Quote Originally Posted by lucy View Post
December 10th, 1948: Universal Declaration of Human Rights at Palais de Chaillot, Paris.
I hope you realised what was going to come out of the woodwork

There are a set of subjects that bring the backwoodsmen out in arms, including welfare, equality laws, trade unions, and in England, the EU and the Human Rights Act. What these all have in common is that they deny that white middle class Englishmen are intrinsically superior and have a natural right to privilege and power. Anything that treats lower kinds of people - the poor, foreigners of any kind except rich ones, wogs, blue-collar workers, criminals, perverts, women - as if they were just as good as true-blue Daily Express readers.

There's no debating this, because it's a gut reaction, as our Prime Minister honestly admitted when he said that the idea of letting convicts vote made him physically sick. As that comment clearly shows, reason is irrelevant: you just have to leave them to rant and try to work round them.
Have they changed the world?

Is the world a better place now than it was before December 10th, 1948?
As far as human rights are concerned, very much better. Of course it's a work in progress, but when I look back to my childhood, and the casual racism, sexism, and prejudice and discrimination of all kinds which people simply accepted as the way things were, I can be really pleased at what our culture has achieved in one lifetime.

Of course it is a fight, and always will be, to retain what has been won and to keep moving on, but I dare to hope that the trend is unstoppable.

The UDHR was just one part of that wave of history, but an important part. Orwell's dictum that "if you don't have the word you can't think the thought" can be used for good as well as evil: by creating new words we make it possible to think new thoughts. And despite what Orwell feared, it's very hard to unthink them.
Do they go too far?
(for example article 25: Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.)
There is always a balance between grand general statements of principle ("Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness"), and shopping lists of exactly how those grand principles should be applied in practice. In this case, I think it was necessary to have the shopping list, because we have all seen how politicians can solemnly pledge themselves to the grand principles while completely failing to apply them. (In 1948 they had vivid memories of the moralistic promises of the fascist dictators.) The creators of the DHR knew that if they confined it to grand principles, it would sound splendid and change nothing.
Should they be reworked?
Nothing is ever perfect, but because that document has so many powerful and ingenious enemies, I'd look very hard and long at any proposal to change a comma.
And finally: What should be done to ensure that human rights are respected?
(assuming that we can all agree that most of the human rights should be respected.
I think you've answered that question yourself. The most important thing is to promote general agreement that human rights should be respected - human rights, not just the rights of "our" sort of people. Everyone is happy to agree that their rights, and the rights of their friends and families, should be sacred and inviolable. The great revolution of democracy was to accept that it applies to everyone's rights, including the rights of your political and religious enemies, the people you hate and despise, the people who hate and despise you and your rights. Because as soon as you start making exceptions you're no longer talking about human rights, but about privileges for a favoured few.