Posted by Dan Ewert : 8/23/2002 11:05:00 PM (Archive Link)
In a previous post, I mentioned human rights and a notion occurred to me. I believe that a good barometer of the quality of a country’s human rights record is to what degree that country’s rhetoric says they have great human rights. In other words, the volume and boasting of their rhetoric is inversely proportional to the actual conditions; the more they claim good human rights, the worse they really are. Take this quote from Libya, for example, “Libya is a country where the respect of human rights is enshrined. The security, political stability and economic prosperity enjoyed by Libya are the proof of its respect of human rights.” (It must be so… African nations just voted for Libya to be head of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights… can the U.N. get any more backwards?) I’m sure you can find similar absurd quotes from those nations with the least respect for humanity. I tried to find a few but not many sites compile ridiculous propaganda statements from totalitarian governments and dictatorships. At any rate, the more a country talks up its record, the less true it is likely to be. For fun, let’s look at the opposite end of the spectrum… let’s try replacing “Libya” in the above quote with “the U.S.”: “The United States is a country where the respect of human rights is enshrined. The security, political stability and economic prosperity enjoyed by the U.S. are the proof of its respect of human rights.” Sounds silly, right? Not because there isn’t truth in it, but because it’s something of a “duh” statement. We wouldn’t go to the trouble of pointing out something like that if for no other reason than that it would appear gauche. It’s also a little overwrought in its language and we would never put it that way. Besides, the attitude of Americans towards almost all things is, “We’re good, probably better than everybody else, but we still have work to do… I mean, have you seen our past?” It’s that Puritan guilt coming into play. People would like to think that the Puritan aspect is no longer pertinent in American society, but we’re Puritan even in our liberality. The right got the values and the left got the guilt. Getting back to the point, however, if a foreign ambassador ever regales you at a dinner party about how great their country’s human rights record is, you should probably question why he feels the need to tell you that. If the record isn’t already obvious and transparent, then there’s a problem.