Here's the foreword from the most recent published copy:
"The Universal Declaration promises to all the economic, social, political, cultural and civic rights that underpin a life free from want and fear. They are not a reward for good behaviour. They are not country-specific, or particular to a certain era or social group. They are the inalienable entitlements of all people, at all times, and in all places — people of every colour, from every race and ethnic group; whether or not they are disabled; citizens or migrants; no matter their sex, their class, their caste, their creed, their age or sexual orientation."
And here is the original document:
"Article 1.
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood."
Sorry not to hijack this thread and I know you technically said Bill of Rights, which is also very inspiring, but I feel like less well known in the US."
These things aren't real declarations because they don't provide any real rights that you can enforce, just fancy PR documents.
Things like
>Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay.
Sound great until you realize that most of the planet lives in poverty - how realistic is it to fight for paid holidays on a planet where most people don't even get paid enough to live? Plus the U.N. has done exactly nothing to ensure people get paid holidays. . . as a matter of fact, they've done nothing to enforce or even advocate for many of the rights in their declaration.
These people don't understand that rights were meant to be limitation on government power to secure freedom, not expansions of government power to chase pipe dreams
There are always people who bring in extreme cultural relativism to argue for all kinds of ethical transgressions: "Hey, who says child labor is exploitation? Maybe some people are fine with working 24/7 without pay and selling their children. What do we know?"
Human rights can be used to find arguments against stuff like that.
The parent is arguing that people haven't actually committed to them because they clearly haven't paid the cost actually involved in that commitment.
Right to Birth Control: we're never going to agree on abortion but can we at least get this? A long time ago women would usually stop getting their periods after 20...because they were constantly pregnant until 50 when menopause started. Having larger amount of children might very well be unsustainable in a world with less jobs and that demands a lifetime of learning (by both spouses) to stay employed and take care of yourselves, let alone 3, 4, 5+ children. If male birth control ever comes out I think this would become even more viable too.
Right to Internet: I don't have great reasons for this but can anyone think of a bad one for this? Like birth control could be found to have terrible side effects, perhaps some welfare plan might cause mass dependency, but literally is there any bad reason for guaranteeing internet?
But......You do have a point though. When extremist interpretations can be made...haha they almost certainly will (Islam, the Bible, anything related to communism, capitalism, etc).
How do you get around that? No contract is really bulletproof, there is a spirit to every law and document. That spirit I like to think is applied through good systems, common sense, and good leadership.
It would have to have term limits on the people involved in making the rules for the system as well.
Everything would have to be staggered though, can't have everything up for renewal at the same time. Too easy to cause chaos of which some people will take advantage.
But, most likely, it won't matter in the long run because my thoughts are around the idea of trying to prevent the always inevitable violent upheaval of the status quo to "make things better". Which only means get rid of all the crappy rules we've forced on ourselves to return to a time the rules were fair and made sense. Which, of course, eventually goes downhill again.
It made me think and I'd even take it a step further and say most of the places the US (military) is involved in are not great like Iraq, Afghanistan, Egypt, Uganda, Haiti, etc. which is interesting because this thread originally asked about our (US) Bill of Rights.
Obviously the UN (and thus all of its mistakes) is typically supported by Democrats...
But also Paul Wolfowitz, neoconservative extraordinaire and also the world's worst human being and the only person I know who can be singularly blamed for the deaths of hundreds of thousands in Iraq and now Syria, was a Republican idealist who was going to spread human rights values by attacking Iraq and paying for the $50 billion dollar war (turned out to be $3 trillion) with captured oil revenues from the temporary, "month long" occupation of southern Iraq...
So, the question is, do good inspiring rights-based documents cause disastrous foreign policy decisions when countries try to implement them in real life?
The opposite of all this by the way is realpolitik, advocated by Henry Kissinger. But then again that was during Vietnam...a war of comparable brutality to Iraq.
In the end...I would say since everything seems to fail...go with the inspiring, come up with a list of actions that will never be justifiable so that "going to far" and "failure" is never a matter of debate but only a matter of proof, and get good leaders.
Is there any existing jurisprudence defending citizen access to cryptography on 2nd Amendment grounds?
