The “Human Rights” Conventions and Declarations are cleverly written to appear to be about liberty – whilst really offering no protection against the expansion of government at all (indeed actually encouraging the expansion of government power)
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Samizdata quote of the daySamizdata Illuminatus (Arkham, Massachusetts) · Civil liberty, Law & Regulation · Slogans & Quotations September 22nd, 2020 |
 15 comments to Samizdata quote of the day |
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Declaration to justify the repugnant behaviours of creepy busy bodies, lunatic puritans, paedophiles and Western politicians selling out to China is much less catchy.
Mr Marks is exactly correct–they all allow exceptions that mean political scum can neutralise ALL yr rights as it suits them.
According to this link the current members of the UN Human Rights Commission are (emphasis mine):
Armenia, Brazil, Germany, Indonesia, Japan, Libya, Marshall Islands, Mauritania, Namibia, Netherlands, Poland, Republic of Korea, Sudan and Venezuela
They replaced the previous members were:
China, Croatia, Cuba, Egypt, Hungary, Iceland, Iraq, Japan, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Tunisia and the United Kingdom
I mean it speaks for itself really, doesn’t it?
It reminds me of the Nobel Peace Prize. The actual Nobel Prizes are for excellence in various fields of science, the Peace Prize was added as an afterthought. It tends to be awarded to people whose contribution to peace has been negative.
Maybe. But what if those Conventions, some of which are directly justiciable, had not existed? Maybe things would be better, but maybe they would be even worse.
For my part, I prefer to force the enemies of liberty to pretend to have a care for it when they wield the power of the State, rather than let them brazenly declare that freedom is an evil that ought to be suppressed.
The two main British figures in the United Nation Human Rights document were Harold Laski and E.H. Carr.
Harold Laski was a socialist – a real one, i.e. he was a totalitarian. He believed in a total government that controlled just about everything. Some people, many people, call themselves socialists without knowing what it means, but Harold Laski was not one of these people – when he looked at what was written on his Labour Party Membership card (he was Chairman) and read the words “control of the means of production, distribution and exchange” he knew what it meant and he SUPPORTED IT.
E.H. Carr was a “Liberal” – and a leading “historian” of the time.
His version of liberalism was ever bigger government (“Social Reform”) as in the “New Liberalism” or “New Freedom” – as for his historical work, this consisted of reading official documents and writing articled and books based on them.
It did not seem t occur to E.H. Carr that the official documents he read might be LIES.
If Sir Edwin Chadwick wrote a report about early 19th century Britain saying that voluntary efforts were not working in relation to X and government “had” to take over, then it must be true as it was an REPORT (in a leather binding and everything).
Even the absurd Official Economic and Social Statistics of National Socialist Germany and the Marxist Soviet Union were believed by E.H. Carr -these were OFFICIAL DOCUMENTS (so they could not possibly be tissues of lies – not hundreds of pages of detailed stuff!).
The people who wrote most of the modern “human rights” documents were of similar calibre.
A mixture of evil men (such as Harold Laski), and fools such as E.H. Carr.
You are not going to find REAL protections for Freedom of Speech in these documents – or the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (the sign of a feeman in both Classical Greece and Republican Rome – and in the tribes of Europe as well.
Nor will you find protection against insane “lockdowns” where tyranny is opposed in the name of “Public Health”.
What you will find is rights to government education spending, health spending, housing spending and so on spending, and lots of vague stuff that intellectually corrupt judges can used to impose all sorts of EVIL.
Paul Marks.
Far too kind about Carr.
Yes Mr Hargrave – I am known for my kind gentleness.
To be serious, I should have checked what I typed – too many typos.
For example, I meant “where tyranny is imposed in the name of Public Health” imposed – not “opposed”.
Yesterday (not here but somewhere else) I typed “Sir Ian Brady” when I meant “Sir Graham Brady”.
Ouch!
