Skip Navigation
77 comments

  • Misunderstanding. For example it’s embarrassing how long I opposed feminism because I only read extreme scare stories about it, never realizing how much of what I took for granted in relationships between genders was a hard fought victory for feminism and all of us. Then when we had our first child, who were the only people standing up to say my company should have paternity leave? Feminists.

    I have a more conservative brother who is very much against affirmative action. However he sees firsthand the results of blindly promoting people to meet diversity goals without regard to ability. Meanwhile I’ve been at companies who pay attention to both, resulting in a much more successful workplace

    Or are we going political? Clearly the Palestinian situation is a crime against humanity, but do I oppose human rights by saying that is much more complex and it’s not as simple as Israel just stopping?

    • Or are we going political?

      Not a political issue.

      do I oppose human rights by saying that is much more complex and it’s not as simple as Israel just stopping?

      Yes. This is a cowardly way of siding with the oppressor and (contrary to the question of this post) indirectly saying one is against not only human rights but also international law, in favor of one's feelings, or to avoid the inconvenience of acknowledging a wrongdoing and not being moved to rectify it. In the least. Not even with words on an online forum.

      There is no neutrality when it comes to human rights, you either support them or you are fine with some people not having them, in which case they are not a right.

      Is it complicated for Russia to pull out of Ukraine and respect international law? Is it complicated because they have a historical right to that land? Is it complicated because Russia has the right to self defense against NATO encroachment? Do you condemn NATO? You and I personally, dear commenter, are not enemies by any definition of the word, but if the narrative has one excusing war crimes because "it's complicated" then the narrative is our enemy. Should Hamas face an international court? Absolutely. Should Israel face an international court? Absolutely. Should all violence stop right this second? Absolutely. Our actions (or lack thereof) decide whether we live in a world of law or a world of brutal autocracy.

  • I doubt anyone you are talking to is opposed to all human rights, that sounds very much like a straw man statement. Reasonable people can disagree about whether any particular right should be protected by law.

    The reason is simple: any legally-protected right you have stands in direct opposition to some other right that I could have:

    • Your right to free speech is necessarily limited by my right to, among other things, freedom from slander/libel, right to a fair trial, right to free and fair elections, right to not be defrauded, etc.
    • Your right to bodily autonomy can conflict with my right to health and safety when there is a global pandemic spreading and you refuse vaccination.
    • Your property rights are curtailed by rules against environmental harm, discrimination, insider trading, etc.

    No right is ever meant to be or can be absolute, and not all good government policy is based on rights. Turning a policy argument into one about human rights is not generally going to win the other person over, it's akin to calling someone a racist because of their position on affirmative action. There's no rational discussion that can be had after that point.

  • Normally, to be honest, it's because they want to hurt someone. Look at the Conservatives in the UK, who are desperate to repeal human rights legislation so that they can send refugees to Rwanda without right of appeal.

    Note that those Conservatives still think that they have human rights. Their excuse for depriving refugees of human rights is that some of them have entered the country illegally. Yet, none of them thinks any Conservative MP should be detained arbitrarily or deported, even though they now acknowledge that they, their government and their party have broken the law in various ways. No, they want to strip rights from other people. Their argument doesn't wash.

    • “Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition …There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect" - Frank Wilhoit

    • I feel like whenever a law like this is written, a coin should be flipped, and all of the people who voted to pass the law have that law applied to them based on the outcome of that coin flip. And that should be fine right? It's a fair and equitable law, respecting human rights.

      It's like the classic traffic engineering joke, how do you get the speed limit increased? You rigorously enforce the speed limit where the The legislators live and drive

      When two children are arguing about sharing something, the diplomatic adult has one of the children divide the thing into two piles, and the other child gets to choose which pile they want. We need to get more of that do unto others as you would have done unto yourself into politics

      • Right, it's like when people try to justify colonialism. Would they be okay with their country being conquered and turned into a colony? No? Okay, so we've established colonialism is wrong. Everything after that is increasingly ludicrous special pleading. 'Oh, but country X was more economically developed, so it was okay,' is only a consistent argument if you actually go on to say '... and that's why it would be a good thing if South Korea conquered Italy.'

    • This remibds of a police raid during the trump years in Kentucky. "They are hurting the wrong peole" said one woman as a mexican man was departed leaving his wife and kids behind.

      Very mask off moment. Just admitting the role of law is harming some people.

  • There have always been such (it is human nature) - but right now they feel bold enough to speak and act, whereas previously they had been too afraid and embarrassed to do so publicly.

    In South Carolina, various KKK-like groups said in advance that they wanted to kill people, wrapped barbed wire around baseball bats (in order to better kill people with), showed up to kill people, then actually killed people, then bragged about having killed people... Oh right, but the other side was not successful in securing a permit for their peaceful protest, so you know, there are "many sides" to every issue I guess.

    Misinformation/brainwashing techniques are powerful. Like if you believed that a particular type of human was the root of all evil in this world, then you SHOULD want them dead, under those circumstances... right? You do not bc you know better, not just about that one group but more fundamentally that it is ideas that bring about evil, not people. But the people killing people do not know that, and it is to the advantage of others who seek power, and want to use the army of sheeple to advance their own agenda, for those sheeple to not know that either.

  • Part of it is disagreement over what should be a right. I have genuinely met people that belive rights like protest, movment, voting, legal rep, should not given they must be earned. So they are pro rights just a very limited list.

    Example say "health care is a right" in the usa.

  • I guess because they think they are superior and forget that human rights include their own rights.

    So yea, the "because they're stupid" answer sums it up nicely.

  • Some people define things differently than reality has ascribed, what are rights, while others are just cruel.

    Ever wonder why ghosts keep up with modern language trends?

  • In addition to the reasons suggested in several of the comments here so far, the philosopher Giorgio Agamben is extremely critical of the concept of human rights since they are a legal and political construct, and the same legal and political systems are used to create 'exceptional' circumstances in which the rights are deemed not to apply to certain groups. Relying on these rights is flawed, in his view, since they will be suspended when most needed. The Philosopize This Podcast did an episode on this just recently.

  • It depends on the context. In some cases the person might be taunting you to defend your position, or simply trying to avoid some subject.

    But let's say that the person says this out of the blue, and is proselytising this view that human rights should be opposed. In this situation I believe that the person thinks that they benefit from denying human rights to other people; it's mostly selfish. (And worse, stupid - the person will be likely in the short end of the stick.)

77 comments