* all fiction is genre fiction in that it caters to a generic desire.
* With its by – all – accounts absolute requirement of a happy ending for it to even receive recognition as a member of the genre by its devotees, the romance’s unforgivable sin is that it flagrantly satisfies the “imaginative needs of the community”… What other genres do indirectly, or even “critically,” it does shamelessly in the open and in resourcefully new ways.
From Pamela to the present, the novel in the English – speaking world has developed alongside and within a capitalist economy increasingly oriented toward consumer enjoyment and, if only implicitly, has been telling the story of that economy the whole time. What we now label the “romance” novel is the reflexive expression of the novel’s original appeal: not only is it written for the satisfaction of the imaginative needs of the reader, but it is about that satisfaction in the figure of the heroine and her mate, who always get what they want, and who in getting what they want reassure their readers of the legitimacy and continuity of the social order.
* Entering through the eyes as a succession of words, the novel is transformed into a series of affectively charged mental images of people and places.
* It would be for Norman Holland, whose classic Dynamics of Literary Response (1968) argues that the better part of what we do when we read is to activate emotional resonances between the text and our unacknowledged fantasies of return to pre – oedipal pleasures.
In his view, the conferral of interpretive meaning on the literary text is a form of defense against the unruliness and unspeakability of those pleasures, which are nonetheless the text’s primary raison d’être and source of generic appeal. In this sense, and never more so than when it is utterly obscene “adult entertainment,” all literature is children’s literature at its core.
* In the mostly unconscious act of introjection, which converts words into psychic events, the reader finds (or feels) analogies between the text’s fantasy material and their own. I have added an additional “basement” level, representing something like the Lacanian or Lovecraftian Real — that is, the substratum of utter indifference to human well – being from which literary and all other forms of fantasizing are obsessively repeated attempts to recover. The literary text is in this sense a therapeutic processing of that indifference as a pleasurable sensation of narrative meaning, and each distinct genre a quasi – algorithmic form of doing so.
Posted inAmazon|Comments Off on Everything and Less: The Novel in the Age of Amazon
* Writing has always been used for work, production, output, earning, profit, publicity, practicality, record-keeping, buying, and selling. Increasingly, writing itself is the product that is bought and sold, as it embodies knowledge, information, invention, service, social relations, news – that is, the products of the new economy. At the turn of the twentieth century, knowledge workers represented 10 percent of all employees. By 1959 this proportion had increased to more than 30 percent of the workforce, and by 1970 it was 50 percent. In 2000, knowledge workers were estimated to account for 75 percent of the employed population, with the biggest gains found among highly educated professional
and technical workers in government and service-producing industries (Wyatt and Hecker 2006). If, as Thomas Stewart (1998) asserts, “Knowledge has become the primary ingredient in what we make, do, buy, and sell” (p. 12), then writing has become a dominant form of labor as it transforms knowledge and news into useable, shareable form.
* The status of writing as a dominant form of labor in the US economy puts an unusual degree of pressure on people’s scribal skills, as their writing literacy is pulled deeply into manufacturing, processing, mining, and distributing information and knowledge. Writing is a time-intensive form of labor that tends to follow people home.
* So rapacious are the production pressures on writing, in fact, that they are redefining reading, as people increasingly read from the posture of the writer, from inside acts of writing, as they respond to others, research, edit, or review other people’s writing or search for styles or approaches to borrow and use in their own writing. Reading is being subordinated to the needs of writing…
* the idea that a text belongs to the person who writes it is not the only concept of authorship that can be found in current US copyright law. When it comes to writing undertaken within the scope of employment – in other words, the writing done by most people in society – copyright turns inside out: under a provision called “Work Made for Hire,” the law is careful to sever writers from ownership claims over the texts that they write at work.
* In the eyes of the law, the employer is the author of their texts. As individuals, workplace writers are not allowed to profit individually from the writing they do. Even the knowledge they may produce in their heads as a result of the writing they do at work is technically not theirs to benefit from. Further, workaday writers are not legally entitled to express their own views through their workplace writing. They can be fired for doing it, and they won’t get much support from the courts if they appeal. According to the Supreme Court, people do not really write at work as citizens or free beings but rather as willingly enlisted corporate voices. At least in their official capacities, workaday writers don’t write as themselves at work, according to the Court. They are not individually responsible for what they are paid to say. Consequently, they don’t really mean what they say. In fact, according to the Court, people who write for pay can’t really mean what they say. Their speech rights are corrupted and, hence, inoperable. From this perspective, writing starts to look a lot less romantic and a lot more feudal.
* copyright is reserved for texts that are considered creative or artistic, or that otherwise promote learning, or have some other enduring social utility…
* teachers and academics still enjoy this privileged exemption and, by dint of long-standing tradition, retain rights to their own writing and other intellectual property even when done on an employer’s premises.
* Constitutional scholar C. Edwin Baker (1989) has written most compellingly of what happens to a citizen’s voice once it is put into paid service – when it becomes (someone else’s) rented property. Such coerced speech necessarily loses its free-speech protections because it is no longer self-directed: “Once a person is employed to say what she does, the speech usually represents not her own self-expression but, at best, the expression of the employer” (p. 54 ). Baker elaborates:
“The First Amendment protects a person’s use of speech to order and create the world in a desired way and as a tool for understanding and communicating about the world in ways
he or she finds important. These uses are fundamental aspects of individual liberty and choice. However, in our present historical setting, commercial speech reflects market
forces that require enterprises to be profit-oriented. This forced profit orientation is not a manifestation of individual freedom or choice. Unlike the broad categories of protected speech, commercial speech does not represent an attempt to create or affect the world in a way that has any logical or intrinsic connection to anyone’s substantive values or personal wishes.”
* speech made pursuant to official duties receives no First Amendment protection. Like private employers, government may control its employees’ speech in order to protect and promulgate its own interests.
* workaday writers are legally severed – economically, ethically, and politically – from the words they write on the job.
* writing – particularly literary writing but not exclusively so – enjoys its own prestige. Through the sometimes convoluted history of literacy in this culture and the ideologies it produces, writing is associated with creativity, talent, intellect, sensibility, knowledge – in a word, authority. In general, writing is a desirable skill, a somewhat scarce skill, respected for its difficulty and the achievement it represents, particularly when it results in publication. Writing benefits most of all from the cultural prestige of reading. Because many forms of reading over time have been marked with high cultural value, this value has come to extend to those who can write in those forms. In this climate, then, writing may bequeath its high status to an individual who engages in it. One can “make a name” through writing. Writing is also its own verifiable record of a powerful engagement with literacy and all of its goodness – including the human growth that is presumed to be entailed in an artistic or intellectual experience. This achievement of the writing per se certifies the writer and warrants the reading. Writing, then, can be an independent source of social value and power and, with some exceptions, it enhances the stature of anyone who claims authorship.
* Legal ghostwriting also collides with the custom of the court to be lenient with self-represented litigants.
