Hey Blogger! Do you have a free speech permit? Although human rights have had an improving trend throughout history, Governments around the world are swinging back towards totalitarianism, as evidenced by this recent Ars Technica post: New Iron Curtain may be Draped over Russian Internet. Throughout human history we have gone through ebbs and flows of revocations and declarations of human rights (these are just examples I can think of right now):
- US
- