenting the decline of religious and social authority, religious journalist Clifford Longley commented in another Telegraph article on the complete lack of "any sense of foreboding that the marginalisation of the beliefs and traditions [the religious establishment] stood for was likely in the long run to do great damage" to modern society. "So now we make up our own rules," he wrote. "It is such thinking that has undermined the confidence of modern parents, who have begun to doubt whether they have the right to pass on their values to their children" ("We Need More Belief--Not More Policemen," December 27, 2000).
EVER MORE CREATIVE
Though it is probably over-quoted, there is no doubt that George Orwell's book 1984 was in some ways prophetic. Take, for example, the recent attempt by the British government to turn children into model citizens with the help of a textbook featuring compulsory citizenship lessons. Government ministers presumably recognize and hope to arrest an increasingly lawless and violent undercurrent among young pupils.
The text, How to Be a Good Citizen by American educator Francine Britton, states as its lofty objective the creation of a "spiritual, moral, social and cultural" renaissance and contains such New Age concepts as "honoring the spirit" and "the mystery of self." Critics have noted an almost Orwellian tendency in the book, which many teachers see as a waste of valuable teaching time. The "no shame, no blame" culture, however, has to invent ever more creative terminology in order to instill in young minds what might remotely be recognized as ethics, morals or values.
Yet we are religious creatures by nature. Karen Armstrong, journalist and writer on religion and belief, incisively commented in her History of God that "human beings are spiritual animals. Indeed, there is a case for arguing that Homo sapiens is also Homo religiosus."
So when we move away from familiar religious and traditional values, some of the politically correct initiatives attempting to deal with the moral vacuum take on a somewhat ludicrous hue as they try to instill values without mentioning such dreaded words as morals or responsibility, nor the even more embarrassing terms God and Christian principles.
Replacing traditional values today we find such idealized concepts as personal freedom, individual choice, self-actualization, self-esteem and "the right to know." Note that all of these focus on the individual, the self.
An inevitable and worrisome result of those values and that kind of focus, of course, is that subjects that used to be off limits, such as a nation's security secrets, are now open to disclosure, discussion and critique. That highly prized commodity, freedom, has thus moved to the point where one can exercise one's perceived rights even if it puts national security at risk.
We seem to have moved light years from a society where personal responsibility came first, to one where personal rights are the first and sometimes only consideration.
THAT OTHER R
So what about that other R, responsibility? Could it be that by privileging rights over responsibilities we have lost sight of a fundamental fact? Think about it: If we do not--as a society and as individuals--put responsibilities ahead of rights, then we will paradoxically begin to lose those rights that we hold to be inalienable.
As laws, proclamations and politically correct pressure groups rain supposed rights on ever more narrowly defined and exclusive groups and causes, it is a sure sign that we are forgetting how the very freedoms we take for granted were preserved through the centuries; namely, by the responsibility and self-sacrifice of our predecessors.
Nobody said it better, from a national perspective, than John F. Kennedy: "Ask not what your country can do for you--ask what you can do for your country."
Apart from a few brave and increasingly lonely voices, it appears that many of our religious and governmental institutions are abandoning--indeed sometimes uprooting--the moral underpinnings of society.
Self-fulfillment and political correctness have replaced that deeper, lasting set of values that overarches and simultaneously underpins individual rights. The warning voices that do sound forth are usually not those of killjoys wanting to make life miserable for the sake of it, but rather those of astute individuals who foresee--and warn about--the damaging outcomes of our self-indulgence.
Writer and philosopher Anthony O'Hear has demonstrated significant insight into where our pursuit of rights without corresponding responsibilities has taken us. "Could it be," he asked in his 1999 book, After Progress, "that the type of material and political progress on which we pride ourselves is actually the cause of spiritual and aesthetic decline? . . . Could the root cause of our discontents be lack of inner resources, rather than higher expectations of life?" O'Hear puzzled that the nation that produced such great artists as Turner and Constable should now put animal corpses and images of human excrement on display as art.
He reflected on "the obsessive harping on happiness in a material sense, which makes our life today so mediocre in so many ways, which forgets that what is really worthwhile can be achieved only through struggle and suffering, that there are aims in life higher than the elimination of pain and the cultivation of pleasure."