* the Internet seems to be favoring a less original form of writing: creation by citation, sampling, cutting and pasting, the blurring of the roles of writers and readers.
* writing is wrapped in yearning and sometimes titanic ambition, tantamount to chasing a dream…
* Just as these young people were well aware of the high prestige afforded the successful artist or published author, they were also well aware of the precariousness of the occupation and the difficulty or unlikelihood of making a viable living as an independent writer…
* a writing orientation can create wariness toward reading, particularly toward its association with passivity and conformity.
* Another predicament of authorship… had to do with managing relations between one’s life and one’s work. …authorship could bring a heightened sense of confusion
and vulnerability, especially in the vicinity of friends and family. …misattribution, parody, estrangement, charges of libel, self exposure, the need for a pseudonym – these are all uncomfortable experiences that can attach to people who write yet rarely enter writing instruction as a focus for exploration and learning.
* reading is largely an internalizing process… writing per se is action in the world. It is an externalizing experience, and so its effects, as we have seen, can come back at writers from the outside. Thoughts can stay private during reading, but they are relentlessly externalized during writing. …bring more wear and tear, more trouble, more risk. Writing risks social exposure, political retaliation, legal blame.
* in the twenty-first century, citizens are more likely to run afoul of the courts not because they are able to read too little but because they choose to write too much. Prosecutors and defense attorneys scour the online writing of prospective jurors, including blogs, Facebook entries, and tweets, to look for predispositions and biases. Several criminal convictions have been overturned in recent years after jurors were discovered writing online about their jury experiences (Grow 2010). Freewheeling personal expression associated with social media is in friction with the court’s traditional ways of protecting the rights of defendants by controlling the speech of jurors.
Posted inAmerica|Comments Off on The Rise of Writing: Redefining Mass Literacy
The most frequently quoted sentence in the literature of settler colonialism is from the Australian scholar Patrick Wolfe: “Invasion is a structure, not an event.” Wolfe was referring specifically to the British settlement of Australia, but the principle applies equally to the United States and Canada, which were also created by dispossessing the peoples living there when Europeans arrived. That fact is hardly unknown—everyone who grows up in these countries learns about it in elementary school.
What is new in Wolfe’s formula is the idea that this original injustice is being renewed at every moment through various forms of oppression, some obvious, others invisible. The violence involved in a nation’s founding continues to define every aspect of its life, even after centuries—its economic arrangements, environmental practices, gender relations. Because settlement is not a past event but a present structure, every inhabitant of a settler colonial society who is not descended from the original indigenous population is, and always will be, a settler, rather than a legitimate inhabitant.
For the academic discipline of settler colonial studies, the goal of learning about settler colonialism in America and elsewhere is not simply to understand it, as a historian would, but to dismantle it. That process is known as decolonization, and the increasing currency of this term is an index of the rising influence of what might seem a merely academic idea. The command to “decolonize” has become almost faddish; guides have been written on how to decolonize your diet, your bookshelf, your backyard, your corporate board, and much more.
Posted inAustralia|Comments Off on Invasion is a structure not an event (8-16-24)
Podnotes summary: The World Health Organization has raised concerns about a monkeypox epidemic. While the disease itself is concerning, there’s something even worse: stigma. Stigma around behaviors that transmit monkeypox, like certain sexual activities among gay men, can be more harmful than the disease by perpetuating discrimination.
Monkeypox primarily affects sexually active men in the LGBTQ+ community but isn’t exclusive to them; it’s not a “gay disease.” It spreads through close contact and while it disproportionately impacts gay men engaging in frequent sexual encounters, stigmatizing this behavior could hinder efforts to combat the virus.
HIV-positive chefs in Toronto held an event to fight against stigma associated with infectious diseases. Randy Davis believes education is key to alleviating fear and ignorance which fuel such stigmas.
Stigmatization doesn’t just affect those who are reckless; during the AIDS crisis, innocent people suffered due to a few individuals’ actions. This shouldn’t be repeated with monkeypox—we must follow science instead of falling into discriminatory traps.
Misinformation online has led doctors to correct homophobic narratives surrounding monkeypox transmission—it’s not limited by sexuality or behavior alone.
The story shifts focus onto Matt Drudge of Drudge Report fame—a once-conservative figure who turned against Donald Trump for reasons unknown—showing how quickly allies can become adversaries based on personal biases or changing political winds. Former associates describe Drudge as sensitive and unpredictable—a drama queen prone to cutting ties over minor slights.
In politics and media alike, relationships are often fragile; alliances built one day may crumble the next as interests diverge—much like nations might betray their own spies for broader strategic gains—as suggested by reports of U.S.-Iranian dealings regarding Israeli agents involved in assassinations. These complex dynamics underscore human fallibility and shifting priorities rather than inherent malice or betrayal.
Ultimately, understanding why figures like Drudge pivot politically remains speculative at best—with various insiders offering theories from policy disagreements to personal dislikes—but what’s clear is that attention-seeking individuals will always seek relevance amidst changing landscapes.
To dodge monkeypox, simply avoid certain gatherings such as gay piss orgies.
Charlie Kirk tweeted about monkeypox being a lesser concern compared to other issues. The Jerusalem Post reported on Tehran’s assassination list linked to Iran targeting Assad agents. Car insurance has spiked by 55% during the Harris-Biden administration due to less law enforcement leading to more reckless driving and higher insurance claims.
A young girl is forced into marriage with an older Muslim man, raising questions about cultural integration versus diversity needs. This practice, along with slavery, persists in modern Islam, reflecting underdevelopment and brutality in some parts of the Arab-Islamic world.
The term “fascism” lacks a clear definition; it varied across regions as a counter-response to communism without a central doctrine or headquarters. After research, one way to prevent monkeypox seems avoiding specific events.
A fabricated story accused Israeli soldiers of raping Palestinians but was debunked after medical exams showed no evidence of assault—just an attempt at smuggling contraband via concealment.
Scott Rasmussen discussed polling differences between elites (those earning over $150k/year with postgraduate degrees living in dense areas) and average Americans regarding trust in government and individual freedom—the elite often favor more control than what public policy reflects.
Many elites believe most Americans share their views even when they don’t align with public sentiment—a disconnect influencing political toxicity and voter disenchantment within America’s polarized society.
Polls show close elections can lead to legitimacy disputes among voters who distrust results not aligned with their beliefs—with both sides having history disputing election outcomes.
As for polls’ accuracy during elections: while skepticism exists due to changes like those seen during COVID-19-related voting adjustments, overwhelming evidence suggests presidential vote counts are generally reliable despite right-wing media casting doubts through selective reporting.
An attorney for Detroit explained that the windows were partially covered during voting to protect voter privacy. Official observers and hundreds of party challengers were present, alongside dozens of reporters. Despite objections to the 2020 count’s legitimacy, analyses debunking these claims are more convincing; no reputable lawyer would support Trump’s rigged election claims due to facts like a suburban shift towards Biden.
