No Concept of Human Rights

The State Department released a report on the United States’ human rights record.  This report was composed for the U.N. Human Rights Council – you can see our opinion of this “council” by clicking here.

I don’t want to delve into this very deeply, but I did want to point out one of the evidences the State Department uses in its argument that the United States is a strong promoter of human rights.  Among recent “advances,” the State Department points to the Obama administration’s health care reform and finance reform efforts.

What, pray tell, do health care and finance reform have to do with human rights?  We have redefined “rights” out of existence!  The idea of a human right has ceased to carry any weight, because it means whatever we want it to mean.  Essentially, the average American today seems to think of rights as specific privileges we want to make sure everyone has.

This approach is a bastardization of an idea of fundamental importance.  Our nation was founded on the idea that human beings, as humans, have certain basic rights inherent to their very beings that cannot be added to or taken away.  They have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Rights are absolute.  A government may trample your rights but it cannot take them away.  They are yours by definition.  By the same token, government cannot create new rights and bestow them upon the populace just because “everyone thinks it’s a good idea.”

We need to abandon our increasingly sloppy and destructive redefinitions of “rights.”  Let’s use “privileges” or some other term and leave “rights” alone while it still has some modicum of meaning.