But no, to my knowledge this legal argument has not been made in court. (Here's a Motherboard article about the possibility: https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/the-second-amendm...)
So far I think it's more interesting to consider as a political argument than a legal one: conservatives who like guns should (IMHO) have every reason to oppose state-weakened cryptography, as much as that might fracture the law-and-order conservatism from libertarian conservatism. (Also, there is no universe where a militia with automatic weapons and tapped email is really going anywhere.)
To have all applicable financial / tax regulations applied to you automatically.
This way you don't have to discover tax breaks/credits/deductions — they just get applied to you.
This is important and effects something like 250M Americans.
Outside of criminal and civil law, much of the US system of government is enforced financially through the tax code.
The benefits of the Internal Revenue Code are applied unevenly because richer people are able to develop the sophistication or acquire service providers who help them make sure they are getting the best available deal.
Can you imagine if hackers/coders got better deals on products Amazon then non-coders? It would be absurd to say "well, learn to code or higher an engineer and you'll save $1000 a year!" That's a pretty close metaphor—we say "get financially literate! The information is out there! get an accountant!".
Computers, tech, machine learning, and AI are great at making sure all Americans get The Best Deal Available.
A community has the right to transparency in the forces that govern it.
I think religious rights should have never evolved the way it did.
Religion is clearly different from creed color, etc, it also includes belief, personality, motivation etc. Instead of becoming power real estate for established religions to fight over (do 'cults', or atheist institutions get the same protections), it should have evolved into the right to believe anything that doesn't motivate you to break the law; in other words, protection against though-policing.
The flat-earthers should get the same protections as catholics - the right to hold any belief, be it on faith or otherwise.
In fact, some believers wrap their belief structures in an established religious structure, it seems, just so they have those protections.
One specific concern about this:
Don't like gays? sorry bub, go to jail. Have a religious basis to not like gays? protected! I choose this contentious example to show that any belief protected by religious rights, should also be protected when otherwise having no religious basis; and also why some beliefs shouldn't be protected, even if religiously based.
When all beliefs not barred are permitted, there will be a lot more motivation to bar specific kinds of belief - at the moment, the established religions can push exceptions for their specific beliefs. Put another way - if religion isn't special, then either racist belief is as valid for a neo-nazi as it is a church, or that belief is an invalid for a church as a neo-nazi.
There are hate crime laws, but they largely are additional charges in cases of violence.
A church probably has an easier time demonstrating that they are a non profit for tax purposes.
If they fail to intercept, they could always get warrants to secretly surveil the suspects, swap or backdoor their hardware, etc.
I also think the right to human autonomy is absolutely crucial. I want the freedom to choose to drive my own vehicle. I don't want a self-driving vehicle to dictate where I can and cannot go.
I really think, and this is entering muddy waters, that there should be a right to anonymity. I should be able to say or do things without people knowing who I am.
A right to privacy and a data letter (every outlet and company must inform you via mail about any data, articles etc on their servers/in their publication in which personal information about you is involved, if they are either supplying a service or writing the story) would fill most of that niche in my opinion
Right to autonomy I agree, that is basically stallmann. First sale doctrine, freedom to tinker, software freedom...things like this
Right to anonymity goes into dangerous territory again...you should have a right to not be surveilled(privacy), which makes it harder to connect you to your speech (good). But if somebody figures it out,having the right to stop that is ...dangerous again.Especially with the bullshit idea that corporate money is speech, that right would make it illegal to unmask bribery
Bill of obligations:
Article 1: All parents are obligated to either support their children and provide their physical and educational needs, and give them the emotional support they need to grow up or leave them up for adoption at the earliest opportunity.
Article 2: Adult children must financially support their parents by a percentage of their income while their parents are over the age of 65.
Article 3: The nearest relatives with income to a person with disability are obligated to support that person financially.
Article 4: The government have obligation to help the needy, the disabled, the elderly, the abandoned, to search for their nearest relatives and garnish their wages and income to ensure the persons' needs are fulfilled.
Etc etc. Instead of centralising social welfare payments through the government, we can place this obligation back towards those nearest to those who need help. Instead of paying taxes to the government for who knows what causes, they go directly to those nearest to us, and if supporting them is too onerous, search for the next nearest relatives.
