- 21 Aug 2003 02:45
#23166
Oh so individual rights and freedoms are a conservative idea?
How deluded you are...it's quite sad. Perhaps you are confusing the conservative mantra of "rights of the individual" with "individual human rights".
Really the seeds for the concept of human rights and freedoms began in ancient Greece but it was from the ideas of the secular intellectuals of the Enlightenment that the true fundamental philosophy of human rights arose. Political philosophers in the 17th and 18th centuries, such as John Locke, Voltaire and Thomas Paine, developed the idea that all human beings had certain inherent rights that cannot be taken or given away. Conservatives and the clergy had to be dragged kicking and screaming into a new era of enlightenment. We had to stop the burning of witches and heretics, secular laws had to be created. The church, though still very powerful, had begun to lose its rigid grip over the state and we began to think about a morality based on reason rather than religious doctrine. The tools of logic had been more fully realised.
The intellectuals of the enlightenment believed that human reason could be used to combat ignorance, superstition, and tyranny and to build a better world. Their principal targets were religion (embodied in France in the Catholic Church) and the domination of society by a hereditary aristocracy. They celebrated the worth and capacity of the human race[a novelty at that time, since christianity had replaced the pride of ancient Greece and Rome with the *miserable sinner* view of humanity] and challenged the moral absolutism of the day. Incidentally, this challenge to absolutism is the opposite philosophy to what James Kalb subscribes to in his essay. He would seek to impose conservative values and have them verified by a religious authority...a backward step.
Eventually these secular ideas led to the following:
British Magna Carta 1215
French Declaration of the Rights of Man 1789
American Bill of Rights 1789
The Geneva Convention 1864
Today discussion about the the protection of human rights generally starts with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, passed by the United Nations in 1948. In its preamble the Declaration emphasises protection of human rights:
"...recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world..."
It's strange when I hear you claim individual human rights as a conservative notion, when I so often hear conservatives bagging the United Nations...the foremost organization in the world concerned with human rights. Even on this forum you claim "UNDHR is not applicable with Capitalism and conservatism". What a joke!
I think the conservative notion of "rights and freedoms" is something very different to the UN one. They are more concerned with the right and freedom to pay low taxes, the right and freedom to reek environmental havoc in the pursuit of profit, the right and freedom to keep government regulation out of their lives, the right and freedom to create monopolies, the right and freedom to be racist and sexist[see Kalb], the right and freedom to pay low wages, the right and freedom to harangue the pro-choice lobby, the right and freedom to deny gays and others their own version of family....ad nauseum.
Now let me out of here....I need some air.
How deluded you are...it's quite sad. Perhaps you are confusing the conservative mantra of "rights of the individual" with "individual human rights".
Really the seeds for the concept of human rights and freedoms began in ancient Greece but it was from the ideas of the secular intellectuals of the Enlightenment that the true fundamental philosophy of human rights arose. Political philosophers in the 17th and 18th centuries, such as John Locke, Voltaire and Thomas Paine, developed the idea that all human beings had certain inherent rights that cannot be taken or given away. Conservatives and the clergy had to be dragged kicking and screaming into a new era of enlightenment. We had to stop the burning of witches and heretics, secular laws had to be created. The church, though still very powerful, had begun to lose its rigid grip over the state and we began to think about a morality based on reason rather than religious doctrine. The tools of logic had been more fully realised.
The intellectuals of the enlightenment believed that human reason could be used to combat ignorance, superstition, and tyranny and to build a better world. Their principal targets were religion (embodied in France in the Catholic Church) and the domination of society by a hereditary aristocracy. They celebrated the worth and capacity of the human race[a novelty at that time, since christianity had replaced the pride of ancient Greece and Rome with the *miserable sinner* view of humanity] and challenged the moral absolutism of the day. Incidentally, this challenge to absolutism is the opposite philosophy to what James Kalb subscribes to in his essay. He would seek to impose conservative values and have them verified by a religious authority...a backward step.
Eventually these secular ideas led to the following:
British Magna Carta 1215
French Declaration of the Rights of Man 1789
American Bill of Rights 1789
The Geneva Convention 1864
Today discussion about the the protection of human rights generally starts with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, passed by the United Nations in 1948. In its preamble the Declaration emphasises protection of human rights:
"...recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world..."
It's strange when I hear you claim individual human rights as a conservative notion, when I so often hear conservatives bagging the United Nations...the foremost organization in the world concerned with human rights. Even on this forum you claim "UNDHR is not applicable with Capitalism and conservatism". What a joke!
I think the conservative notion of "rights and freedoms" is something very different to the UN one. They are more concerned with the right and freedom to pay low taxes, the right and freedom to reek environmental havoc in the pursuit of profit, the right and freedom to keep government regulation out of their lives, the right and freedom to create monopolies, the right and freedom to be racist and sexist[see Kalb], the right and freedom to pay low wages, the right and freedom to harangue the pro-choice lobby, the right and freedom to deny gays and others their own version of family....ad nauseum.
Now let me out of here....I need some air.