Rights Based on Natural Law Part Two: According to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Eleanor Roosevelt

By Olivia Pierson
First published on Insight@theBFD 12/03/2020

As observed in last week’s overview of Natural Rights according to John Locke, America’s Founding Fathers beautifully echoed Locke’s liberty rights in the Declaration of Independence: 

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

These liberty rights require nothing from others, except that they exercise the virtue of tolerance (live and let live), hence being often referred to as “negative rights.”

Thus Locke’s concept of a liberty-oriented, self-governing society based on natural law placed rigorous personal independence and responsibility at the very heart of its potential to flourish.

James Madison penned these words during the framing of the Constitution:

“…what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature. If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In forming a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.” [James Madison, The Federalist, 51]

As we all know, human beings are far from perfect and some folk are even downright malevolent. The justification for creating governments instituted by men lies in this fact and so also does the conviction of the Founding Fathers that government be limited and have its powers continually restrained – hence the Bill of Rights which sets amendments of the Constitution into federal law.

But since Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt’s pet project – the Universal Declaration of Human Rights – was adopted in 1948 by the United Nations General Assembly, natural rights have been completely flipped on their head.

Instead of continuing to develop a system of rights, and laws to protect those rights built upon the bases of reason and personal independence, ie, universal human identity in a state of nature, the new laws began to supplant the old on the bases of weakness and personal dependence. 

What was once a natural right to “the pursuit of happiness” was rewritten in empathetic-sounding language to mean a right “to demand happiness” via the vehicle of constant approval and acquiescence from all other citizens.
Consider the wording of these new rights in the UDHR:

The Right to Social Security #22 – “Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security and is entitled to realization, through national effort and international co-operation and in accordance with the organization and resources of each State, of the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality.”

The Right to Work #23 – “3. Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection.

The Right to Play #24 – “Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay.” 

The Right to Education #26 – “2. Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace.”

Responsibility #29 – “1. Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible.

2. In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society.

3. These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.”

If one reads through all of the rights laid out in the UNDHR, the term “dignity” is used a lot – and so is this strange term: “and the free development of his personality,” along with, “due recognition and respect for the rights and freedom of others.”  These phrasings can facilitate a shit-load lot of nonsense and have done so. 

As just one example illustrates so well, the charge of the Woke Brigade has been campaigning to compel others (everyone) to use nonsensical pronouns like “zir,” or “ze,” in deference to the demands of neurotic, gender-obsessed individuals.
 
It was this point which rocketed Professor Jordan Peterson into the public eye when Canada sought to enact Bill C-16, an amendment to the Human Rights Act and their Criminal Code, making it illegal to not recognise and respect the rights of gender identity and gender expression.  Not using correct personal pronouns, which are not even in the English language, was to become a crime, and now is.
 
Peterson always stated that he didn’t have a big problem with using pronouns like “zir” or “ze” to individual students if they asked him to; what got his goat was the State making laws to force people to use language they would not normally use. That, in Peterson’s mind, was a giant leap too far and something reminiscent of totalitarian regimes and Orwellian “Newspeak”.  He was right.

This is exactly what “due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society” means.  If you don’t willingly give such active due recognition and respect etc, you’re a criminal. 

When Peterson said, “No! I will not be compelled to speak a state-imposed language,” he felt the full brunt of Canada’s human rights laws come down upon his head.  His own traditional natural rights and freedoms were irrelevant.
 
Freedom in the classical liberal sense now means something quite different than that which John Locke’s liberty rights conceived of, and that which the Founding Fathers midwifed into existence during the birth of American liberty in 1776. The purveyors of the ever-widening dimensions of so-called human rights have sought to overthrow them – and they are by no means done yet.
 
Rather than societies flourishing on a foundation of personal independence and individual responsibility which requires only tolerance from others of the live and let live variety, the new rights compel citizens to acquiesce to the weak-spirited subjective-happiness-demands of others as they cite their “right to be recognised and respected,” over everything from their diverse cultural and religious scruples to the active development of their personality and gender-fluidity.
   
And hell help you if you don’t.