Noah Carl suggests academia’s leftward shift is influenced by an influx of women who tend to be less supportive of free speech and more in favor of censorship—often seen as protective but potentially contributing to a culture less open to controversial discourse.
ABC Australia documentary Four Corners reports: Channel 7 faced allegations ranging from using sex workers and drugs for interviews, workplace bullying, discrimination, and harassment. Many employees signed NDAs upon leaving or being fired under various circumstances such as maternity leave or after filing complaints about their treatment at work. These agreements often silence them from discussing their experiences publicly.
The text also mentions how certain jobs can be tough on everyone but claims there’s an expectation that men will endure silently while women might not tolerate such conditions well. It discusses the impact this has on industries like journalism where competition is fierce and economic stability is waning.
Employers often hesitate to hire women who might become pregnant or people from groups they perceive as less desirable workers, prioritizing their interests. Similarly, employees aim to maximize earnings while minimizing effort, and employers seek the most work for the least pay. We’re conducting a Zoom interview with a woman who risks speaking out even anonymously about management’s tactics.
At Channel 7, she was told to sift through staff emails that could be used against them. Asked how she felt about this task, she now feels sick; it reflects a broader issue where many have had to do distasteful things at work. The idea is that employment equates to choosing your “slave owner”—a harsh view of reality.
She criticizes the abuse of internal policies meant for ethical purposes but notes self-interest is common among all people—men and women, employers and employees. Everyone can claim victimhood; surrounding individuals may feel wronged by those same complaining parties. Life involves inadvertently harming others while pursuing one’s goals.
Elliot Blatt urges us to recognize these realities—wake up and smell the eucalyptus.
Another great show Luke. I appreciate all the effort you put into your research and the videos you show provide high quality information from leading academics and experts. This show has a little bit of everything and the callers add a touch of variety to the livestreams. I like how some (if not most) of your world view is shaped around self-help/AA. Which is interesting because I feel what self-help/AA tries to get you to do is to confront your own ego. A problem we have on the right is how everyone wants to be unique as possible and refuses to work with others because we are all natural born contrarians. No wonder many of us don’t have good relationships with our family and friends, as we are ready to burn bridges at the drop of a hat if someone dares bring any harm upon our volatile emotions.
This show is a hidden gem and I always leave feeling happy, informed and centered. For the record my world view lines up closely to yours and Steve Sailor’s. I can’t stand the rampant pessimism, hatred and bickering which goes on the DR and this is a show where I can get my views said back to me and sometimes even challenged or confronted. I appreciate your normal and fair approach to charged topics like race, immigration and the Israel/palestine conflict. It tells me you have a social life.
I used to before just say every far right opinion I had and if someone had a problem with it then good one less weak willed, immature person out of my life. I like how you pull from mainstream news sources, even though sometimes it must feel like wading through mud to find pearls because I before had completely written off news websites before you shared a Richard Hanania article about how mainstream news sites are not all that bad and the article you share about the jealous pastor’s brother was very intriguing and provided a fascinating look into the world of end times obsessed Christian fundamentalists even though the journalist is most likely a giga shitlib. I could tell behind her faux neutrality she loathed all the people involved in the article.
Podnotes summary: Kamala Harris has been on the rise in recent weeks, with increasing poll numbers and support from both sides of the political spectrum. Despite previous doubts by Democratic elites who considered replacing her as vice president due to fears she might falter off-script, Harris has run a tight campaign that’s garnered media backing.
She’s now ahead of Donald Trump by four points in key swing states like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. This leaves Republicans searching for ways to counter her momentum.
Kamala Harris’ team is top-notch; they’re strategic and she follows their lead well—unlike Trump who often deviates from planned messages. Questions about his cognitive ability at age 78 have surfaced among Republicans.
There are concerns within the Harris campaign regarding potential scandals or controversies that could emerge. Tim Walls’ National Guard service portrayal has come under scrutiny, which may distract from Harris’ state tours if amplified by opponents like Trump.
At a rally in Michigan, when confronted by protesters accusing her of supporting genocide, rather than addressing their claims directly, Harris warned them not to help Trump win with such accusations.
Harris also hinted at potential policy changes towards Israel during a private meeting before the rally—a topic that remains sensitive for many voters.
In terms of societal commentary:
– YouTube’s content restrictions reflect pressures from advertisers more than individual decisions.
– The feminist movement aims at removing constraints on female sexuality while restricting male sexuality.
– Societies tend toward feminism until challenged by patriarchal forces; this shift impacts various social dynamics including dating and marriage norms.
The balance between choice and discipline is crucial: too much freedom can be overwhelming whereas structured limitations can guide productive behavior.
As we navigate these complex issues around gender politics and societal expectations, it’s clear there’s no one-size-fits-all answer but an ongoing dialogue about our evolving values and behaviors is essential.
Some women cope with insults to their femininity by turning to hobbies like gardening or arts and crafts, while others express anger through political activism. A few seek revenge on society due to feeling displaced from the dating scene.
Childlessness can deepen despair as it reduces opportunities for nurturing, impacting both personal fulfillment and societal stability. Commentary suggests that masculinity is about invasion, while femininity is about invitation; mistakes made by each gender are influenced by these traits.
The UK faces social media crackdowns following riots sparked by misinformation. Prime Minister K Star warns of arrests for sharing riot footage online. The unrest began after a tragic incident at a children’s dance event led to the wrongful vilification of an immigrant suspect on social media.
Nigel Farage discusses divisions in British cities, blaming unchecked immigration and identity politics for eroding national identity and fueling violence. He criticizes government responses during COVID-19 lockdowns, advocating free speech over censorship on social media platforms like Facebook.
David Starkey highlights ethnic tensions in Britain, noting how multiculturalism has led to differential treatment by police towards certain groups. This approach often exempts historically marginalized communities from criticism but stokes resentment among those who feel excluded from such protections.
In conclusion, divisive issues related to immigration, policing practices, and freedom of speech are intensifying debates within the UK as leaders grapple with maintaining order amid rising discontent.
Tim Walz’s a joyful, effective communicator with an impressive background. Even as a conservative, I acknowledge that. However, the media critical of him focus on his liberal policies in Minnesota and warn against the financial implications if he gains more power.
Tim Walz is known for being progressive and not moderate within his party. His selection has been controversial; critics label him extreme and blame him for unrest in Minnesota.
Contrastingly, Trump confidently faced the media while Harris avoided it. She briefly engaged with press questions but should face more to provide unscripted answers.
The discussion shifted to riots in the UK and their dynamics influenced by racial tensions and new right-wing outlets like GB News funded by foreign interests possibly aimed at sowing division.
Debates also touched on low fertility rates driving immigration and multiculturalism despite resistance from some who prefer understanding over emotional responses.
Media outlets sensationalize news for attention but elite media balance this with maintaining status among certain demographics or advertisers’ support—highlighting Joe Biden’s cognitive decline was avoided due to civility norms despite its obviousness to many outside elite circles.