These articles obligations can be extended to include companies, governments, institutions. Any entity that doesn't fulfil their obligations can be sued by anyone, rather than only when they violate the plaintiff's "rights".
What if you were abused by your parents and/or had some other issues with them, and you haven't had any contact with them for 30 years? Should you still pay them after they get over the age of 65?
In general, the whole idea is upsetting to me, over here in EU we pay massive taxes but they guarantee people in need are taken care off, "garnishing wages" of nearest relatives sounds just stupid.
In the the states, I feel there is still the idea of property as a basis for freedom. "Negative freedom" - don't force me to do things, don't touch my house, don't touch my money, don't restrict what I could theoretically do if I have the means - is more dominant. Hence, people don't seem to like the idea of having to pay for "other peoples freedom". It's more palatable to think of taking care of just your kids/relatives - there is a limited number of them, and you can probably do that without actually giving up a lot of property. Buy a big house, move your parents in there, you still have a big house afterwards.
Of course, this also leads to (or is equivalent) to a "fuck the poor" mindset
This doesn't exist in the US anymore, maybe for a long time. People think it does, but it does not.
>> "Negative freedom" - don't force me to do things, don't touch my house, don't touch my money, don't restrict what I could theoretically do if I have the means - is more dominant.
People like to think this too, but it doesn't work out that way for most people.
Simple examples: police confiscating money and small items during routine traffic stops with little or no recourse, overzealous use of eminent domain for questionable reasons, creation of various "fees" because local government can't get tax increases passed, etc.
There's likely more easily found but those are the first few I can think off the top of my head. Note that in some areas of the US this sort of thing happened and there was instant backlash against it in some jurisdictions. But in others the government moved along just nicely thank you very much.
People think of their homes as their "property" and maybe there is some basis in "freedom" in that. But most people don't "own" that property in the first place. Property can mean many different things and many different aspects of property are in a constant state of seizure by government for its own ends.
Your last sentence confirms me in this. "The government" is made up of people who got into power for idealistic or selfish reasons, yet you refer to it as its own entity and concept. This gels well with the "lay of mine" concept of freedom, less well with the "we as a whole enable us all" flavour.
Obviously, I am biased, and I might be interpreting things. If so, please corrent my misunderstandings if you have the time.
But I would say that the mindset hasn't changed per se, but I think it's starting to get there.
The right to a speedy trial - you get freed from jail ROR if not tried within 3 months.
Its rediculous that one can be jailed, thieved or killed for: possessing someone else's number, telling someone a secret number, or refusing to share the correct number with someone.
These problems only exist because society believes in, and enforces, ownership of ideas
- leaking someone's private medical records
- sending weapons designs to a foreign power
- selling photos of child abuse
Correct?
It's not illegal to have a case full of medical records, but stealing them or releasing them without permission is illegal, no?
Rights exist because they are insisted upon and asserted by the people, not because a government or a document declares that they exist.
If someone could organise a monthly 'exam hall'. Over time you could even build prestige on these courses same as large university if you can guarantee the examination process is robust.
Thinking about it... I think you'd need;
- A place where people have to physically turn up.
- Paid/volunteer monitors do a proof of person ID check and some photo or physical ID check as students notoriously do other student exams in some unis.
- Exam content has to be original to avoid rote leaning form doing past exams.
- Exam content to be provided at test commencement on individual screens, communal projector or print out in the room that only get released as the exam starts. This way People cant gain early access to anything.
- Web cams must be set up to show the exam room so effectively there is another level of monitors and the physically present monitors are monitored too. This again would reduce the risk of graft.
- Exam paper/results must be collected immediately from exam with something to ensure the person who did the work uploads their own, e.g. At the end of the exam people are called by name to walk to the front of the hall and scan their paper.
I'm sure there would be a bunch more to it than that but it seems to me once you could guarantee results are genuine there is a great opportunity to have recognised online courses that can have all the prestige of unis (less networking effect). Without believable results it will always be a challenge and learning will be for learning sake, not the recognition factor universities provide.