Why Human Rights are vital to your Life and Project

Mention Human rights and most people in the Western world will agree they are needed in countries with brutal dictatorships, etc.

Ask them if they can name a few of the 30 Human Rights that are agreed upon by all governments around the world, and they may be able to name a couple.

People do not know their human rights because they do not think they need them.

Yet their own happiness and freedoms depend on their human rights, and it may come as a surprise that the things they object to in society, particularly these days, are actually violations of their human rights.

If only they knew them!

If you have any cause or group you belong to, whether a social-activist cause or a particular religion, or any other, it will never succeed or even continue to exist in an environment where human rights are not respected. Maybe you have already experienced the unpleasantness of being under attack, directly or covertly?

Part of these attacks is to pit one group against another so they become too busy competing against or fighting with each other to notice the person tightening the proverbial noose slowly around their neck. And so a minority can command the majority.

The one thing we all have in common is we are each an individual, the building block of all groups and civilization itself, and we all would like to do well in life. That is only achievable where human rights are respected, and when we all recognize that and sign up to it, we speak with one powerful voice that the minority cannot silence.

So let’s look at Human Rights for a moment.

Occasionally over the last four millennia, amazing individuals and groups have stood tall, fired by an instinct for fairness and justice to protect all individuals from the excesses of the anti-human, collectivist urge or those who do not conceive human life to have any value. Such hard-fought proclamations as the Declaration of Independence, The Bill of Rights, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) have championed the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family, each document bringing us closer to a more inclusive and comprehensive articulation of rights that are part of our make-up and cannot be taken away.

On what grounds are human rights considered natural laws and inalienable?

Simply that we are rational and spiritual beings and so have something to contribute and a right to operate in a fair and equitable environment in order to do so. And because when not coerced otherwise, these rights and laws mirror how people behave toward each other naturally.

These documents have empowered individuals to create and maintain a cooperative civilization founded upon the notions of dignity, worth, and mutual respect—quite in contrast to the environment existing today in which humans have no redeeming features and nothing worthwhile to contribute, so having no value.

Today, we have multiple rights and freedom of choice regarding physical safety, personal freedom, property, activity, belief, expression, justice, work, and education as listed in the UDHR. These 30 specific rights were compiled 73 years ago as a best effort and, like anything else, could be improved upon as changing challenges need to be met. Each improved statement of human rights has provided the best bulwark against tyranny, including today’s nightmare bearing down upon us all the world over.

Predictably, in a world dominated by those working hard to confuse issues and people alike, very few individuals know and insist upon their rights and so have they disappeared and not been respected; law courts often bow to pressure from hostile intelligence services, bribable politicians, and those in power who seek to maintain their position with no concern for the rights of people they hold in low esteem.

Yet all it takes to end the collective dystopia is knowing, sharing with all, and insisting upon our inherent rights with millions and even billions having the certitude to stand together and say, “We are here, we matter, we will no longer kneel!”

What is the real power behind these documents?

Each right implies a concomitant responsibility: If it is my right, it is your right, too. Who will guarantee your rights? I will. Who will guarantee my rights? You will. This mutuality binds individuals into a sweeping movement against which no minority of lost individuals can mount an effective campaign and they will crumble, just like all before them who relied on lies, force, and the self-defeating super-control of individuals to underpin their feudal “civilization.”