Lastly, discussions turned to two-tier policing where different communities receive varied police treatment highlighting disparities without much mainstream effort to understand white working-class frustrations compared to other groups’ riots.
The British government has a policy of multiculturalism and has been dispersing refugees across the nation to cut costs and encourage assimilation. This, however, leads to increased housing prices in poorer areas due to contracted private landlords raising rents. The government believes spreading migrants out prevents isolated communities from forming and speeds up assimilation.
In an unrelated incident, I witnessed a father with his children dangerously close to traffic. It raised questions about when it’s appropriate to intervene with strangers who may be at risk.
Regarding political figures like Tommy Robinson and David Starkey, opinions vary on their influence and credibility. Trust in commentators is hard-earned since they often speak outside their expertise.
Domestic politics are equally contentious; Labour’s majority doesn’t reflect its popularity or connection with the white working class. Japan’s societal differences also come into focus when comparing it with Britain regarding optimism for the future despite modern comforts.
Finally, media coverage of politicians requires scrutiny as it influences public perception without necessarily providing substance or encouraging accountability in potential leaders.
I often wonder, if foreign support for a political cause is good or bad. The African National Congress accepted Soviet aid and I can’t blame them—they needed help. But does accepting foreign assistance mean we’re part of the problem?
In Britain, I want my country to improve but worry about foreign influence like Russia’s backing of extreme groups. Are they trying to destabilize us? Arrests during riots make me question the freedom to observe protests.
Our prosecutor-turned-leader seems too eager to punish rioters harshly, with no bail and quick prison sentences. It deters people but also punishes those caught in the moment—like the young man jailed for stealing from a bakery.
Stephen: Discussing politics, I don’t trust mainstream media; instead, I follow independent voices online who dare speak out against current issues. People are apolitical in real life; they accept gender equality on the surface but avoid discussing sensitive topics openly due to fear of repercussions.
Online speech restrictions have grown significantly though people still speak freely in private settings. There’s a class divide in political correctness adherence—with working-class individuals less influenced by it than middle- or upper-class ones.
The UK has its own set of problems: work environments without English speakers, healthcare access issues, housing shortages—all affecting deprived communities who feel overlooked by media and elites.
Humor is restricted; feminism isn’t prominent among everyday folks who focus more on practical matters than ideology. Political correctness awareness exists yet doesn’t dominate casual conversations as much as one might think.
As for sexual divides and relationship dynamics among youth—it varies across social classes with different attitudes toward sex and relationships evident between age groups and backgrounds.
Luke: Despite having its issues, England’s government still provides a better quality of life than most people in history or the world today. While it may not be as prosperous as neighboring Luxembourg, it holds up well compared to other nations. However, our perception of the world is often biased by our own attitudes – optimists see positive news while pessimists focus on doom and gloom.
The media feeds into these biases with their stories. For instance, I’ve observed that society has become too comfortable pressing the “easy button,” losing resilience in the process. It seems like genuine grit is dwindling as more people rely on external support systems rather than internal strength.
Kip: Financial concerns have grown even for those who are technically millionaires due to inflation eroding what was once considered wealth. The concept of community and culture feels audacious now; there’s an overwhelming sense that we’re spiraling down into madness.
Financially speaking, debt levels are alarming. As interest rates rise from 3.9% to 4.1%, worries about economic stability increase alongside them. Observing spelling bees reveals how immigrant children outperform native ones, suggesting a decline in homegrown excellence.
Luke: In education too, passion-driven learning seems rarer among local students compared to their Asian counterparts who excel through rote learning and pragmatic approaches—yet innovation typically emerges from those willing to explore beyond test material.
Kip: Concerns also extend to regional banks struggling with low-interest loans and potential bailouts by governments which could lead us further towards dependency on state assistance rather than self-reliance.
Looking at global dynamics, countries like Saudi Arabia have begun questioning long-standing agreements like oil trade in US dollars—a sign that America’s influence might be waning as others grow tired of playing by rules set predominantly for US benefit.
The accumulation of gold by Asian governments contrasts sharply with sales in America over the past decade; this shift signals a possible transfer of wealth and power Eastward despite America’s military might keeping it dominant—for now.
Finally, discussing whether another country could challenge American dominance remains speculative but highlights underlying shifts away from traditional power structures toward something new yet undefined.
In the past, the English Tory party was seen as self-worshipping and undeserving of its own admiration. England’s history is marked by significant advancements such as increased life expectancy, prosperity, health improvements, and mass literacy—all starting here. Yet now we face a unique situation with unprecedented levels of migration since 1997 that surpass even ancient population movements in scale.
Mass immigration began modestly post-World War II but has since escalated dramatically. This surge has had profound impacts on society and has occurred alongside suppressed public debate—a combination that exacerbates problems.
Turning to human rights discourse, historically it was conservatives who championed these ideals in Europe after World War II—not the left as commonly assumed today. Conservatives saw human rights as a means to protect democracy from tyranny—whether from majoritarianism or totalitarian ideologies within socialism or fascism.
After WWII, British Protestant conservatives valued time-tested institutions over popular sovereignty while Catholic French conservatives sought corporate structures reminiscent of medieval times. Both groups were skeptical about universal rights applications; instead, they favored liberties tailored to specific historical communities.
The conservative push for a European human rights court aimed at protecting individual freedoms against expansive state power reflects this tradition. However, they did not extend these protections universally across all peoples—a notion still debated today regarding European identity amidst growing diversity.
Nowadays in Europe and America alike, there’s contention over how much authority courts should wield versus elected bodies—a reversal from past perspectives where conservatives once advocated for judicial oversight over executive actions.
The complex legacy of conservative involvement in shaping modern human rights continues to influence contemporary politics amid discussions around immigration policy and national identity within an increasingly diverse Europe.
Keir Starmer was a staunch leftist, unchanged over time. Unlike Jeremy Corbyn, who supported Marxist dictators and terrorist groups, Starmer’s alignment is different. He believes in the human rights culture that many Western critics of Israel subscribe to—a culture now questioned by some on the right who see it as undermining social cohesion.
Human rights have become politicized; conservatives once supportive now see them hijacked by progressive agendas. This divide affects global standards and national interests, with each side prioritizing either security or personal liberties.
The United Nations Human Rights Council and associated organizations champion human rights but are seen by some as biased against Israel. Critics argue that universities chase popularity rather than truth, often ignoring flawed science for fame or funding—mirroring issues found in corporations and governments alike.
In academia and media, incentives encourage networking over honesty; criticism can jeopardize one’s standing within an institution or community. The quest for evidence-based self-help is challenging since what works varies from person to person without clear scientific backing.
Finally, discussions about addiction treatment highlight how complex clinical advice gets oversimplified online for mass appeal—reflecting systemic pressures across platforms promoting easily digestible content at the expense of nuanced accuracy.