Other voices have also lamented the corrosive effect of this blinkered focus on rights alone. W.A. Borst, for instance, author of Liberalism: Fatal Consequences, wrote of the United States: "A nation which had set up a near-perfect and flexible government is now finding common sense more endangered than the snail darter. Lawyers have hamstrung society with nit-picking minutiae. . . . This lack of common sense has led inevitably to a rights revolution, where only selfishness and personal interest seem to reign supreme."
Consider, by way of illustrating the point, that hate-object of political correctness: the beleaguered, conventional two-parent family. Is diligently pursuing irresponsible fathers, also known as deadbeat dads, really as good as teaching the spiritual, moral and social responsibilities of fatherhood? Does providing state financial support for unmarried mothers really match teaching girls that waiting until marriage for sex and children is still by far their (and their offspring's) best chance for security and happiness? Why won't governments and churches preach that message when the miserable results of the alternatives are as plain as a pikestaff?
THE SAME OLD LESSONS
The liberalization, trivialization and mockery of institutions that have been the bedrock of ascendancy and greatness are, like a cancer, eating away everywhere. Take the institutions of America and Britain as an example. Peter Hitchens, British journalist and social critic, wrote in his 1999 book, The Abolition of Britain: "A forest [i.e., the British Constitution] that has taken centuries to grow can be cut down in weeks, or even hours, especially if the foresters have grown indolent and slack, and take their charge for granted. . . . When the British tradition was suddenly threatened by attractive-seeming ideas, innovations and philosophies, there was no one left to fight for the old order. When affluence encouraged individual independence and weakened the sense of mutual obligation, all classes began to forget the ties that had bound them together. . . . So we allowed our patriotism to be turned into a joke, wise sexual restraint to be mocked as prudery, our families to be defamed as nests of violence, loathing and abuse, our literature to be tossed aside like so much garbage, and our church turned into a department of the Social Security system."
Philosopher George Santayana's warning that "those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" certainly applies here.
Many American and British legal and constitutional concepts are based on, or owe an immense debt to, our Judeo-Christian heritage. Therefore, while that heritage has arguably suffered from faulty transmission over the centuries, our laws and concepts of truth and morality owe their ultimate authority to the underlying concepts contained in Scripture--the Holy Bible.
The God of the Bible made very clear what would ultimately make or break a nation. To the nation that would base its constitution on His laws and providence, He said: "I will give peace in the land, and you shall lie down, and none will make you afraid; I will rid the land of evil beasts, and the sword will not go through your land. You will chase your enemies, and they shall fall by the sword before you. Five of you shall chase a hundred, and a hundred of you shall put ten thousand to flight; your enemies shall fall by the sword before you.
For I will look on you favorably and make you fruitful, multiply you and confirm My covenant with you" (Leviticus 26:6-9).
God gave a foundation to the children of Israel, His prototype nation, millennia ago. It worked for them, and it has worked for others to the degree to which it has been applied. "Therefore be careful to observe [God's laws and statutes]; for this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples who will hear all these statutes, and say, 'Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.' For what great nation is there that has God so near to it, as the Lord our God is to us, for whatever reason we may call upon Him? And what great nation is there that has such statutes and righteous judgments as are in all this law which I set before you this day?" (Deuteronomy 4:6-8).
RIGHTS OR BLESSINGS?
Interestingly, God never promised rights. He promised blessings, and that is the critical difference. A self-sacrificing individual who serves his or her society, a people that truly looks to God, doesn't need to be and indeed isn't focused on rights. Such people are focused on other people and on God, and on their responsibilities to both.
This is the lesson of social responsibility: "For the commandments, 'You shall not commit adultery,' 'You shall not murder,' 'You shall not steal,' 'You shall not bear false witness,' 'You shall not covet,' and if there is any other commandment, are all summed up in this saying, namely, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself'" (Romans 13:9).
Our narrow and selfish preoccupation with our rights threatens to engulf and destroy us. It is not until we begin again, as individuals and as nations, to look outside ourselves to our religious, moral and social responsibilities --to other human beings and to God--that we will reverse national, social and spiritual decline.
DAVID F. LLOYD
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Author, Edwin Stepp, Director of Development for Vision Media Productions, writes articles on current events and ideology for Vision Media. More information about these and other current events and ideology topics can be found at www.vision.org.
Author, Sally Falkow, contributes articles on current events and ideology for Vision Media Productions. More information about the latest current events and ideology can be found at www.vision.org.