Gee, Paul, next you’ll be glad that Trump wants to appoint a conservative Judge to the Supreme Court! How will progressives secretly control government now? Think about the children!!!
Barak Hussain Obama was awarded the Nobel peace prize for winning the US Presidential election. He hadn’t even had time for his presidency to be a negative.
@ Stonyground September 22, 2020 at 6:54 pm
Mr Wiki begs to differ and avers that the original five awarded from 1901 are for Chemistry, Literature, Peace, Physics, and Physiology or Medicine. The Johnny come lately, commonly known as the Nobel prize for Economics, is actually the Swedish central bank’s Nobel memorial prize, established in 1968 to commemorate the 300th anniversary of the bank.
To save readers Ducking the question:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Prize
Hope this helps.
@ APL September 23, 2020 at 12:01 pm
“He hadn’t even had time for his presidency to be a negative.”
The Committee can spot a suitable candidate years in advance.
DP
Nicholas – even if President Trump wins and the Republicans hold the Senate, I will still find reasons to be depressed (I am very good at finding reasons to be depressed) – “the economy is finished” I will declare – pointing at the terrible fiscal deficit and the monetary Credit Bubble (and I will be right).
However, privately I will be very pleased if President Trump and the Republicans win – there is more to life than economics, I would like to see basic Civil Liberties preserved.
Basic liberties would be exterminated under the Democrats – the Democrats are divided into factions, but these factions are united in their HATRED of fundamental liberties.
This is why both billionaires such as Mr Bloomberg and the Marxist street thugs of BLM and Anfifa support Biden/Harris. The billionaires of the Credit Bubble and the Marxist loot-burn-kill types have hatred of liberty in common. They all want to control every aspect of human life.
DP (September 23, 2020 at 11:32 pm) is correct that Nobel, having spent his life and made his millions developing explosives very useful in war, did want a Peace prize (and his prizes in general to pursue peaceful ends). I am reminded of this mediaeval Icelandic graves that had the cross on one side and Odin on the other. 🙂
However APL is right that the Nobel committee gave Barack a prize before he had time to be a negative. And there is so much no way they could have ‘spotted him years in advance’ that I’ll certainly believe any DP response saying that was meant ironically.
In his rise from Chicago Democrat Machine community organiser through congressman and senator to president, Barack spent the absolute minimum time in each intermediate position and the absolute maximum of that time campaigning for the next one, which is why he so often just voted ‘present’. (And how likely is it the Nobel committee even knew of his existence before he became world-noticeable in the 2008 primary, after which they didn’t have years, plural, to spot anything before they gave him the prize.) Of their two (IIRC) stated reasons for the award, his “sponsorship of nuclear non-proliferation” (my bolding 🙂 ) reads comically in the light of the Iran deal (one might say about the committee, as Obama adviser Ben Rhodes later said of the MSM journalists he fooled about that deal, “They literally know nothing!”) and the “new climate in international relations” which they claimed to perceive in 2009 likewise proved anything but peaceful within quite a short time.
That, Paul, is because your depression has very little to do with the state of the world and nearly everything to do with what you eat.
NB: Bertrand Russell used to make a very similar remark. He wrote that people got very angry when he made that remark.
Justice Scalia being interviewed in 2014 (along with Ginsburg).
The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded by a committee of the Norwegian Parliament, a legacy of the Union of Norwegian and Swedish crowns at the time, and they got the responsibility for the Peace Prize after the formal separation of the Crowns. The other (real) Nobel Prizes are awarded by various Swedish institutions. The Peace Prize spent most of the 20th Century playing catch-up with the Lenin Peace Prize (devised to mock Nobel’s Peace Prize) and then just carried on after the USSR collapsed. It shows the calibre of Norway’s MPs.
The Nobel Prize for Literature formally died when it was awarded to Bob Dylan, who made the committee awarding it look complete fools thereafter by his reaction. He did us all a favour thereby.