WP: Jose gazed at the wall sign that read, “In the morning when I rise, give me Jesus,” and pondered how his brother Jeremiah was using Christianity to gain fame. With a large social media following, Jeremiah spread far-right beliefs claiming Trump was chosen by God. Jose’s frustration grew as he saw his brother twist religion for political gains.
Jeremiah led a church and school preparing for end times, sold e-courses on prophecy, and shared supposed divine messages about American politics online. Meanwhile, 37-year-old Jose struggled with dead-end jobs to support his small ministry in Alabama.
Their father always sided with Jeremiah which pained Jose who felt compelled to speak out against false prophets leading believers astray. Despite knowing it could cause family strife or attract public criticism from strangers labeling him delusional or worse.
Finally deciding to act, Jose posted a message challenging religious fabrications on Facebook. He knew morality sometimes meant speaking up even if it risked conflict with those closest to you.
The story illustrates complex dynamics within families where success contrasts sharply with struggle; how personal narratives must adapt when faced with such disparities; and the tension between loyalty and truth amidst differing interpretations of shared experiences.
Addressing broader issues like gender roles in combat or cultural oppression claims underscores societal debates over equality versus recognizing inherent differences among groups—highlighting that liberal perspectives often prioritize some harms over others depending on ideological stances.
Dennis Prager points out that all punishment contains revenge.
People on the right are not as horrified by revenge as people on the left because the right wants to strongly punish norm violators.
Other distinguishing features of the right include a reflex that traditional ways of people (such as the nuclear family) are better than untested ways, and more comfort with hierarchy and inequality.
Amos Harel, a military and political analyst for Haaretz, said that one of the most dispiriting aspects of the current nightmare is the way Sinwar was able to provoke the Netanyahu government into a state of horrific and ruinous fury. “The sense in Israeli society is that we are going down the drain, and Sinwar has helped drag us there,” Harel told me. “When we justify things we never would have justified before, we are in the moral gutter. Words like ‘revenge’ used to be heard only among the Bezalel Smotrichs and the Itamar Ben-Gvirs of the world”—two particularly reactionary ministers in Netanyahu’s cabinet. “Now military units and mainstream colonels are using terms like nekama, revenge. It’s almost part of the norm now. I am not sure it was part of Sinwar’s great plan, but that is where we are.”
Posted inConservatives|Comments Off on The Left Is Horrified By Revenge
Herbert Aptheker, a senior member of the American Communist Party (CPUSA) and influential scholar of Marxism, argued for framing the Arab-Israeli conflict in terms of “imperialism and colonialism versus national liberation and social progress,” as well as through the lens of racial oppression. Contrary to Israeli rulers’ claims, he declared, the greatest threat facing Israel came not from Arabs but from Israel’s own extremist right-wing government, which had turned Israel into the “handmaiden of imperialism and colonialist expansionism.” He equated Israel with Nazi Germany by referring to the recent Six-Day War as a blitzkrieg, a quintessentially Soviet propaganda term meant to evoke Hitler’s invasion of the USSR. Today, said Aptheker, it was Jews who were “acting out the roles of occupiers and tormentors” of the oppressed. He called on the audience to work tirelessly to unmask “the horror of the June war and its aftermath.” So closely did Aptheker’s speech follow the anti-Israel logic and idiom of Soviet propaganda that it may well have been written for him in Moscow.
The two documents the conference unanimously adopted—the “Appeal to the Conscience of the World” (reportedly signed by 100 members of the Indian parliament) and a “Declaration”—conveyed similar messages with even more bombast. Evoking classic antisemitic tropes, they accused Israel of having cynically violated all “standards of human decency,” and declared that it had made “a mockery of all human moral values.” They dubbed Palestinian terrorism—aka “resistance”—as “righteous and justified.” In an attempt to make the Middle Eastern conflict more relatable, they equated it with the central cause animating the Western left at the time: the war in Vietnam. They called for all the people on the planet to resist “imperialist-Zionist propaganda” and expressed appreciation for the “progressive and peace-loving” Soviet Union and other socialist states and Non-Aligned countries that “supported the Arab cause.”
The message echoed throughout the global leftist universe. The CPUSA, which was almost wholly subsidized by the Soviet Union, published Aptheker’s speech and both statements in full in its theoretical journal Political Affairs. The African Communist, the Soviet-financed quarterly organ of the South African Communist Party (SACP), which was deeply intertwined with the African National Congress (ANC), ran a piece titled “Zionism and the Future of Israel,” closely reflecting the language of the New Delhi conference, complete with the word blitzkrieg. Its author, who claimed to be a South African living in Tel Aviv, accused Zionist “fanatical zealots” of exploiting the biblical concept of Jewish chosenness to fan the flames of Jewish supremacy (“chauvinism” in the language of the day), while equating Israel with apartheid South Africa.
What’s so interesting about this half-century-old Soviet propaganda is how precisely it mirrors the language emanating from the anti-Israel left since Oct. 7. Today’s left, too, speaks of Israel as a racist, imperialist, and colonialist state; equates it with Nazi Germany and apartheid South Africa; disparages Jews for having turned into oppressors; and proclaims Palestinians’ inalienable right to resist their colonial oppression by any means necessary.
Posted inAnti-Semitism|Comments Off on Zombie Anti-Zionism
Conservative Europeanists invoked international human rights norms for different purposes. Nevertheless, they were united in their belief that a democracy in which tyranny of the majority held sway was little better than a dictatorship. The rights of the minority, like the autonomy of the individual and civil society, were not to be sacrificed at the altar of the unitary nation – state.
Pluralism, not popular sovereignty, was their watchword. While their socialist opponents called them anti – democratic, conservatives saw their aim as protecting democracy from itself. Totalitarianism, they believed, was a contagion whose carriers were not limited to communists and fascists, for it could metastasize within democratic movements and persist even after the fall of authoritarian regimes. Socialism was alleged to be its breeding ground, especially that of the Marxist variety, but so, too, were certain aspects of liberalism and republicanism to blame. With domestic courts having proven themselves unable or unwilling to uphold the rule of law against overweening executives, in their eyes, a new international solution was needed. For conservatives, this was not to be found in what they regarded as the soulless internationalism of liberal technocrats, with their naive faith in scientific and technological progress. A return to tradition and older forms of community would form the bedrock of a free and united Europe, not technocracy.
None of this is to deny the centrality of left – wing activism to the history of human rights writ large. In the domestic sphere, the Left had for much of the past century been at the forefront of championing civil liberties, ending discriminatory measures against women and minorities, expanding suffrage, and securing economic and social rights.
* What remains to be explained is why in the aftermath of the Second World War proposals for the creation of a European human rights court attracted the disproportionate support of conservatives and disproportionate opposition of socialists. Socialists also tended to be less enthusiastic about European integration than their conservative counterparts. It is true that those who participated in European assemblies were eventually prepared to accept a European human rights text of some kind once conservatives had taken the initiative of placing it on the agenda. What polarized Western Europeans was the question of which rights such a charter would guarantee and whether it would be implemented by a supranational version of the US Supreme Court — that is, a European high court empowered to overrule the decisions of national executives, judiciaries, and legislatures, as well as deal with claims of rights abuses submitted by private parties.
