The Scope Of Human Rights

Historically and in the present, it is not particularly uncommon for people to think that there are rights some groups of people have--like the right to be taken seriously when victimized or to not be discriminated against for things they cannot change about themselves, like their age--that they also think other groups do not have.  For all the progress the world has made towards becoming more egalitarian in not just the sense of gender equality, but in the sense of opposing all abuse and illicit forms of discrimination, there always seems to be some people on both major sides of the political divide that truly do act and talk as if they believe that some groups of people deserve more or less basic respect or have more rights than others for things that have nothing to do with their worldviews and moral behaviors.  It is not even difficult to identify these trends once one knows what to look for.  In America, for instance, it is easy to see that conservatives and liberals elevate some people above others because of their gender, race, nation of birth, occupation, or age.

Whatever human rights exist are rights of men and women; they are the rights of whites, blacks, and other races; they would likewise belong to the unborn, the elderly, and people of all ages in between, just as they would to the poor, middle class, and upper class alike.  There is no such thing as a human right that only some people have.  It is very telling of what some people actually believe that they speak of human rights and justice when it is convenient and then, even if the rights and obligations they posit are inconsistent and invalid, they are not even consistent in living out what they claim is true!  To see how sincere someone is about opposing murder, see if they care more about the murder of the unborn or those outside the womb.  To see how sincere someone is in opposing rape, see if they care more about rape when one gender is the perpetrator or victim or if the location of the rape (such as prison) changes their stance.

The examples go on and on.  Both conservatives and liberals might talk of human rights when it makes them look favorable or makes them feel good about themselves, but beliefs and the rationality of those beliefs is more important than mere words.  The existence of human rights cannot be proven or disproven in an ultimate sense, but conceptual inconsistency disqualifies some ideas about human rights from even being possible, with any idea that only some people have human rights being among them.  Anytime someone thinks a person has more or less rights than someone else because of something beyond their control like the color of their skin, their age, or their birth genitalia, they are actually suggesting that some people matter more than others for reasons that have nothing to do with philosophical competence or moral character.

The consistency of what something thinks about human rights alone, and not even consistency in acknowledging verifiable logical truths about human rights as a concept, reveals how much they actually care about the subject.  Consistency alone does not make a person's beliefs right unless they are consistent with the truth, but the very obvious (at least to a rationalist), avoidable contradictions in what conservatives and liberals believe or the disparities between what they profess and do demonstrate their cluelessness and insincerity.  Talk of human rights for them is usually no more than that: talk.  One emphasizes the unborn; the other emphasizes those outside the womb.  One emphasizes men while ignoring true discrimination against them; the other emphasizes women as if they have superior psychological traits.  One emphasizes the normalcy of whites being the visible face of Western civilization; the other might emphasize blacks as a means to a political end.

This asinine prioritization of one group over another when human rights would call for lifting up people of all ages, all races, all nationalities, all economic classes, and both genders is a mark of clear stupidity.  It might take a rationalist to recognize the true depths of the assumptions and contradictions embraced by the typical non-rationalist, but everyone can suffer when hypocrisies are made normal parts of political and everyday life by imbeciles with the power and money to misdirect some people away from their philosophical incompetence.  Anyone who truly cares about human rights and truth will eventually come to the realization that even though human rights, like many other things such as the existence of other minds, cannot be truly known to exist, many ideas about them are still false either way.  Selective emphasis on some demographics over others for superficial or discriminatory reasons is no way to honor whatever human rights might exist.