Human rights
will advance
after Bush and Blair
By
Jonathan
Power
TFF
Associate since 1991
Comments directly to
JonatPower@aol.com
May 10, 2007
This column is
based on my new book, published last week by Brill, “Conundrums
of Humanity”.
LONDON - The era of George W. Bush and Tony Blair
will be remembered for one thing twenty years hence - the world went backwards
on human rights after fifty years of steady advance. Yet I predict within
less than a handful of years forward momentum will be restored. The foundations
for pushing forward the frontiers of human rights are well laid, and we
will come to regard this present political era as more of a setback than
a rout.
Many scholars have argued that a doctrine of natural rights was already
implicit in Judeo-Christian teaching. But Moses’ law was commandment.
So were Jesus’ and Mohammed’s and although St Paul wrote of
a law written in the hearts of men he certainly did not go so far to say
“all men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.”
Natural rights theories are essentially a relatively recent Western invention,
dating from around the 12th century, at the height of the medieval period.
Twelfth century European civilization was marked, like no other culture,
with a new emphasis on humanism and personalism. Not least courtly love
literature explored the pain and joys of human lovers. In marriage law
the simple consent of the man and the woman, without the need to go to
church, was regarded as sufficient for a valid sacramental marriage. What
a human right that was!
When the French Franciscan philosopher, William of Ockham, arrived on
the scene in the 14th century, he took this a step further. Natural rights
and natural law, he wrote, were derived from human rationality and free
will and were independent of Christian revelation. Pope Benedict is today
an enthusiast of this idea of natural law.
The Enlightenment was the next great watershed- led by Rousseau (“Man
is born free; and everywhere he is in chains”) and Voltaire (“I
know of many books that fatigue but not one that has done real evil”).
In France these ideas fuelled the agitation against the Ancien Regime.
In the American colonies they inspired the rebels who defied the British
establishment. It was the American Declaration of Independence in 1776
that first synthesised the best ideas of the Enlightenment- and did that
in the most beautiful prose.
But a mere two years later the Enlightenment started to run out of breath.
The terror in France had much to do with this. “When I hear of natural
rights”, said Jeremy Bentham, the English philosopher, “ I
always see in the background a cluster of daggers and picks.” Karl
Marx was vociferous critic of The Rights of Man - they “are nothing
but the rights of egotistic man”
Human rights went out of fashion and even the carnage of the First World
War didn’t bring them back. Neither did Stalin’s show trials
and mass executions nor the persecution of the Jews in Germany re-ignite
the cause. The dam of apathy was not breached until H.G. Wells, the great
science fiction writer, shortly after the onset of the Second World War,
together with a few socialist friends including A.A. Milne, the author
of Winnie the Pooh, published a declaration of principles on human rights.
This was the first time since the 18th century that there was an attempt
to restate human rights in a homely way. Penguin Books quickly followed
up the declaration by publishing “H.G. Wells on the Rights of Man”.
It was translated into 30 languages. President Franklin Roosevelt was
one of its readers. On January 1st, 1942, just after the U.S. entered
the war, the Allies pronounced that “complete victory over the enemies
is essential…. to preserve human rights and justice.”
From Eleanor Roosevelt’s chairing of the the UN committee that wrote
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, through the Nuremberg war crimes
tribunal, through the founding of Amnesty International, the decision
by President Jimmy Carter to make human rights a cornerstone of U.S. foreign
policy, and on to the world wide majority vote in 1998 for the establishment
of an International Criminal Court, the world has increasingly nailed
its colours to the mast of human rights.
It will take more than the eight years of George Bush and the ten years
of Tony Blair to reverse this advancing tide, now 900 years strong, although
the setbacks have been severe. As we prepare for a changing of the guard
in Britain and in the U.S., we must take a deep breath and push their
successors to build civilization to a new level of order- ensuring by
the observance of law that tyranny is kept in check, that liberty and
justice prevail and that the strong do not trample on the weak and vulnerable.
Copyright © 2007 Jonathan
Power
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Jonathan Power can be
reached by phone +44 7785 351172
and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com
Jonathan
Power
2007 Book
Conundrums
of Humanity
The Quest for Global Justice
“Conundrums
of Humanity” poses eleven questions for our future progress, ranging
from “Can we diminish War?” to “How far and fast can
we push forward the frontiers of Human Rights?” to “Will
China dominate the century?”
The answers to these questions, the author believes, growing out of
his long experience as a foreign correspondent and columnist for the
International Herald Tribune, are largely positive ones, despite the
hurdles yet to be overcome. Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, London, 2007.
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