The European Court of Human Rights was an object of great controversy even before its creation. Judiciaries had long been viewed with hostility on the Left. This was particularly true of Britain and France. In Britain, memories were still fresh of the role that courts had played as bastions of conservative assaults on trade unions and economic planning, as well as their complicity in repressive measures against various left – wing organizations. The ruling Labour Party had not failed to take notice of the US Supreme Court’s efforts in the 1930s to overturn Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. It advocated a strict adherence to the principle of parliamentary sovereignty, whereby acts of parliament were not subject to judicial review or other constitutional constraints. In France, judicial power was associated with the aristocratic privileges of the ancien régime . Ever since the French Revolution, the French Left had inveighed against the creation of a reactionary “government of judges” capable of overriding the will of the people as expressed in the National Assembly.
* In domestic affairs, a European supreme court was widely regarded as a mechanism for realizing what socialists described as a discredited conservative agenda too unpopular to be enacted through democratic means. The most avid advocates of a European supreme court were those conservatives who before the Second World War had championed the independence and constitutional prerogatives of domestic courts. They reasoned that the ever – expanding state bureaucracies in their countries, once placed at the disposal of socialist governments backed by left – wing parliamentary majorities, posed a threat to their human rights. Of particular concern to conservatives were the fundamental freedoms of property owners, ecclesiastical schools, and political oppositions.
* It is said that human rights are akin to a secular religion. Some of the framers of European human rights law took this analogy quite literally. A new court whose legal authority and moral suasion mirrored that of the medieval Church was to be constructed from the wreckage of a lost Christian civilization. For some Catholic conservatives, the spiritual reunification of Europe required the subordination of parliamentary democracy to what they called “supranational justice,” a term that rearticulated an older belief that transnational Christian norms should constrain the exercise of sovereign power. Envisioned as a successor to the medieval charters of old, a European human rights treaty held the promise of strengthening the autonomy of Catholic churches, towns, and regions, as well as associations of Catholic peasants and workers.
* In the name of promoting reconciliation, these conservatives called for greater leniency or outright amnesty. They were unhappy that, to varying degrees across Europe, the Left had taken advantage of postwar purges to disenfranchise and silence political rivals, seize the assets of landholders and industrialists, and rid armies, bureaucracies, and judiciaries of conservatives.
* Involvement in the creation of the European human rights system offered conservatives the opportunity to disavow right – wing authoritarianism, which many had once argued was preferable to left – wing revolution and democratic dysfunction, without requiring them to repudiate their prewar worldviews. It placed a renewed emphasis on the anti – statist, libertarian dimensions of conservatism.
* Conservatives correctly identified the propensity of postwar socialists to reject checks on majority rule in their attempts to centralize bureaucratic authority over economic and social affairs. In response, they sought to forge a European human rights system that would replace majority rule with the rule of law, the unitary state with a more pluralistic system, the absolute sovereignty of nations and parliaments with greater autonomy for individuals, families, localities, minorities, and civil society. Such views were by no means exclusive to conservatism, nor did all conservatives share them. Certainly, they are foreign to much of the European Right today. In the immediate postwar period, however, their realization fell primarily to conservatives over a chorus of objections from socialists.
* The decision of postwar conservatives to momentarily place themselves at the vanguard of the human rights revolution in Western Europe did not mark a repudiation of their longstanding political beliefs. Rather, it signaled a recognition born through the lessons of the recent past that conservative objectives would be better realized on the transnational plane than the national one. Participation in the construction of international human rights safeguards occurred in tandem with a shift in emphasis, not a wholesale transformation, in the component parts of conservative ideology. For the most part, it was the application of conservative principles rather than the principles themselves that changed — and even here, the language of human rights was employed to advance economic and social policies that conservatives had advocated since at least the nineteenth century.
* Romanticism remained an important an element of conservatism throughout the first half of the twentieth century. Conservatives by and large remained skeptical of the liberal faith in reason and progress. The modern world was not necessarily a more just, free, and peaceful one than the old. On the contrary, the destruction of social hierarchies in the name of egalitarianism had led to widespread material and spiritual impoverishment, setting peoples against one another in a cycle of perpetual conflict. It was a delusion to believe that rights and obligations could and should be the same for all, for in reality they could only endure if tailored to specific groups. Liberties were not to be deduced from first principles on the basis of cold logic alone. Rather, they emerged organically from the development of human habits and personalities within a particular civilizational or communal framework. Humans were naturally selfish, sinful creatures who could only learn to respect one another’s liberties through the recovery of the traditions that once united them, not the issuing of abstract declarations of principle.
* Conservatives differed to the extent to which they rejected the modern world. They disagreed violently, for example, on the virtues of capitalism, industrialization, and parliamentary democracy.
* Protestant conservatives in Britain, for example, were generally averse to fixing their mast to a set of timeless, universal prescriptions for the organization of human societies, preferring instead to defer to the practices and values particular to a given historical community, though their view of human nature remained a consistently pessimistic one. For them, conservatism meant the defense of institutions that were historically tested — in other words, that had proven their worth over a long span of time — and liberties that were for the most part historically contingent — in other words, that were not necessarily suitable to all peoples in all places at all times. They believed that human rights originated in medieval charters such as the Magna Carta and later the Reformation. While rejecting popular sovereignty as a foundational constitutional principle, they agreed with the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty, which for them meant that parliamentarians were entitled to their traditional prerogatives. Their chief concern was limiting the power of the executive, which they argued needed to be constrained through both an independent judiciary and parliamentary oversight, particularly as regarded the rights of property owners. Though, historically, conservatives in Britain were more comfortable exalting the virtues of “constitutional government” than those of “democracy,” this proclivity faded across the first decades of the twentieth century, in part as a consequence of the expansion of suffrage and the democratic rhetoric that characterized Allied propaganda in the two world wars.
Catholic conservatives in France tended to be more hostile to parliamentary government than their Protestant counterparts across the Channel, but this was in part because the conception of parliamentary government they associated with the Jacobin republican tradition diverged from that of constitutional monarchies such as the United Kingdom. In accordance with the doctrine of social Catholicism, they were more given to denouncing capitalism and liberalism, promoting in their place a neomedieval form of corporatism that would restore the collective rights of workers while fostering harmony between social groups. Even the most right – wing among them, rather than seek to do away with representative bodies altogether, believed that they should function according to older conceptions of the constitutional order… Catholics following the Vatican’s lead looked to natural law doctrine, particularly that of the medieval scholastic Thomas Aquinas, as a basis for the organization of society.
Others had a more historicist sensibility.
* Ever since the American and French Revolutions, British and French conservatives had generally been uncomfortable invoking the “rights of man.” Yet, none hesitated to proclaim themselves champions of “liberty,” which could mean anything from the inviolability of private property and the autonomy of the Church from the state to the emancipation of the human spirit from a false moral outlook.
