A Cruel and Unusual Record http://t.co/RcF3pqoTAS – President Carter: US no champion of human rights – #americansabroad are well aware!
— U.S. Citizen Abroad (@USCitizenAbroad) July 5, 2013
While the country has made mistakes in the past, the widespread abuse of human rights over the last decade has been a dramatic change from the past. With leadership from the United States, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted in 1948 as “the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.” This was a bold and clear commitment that power would no longer serve as a cover to oppress or injure people, and it established equal rights of all people to life, liberty, security of person, equal protection of the law and freedom from torture, arbitrary detention or forced exile.
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At a time when popular revolutions are sweeping the globe, the United States should be strengthening, not weakening, basic rules of law and principles of justice enumerated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. But instead of making the world safer, America’s violation of international human rights abets our enemies and alienates our friends.
As concerned citizens, we must persuade Washington to reverse course and regain moral leadership according to international human rights norms that we had officially adopted as our own and cherished throughout the years.
Speaking of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
2008 was the 60th anniversary of the Declaration. The United States of America celebrated by enacting the Exit Tax.
…and to think it’s only gotten worse since then.
Makes me want to cry.
“MIGHT MAKES RIGHT”
“Might makes right is an aphorism with several potential meanings (in order of increasing complexity):
In English, the phrase is most often used in negative assessments of expressions of power.
The second related idea associated with the phrase connotes that a society’s view of right and wrong is determined, like its perspective on history, by those currently in power.
The term can be used in the descriptive, rather than prescriptive way, in the same sense that people say that “History is written by the victors.” Since every person labels what he/she thinks is good for himself/herself as “right,” only those who are able to defeat their enemies are the ones who can push their idea of what is right into fruition.
In terms of morality, those who are the strongest will rule others and have the power to determine right and wrong. By this definition, the phrase manifests itself in a normative sense. This meaning is often used to define a proscriptive moral code for society to follow, as well as while discussing social Darwinism and Weberian themes of the authority of the state (e.g. ‘Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft’).”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Might_makes_right
actually the author of the Universal Declaration was John Peters Humphrey, OC, a Canadian assisted by
Rene Cassin (France) among others. . The US, France and the UK opposed a Japanese request to include a Declaration of Racial Equality as part of the charter for the League of Nations
Depressing as hell. It’s true that it’s only getting worse despite well-written warnings such as this from over a year ago.
@Patricia
In the mid 1980s I attended a series of lectures on Charter S. 15 (Equality Rights). Professor Humphrey was the main speaker. At the time I was struck how anti-American he was. In fact, to the point where I remember one American in the audience made a point of objecting to his attitude.
He seemed to attribute the decline of America to the loss of the Vietnam war. Anyway, it was interesting.