The Religion of Human Rights is Anti- Democratic
by David Robertson, theweeflea:
There is a new religion in town. It alone knows the truth. It is intolerant, authoritarian and anti-democratic. Like many of its cult-like forbears in the West it has its roots in Christianity but has become quite specifically anti-Christianity– the child seeking to devour the mother. It is very powerful and holds sway amongst many of the academic, political and economic elites. It’s the religion of Human Rights.
Why call human rights, surely de facto a good thing, a religion? Because it carries all the hallmarks of the narrowest of fundamentalist religions. Human rights are of course a good thing – just like peace, love and justice are good things. The major difficulty is that the term Human Rights is used as though it were self-evident what it means. But it isn’t.
Let’s just take one example – abortion. Is it a human right for a mother to be able to take the life of her child in the womb? If you understand that the baby in the womb is just a blob, a clump of cells, then there is no problem for you. I am not going to rehearse all the arguments here, but this issue is just one that challenges the narrative of those who believe that human rights are self-evidently obvious.
The question then moves on from what, to whom. Who decides what human rights are? The answer is of course those in power. The wealthy elites. Those who control the media, politics and the academic, legal, arts and economic establishments are the ones who determine what the rights are for the rest of us. The danger of this is that is becomes a self-perpetuating elite that negates democracy. In a debate on abortion I was told that ‘you don’t get to vote on abortion’. This new authoritarian religion means that ordinary people don’t get to vote on many major social, political and economic issues. Who cares about how people vote or what elected representatives do – all the elites have to do is go to the unelected institutions to overcome democracy and get their way anyway.
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