* The result was a hybrid human rights doctrine, a strange amalgam of the Enlightenment and the counter – Enlightenment, modern individual liberties and medieval communal liberties, natural rights and historical rights.
* The conservative politicians who championed a European human rights court believed that colonized peoples were not entitled to the same rights protections as Europeans.
* A common thread in Euroskeptic critiques was a perceived contradiction between democracy and human rights, on the one hand, and the supranational prerogatives of EU institutions, on the other.
* The faltering popular legitimacy of European institutions today is due to the fissiparousness of European identity as much as the vicissitudes of domestic politics and economic growth. Attempts to articulate a set of qualities shared by all Europeans often only sow the seeds of fragmentation. To characterize Euroskeptic forces as “anti – Europe” ignores how many of them have their own conception of the history and values that unite Europeans, one that often betrays a longing for the days when the expressions “Europe”, “Western Europe” and “Christian Europe” were interchangeable. In postwar Europe, democracy and human rights were invoked for contrary purposes, with the terms themselves assuming radically different meanings depending on the context in which they were deployed. Appeals to democracy and human rights continue to divide as much as to unite Europeans. Whether found in calls for a greater pooling of national sovereignty or for greater national self – determination, such rhetoric has been mobilized both in defense and in defiance of supranational authorities.
In response, there has been little agreement among “pro – Europe” forces on which markers of European identity should be the focal points of a new vision of the multicultural, multiethnic Europe of the twenty – first century, one spanning east to west, north to south, the continent and Britain.
* Europeanists sometimes speak of the need for a charismatic leader to counter the growing tide of “anti – Europe” sentiment. Charisma, however, is a quality that emerges only if there exists an empathic bond between leaders and the people they aim to inspire and mobilize. This in turns depends on identification between the two on the basis of not only common material interests but also a shared cultural and ethical sensibility.
Charismatic figures are, above all, powerful storytellers. Yet, the grand narratives found in official and scholarly accounts of European integration rarely capture the popular imagination. There is none comparable, for example, to that which Barack Obama used to great effect in the 2008 US presidential election, when he campaigned on the theme of American unity in diversity by invoking the motto e pluribus unum, “United We Are One.” By tethering his own personal story to that of the American nation, Obama was able to momentarily inspire hope for a reunited United States, a new America refounded on old American ideals, a vision that carried with it both great historical resonance and tremendous affective power. At the same time, the unabated political polarization of the United States during Obama’s tenure as president offers a cautionary tale. Charisma and visionary rhetoric alone are not sufficient to effect either national or transnational integration. More critically, the qualities that are said to unite Europeans must resonate with the social solidarities they experience in their everyday lives.
In my years as a theology professor, as a rare conservative in higher education, I became accustomed to calls for dialogue on this or that issue. In almost every instance, it was a set-up for mandatory public capitulation. If someone regards abortion as a moral evil and same-sex marriage as an oxymoron, as I do, he cannot say so in a public forum, for it amounts to a sin against dialogue. It “shuts down conversation,” I was told on many occasions. As I learned over the years, there’s dialogue—until there isn’t. Once homosexuality is affirmed on a Catholic university campus, there’s no more “dialogue.” Can you imagine “dialogue” on global climate change? The movement from dialogue to censure and then denunciation is often a smooth one.
…After World War II, human rights came to prominence in Europe as a way to protect the individual from the state.
…in the twenty-first century, human rights has changed its role, at least in the West. Today, it has become a powerful ideology that promises to relieve us of the burdens of political responsibility for the common good.
Case in point: Europeans today must face the very difficult task of determining whether and how to limit migration. Who shall be counted as part of the national community? This is a political question, perhaps the most fundamental one, and it remains our responsibility to answer it. Human rights, however, can become an ideology that rejects this political responsibility, saying that migrants who qualify as refugees must be accepted, regardless of circumstances. By this way of thinking, immigration is a matter of basic human rights and thus transcends the political.
… I’m increasingly against human rights. As an ideology, it has become a patron of negative freedom, pushing against demands and obligations arising from our shared culture. In the West, human rights now functions as an enemy of the responsible exercise of freedom. Exalting human rights as the epitome of social responsibility short-circuits collective judgment and stymies action for the sake of the common good.
…Both right and left in America imagine that today’s social distemper stems from too little freedom, when, in fact, what currently agitates society is the loss of stability, unity, and solidarity.
Consider the increasingly bizarre liberal fixation on transgender rights. As more and more commentators now recognize, our political crisis concerns the disintegration of the once expansive and solid middle class. People feel economically vulnerable, true, but they feel culturally vulnerable as well, something that politically volatile concerns about immigration indicate. In this context, “problematizing” male and female identity—a fundamental point of orientation for every young person trying to figure out where he stands in the world—exacerbates the disintegrating trends that make so much in their lives so liquid.
Over the last few decades, the human rights project has become increasingly progressive, advocating a singular way of living the good life, with a concomitant demotion of values that don’t fit in, such as those associated with religious belief or with social institutions such as families, churches, schools, local communities, and clubs…
Although those on the right do not accept the liberal universality that currently drives much of the discourse and action around human rights today, they continue to believe in the inherent dignity of every human being, which includes the right to the security of life and property, due process, and the protection of fundamental liberties. The forms that these rights take can vary across societies depending on historical context, but they are essential.
…The number of rights that concern conservatives is smaller, but what is required to protect them and build a successful society is more expansive. Whereas liberals put rights at the center of their worldview, conservatives see them as dependent on social institutions, a complementary set of duties, and a healthy appreciation of virtue. Rather than being “Against Human Rights,” conservatives could more accurately be said to believe in a different vision of human rights—a vision with values shared by many societies worldwide. Unfortunately, the progressive takeover of human rights promotion alongside an individualist turn in Western culture has blurred this vision…
Anglo-American conservatives have historically had a much more modest and context-specific understanding of rights than the vision prevalent today.2 Recognizing a higher authority, a natural law established by God, that could be learned from the accumulated experience of many generations and which the Bible (and, for Selden, also the Talmud) provided reliable guidance, they rejected the “unrestricted use of pure and simple reason” as a way to govern on the grounds that it would produce judgments that are “intrinsically inconsistent and dissimilar among men.” A purely rationalistic approach would lead to confusion and a breakdown in social and political order. As such, except for a core group of laws that apply everywhere (e.g., the seven Noahide Laws), they prescribed no universal rules for how to organize states. As Selden wrote, “Diverse nations, as diverse men, have their diverse collections and inferences, and so make their diverse laws grow to what they are, out of the same root.”
…There are, broadly speaking, two different approaches to organizing society: one focused on maximizing personal freedoms and the other on maximizing the robustness of relationships and institutions. The first centers on the autonomous individual and emphasizes the liberty of each person as long as they do nothing to harm anyone else; the second centers on the wellbeing of society as a whole, emphasizing the interdependence of each person within the groups and networks they belong to.
These approaches assume and promote different definitions of the good life. Individualistic societies highly value choice and fairness, and they emphasize moral concepts such as rights, liberty, and justice. On the other hand, sociocentric societies highly value order, hierarchy, and tradition; they emphasize moral concepts such as duty, respect, reputation, patriotism, sanctity, and purity.
Not surprisingly, these two social orders have different conceptions of human rights and the role of the state in enhancing human welfare. Autonomy-centered societies prefer a human rights framework that offers broad protections for individual choice and which gives the state a large role in enforcing rules. Cultural differences, traditions, and social institutions can be set aside if they conflict with human rights goals. Sociocentric societies, in contrast, prefer a human rights framework that includes a few core rules that ensure certain minimum standards are met while providing flexibility for local adaptation. The state is still important but plays a different role in enforcing rules. Traditions and social institutions, considered crucial to identity and feelings of dignity, are given a relatively large role. Human rights are seen as but one of many ways to better lives and improve how societies work.
…a diminution of the important role originally played by duties, responsibilities, social institutions, norms, and morality; a debasement of political discourse; and an unnecessarily expansive role for the judiciary in setting public policy, which produces “coerced, and often unsatisfying, social arrangements.” The progressive domination of much of the discourse as well as their overwhelming influence on key institutions (including the media) in the human rights field means that today too often rights promotion is based on a particular, singular worldview about what it means to be a person, and what is just, good, and worth pursuing. As Makau Mutua writes, “They [human rights organizations] claim to practice law, not politics. Although their mandates seek to promote paradigmatic liberal values and norms, they present themselves as neutral, universal, non-ideological, non-partisan, and unbiased.” Values that don’t fit into this worldview are ignored or devalued.
…Western individualists of all political persuasions must recognize that promoting human dignity does not always mean securing individual autonomy. Not only do different societies—and different parts of our society—have different definitions of rights, but they also have a different vision concerning the place or exercise of individual autonomy. Many of the rights currently promoted by progressive human rights activists are highly dependent on a particular culture or worldview—one that has evolved significantly over the past half century. A different vision of society would promote and implement rights differently. For instance, whereas approval of any right to kill or harm oneself was once unthinkable, now ever-widening forms of physician-assisted suicide are becoming acceptable. While the amputation or reshaping of the body was formerly seen as unethical and dangerous, now sex reassignment surgery is accepted and encouraged (while, for some, circumcision is considered a human rights violation). Marriage used to emphasize the needs of children; now it is centered on the rights of adults. Instead of developing a concept of children’s rights that constrains the freedom of parents, a concept of adult rights that often deprives children of much needed social support predominates.3 In all these cases, what is at issue is not the importance of mores and rights, but which rights and harms to emphasize, and who is permitted to make choices.
The evolution of human rights discourse has prompted many of the growing disagreements over human rights between countries (and between different parts of American society). By assuming that, as Sally Engle Merry notes, “human rights are part of a distinctive modernist vision of the good and just society that emphasizes autonomy, choice, equality, secularism, and protection of the body,” progressive rights proponents have converted their own cultural norms into universal rights. This approach produces an ever-growing number of rights while it assumes a uniform value system across countries. It generally views culture as an obstacle that needs to be changed through education and the intervention of national and international authorities—not a very appealing proposition to people who understandably cherish their values, history, and sovereignty.
Indeed, when progressives urge non-Western countries to discard tradition or heterodox ways of living, or adopt a one-size-fits-all approach to various challenges that they face, they engender ill will and undermine whatever consensus on human rights existed in the aftermath of World War II (when the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted; see below)—consensus that could bridge differences across cultures and improve human wellbeing—and that was rooted in an older vision of human rights that conservatives were much more comfortable with. Today, autonomy-centric progressives too often incite resistance from sociocentric societies to even those reforms that ought to be acceptable to them.
…When conservatives have discussed rights historically, it is usually with the understanding that they are based on a divine source and represent a sacred moral order.
When the American section of Amnesty International was first founded in the 1970s, William F. Buckley was one of its earliest supporters. The prime mover behind the American section, Ginetta Sagan, was a mentor to those of all political stripes, including, for example, Republican Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, whom no one has ever accused of being a “leftist.” When George W. Bush called in his second inaugural address for the United States to affirm “the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world,” he was issuing a call with which no human rights advocate could possibly disagree. The board of Freedom House, a prominent human rights organization, is rife with ex-Bush administration officials like William H. Taft IV and Paula J. Dobriansky, and with scholars like Ruth Wedgwood and Joshua Muravchik who are generally identified with the conservative end of the political spectrum.
And yet, despite the political diversity these instances represent, human rights are generally identified as a left-wing cause. There are many reasons for that, perhaps foremost among them the fact that human rights standards are established largely by international instruments, beginning with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (udhr), and enforced, to the extent to which they are “enforced” at all, by international institutions, such as the un Human Rights Council. Conservatives tend to resist subsuming American sovereignty to international regimens and to be suspicious of international institutions, in part because they include some member states lacking consent of the governed and basic liberties. As a consequence, the United States has ratified fewer key human rights treaties than the other g20 nations and, when it has ratified them, has tended to attach reservations asserting the preeminent authority of the U.S. Constitution.2
Human rights are generally identified as a left-wing cause, largely because human rights standards are established globally.
Moreover, human rights have come to be associated with a number of causes — notably opposition to the death penalty; the closure of the prison camp at Guantánamo Bay; and the assertion of a right to health care — that, justifiably or not, are considered liberal causes in American political terms. The fact that conservatives have played a prominent role in other landmark human rights struggles — such as the promotion of religious freedom; an end to the second Sudanese Civil War in 2005; and the campaign to end human trafficking — has failed to redress the perception that human rights advocates, with the exception perhaps of a handful of neoconservatives, are ineluctably drawn from the left.
…Perhaps no issue has more robustly divided left and right, at least since 9/11, than the challenge of finding the right balance between security and liberty. Without re-litigating, so to speak, highly contentious decisions of the Bush administration, it is fair to say that it erred on the side of security…
There is no international definition of terrorism, and the Geneva Conventions were not designed for nonstate actors.
…Ever since Jeane Kirkpatrick tried to distinguish between authoritarian and totalitarian governments in her 1979 Commentary essay “Dictatorships and Double Standards,” left and right have been arguing about when national interests trump accountability for human rights abuses.
For many years Amnesty International claimed that it favored no particular form of government — only governments of whatever stripe that support human rights. And human rights leaders have repeatedly and correctly pointed out that democracy was no guarantee of respect for human rights…
Conservatives have traditionally blanched at social and economic rights.
Posted inConservatives, Human Rights|Comments Off on The Conservative Human Rights Revolution: European Identity, Transnational Politics, and the Origins of the European Convention
"This guy knows all the gossip, the ins and outs, the lashon hara of the Orthodox world. He’s an [expert] in... all the inner workings of the Orthodox world." (Rabbi Aaron Rakeffet-Rothkoff)
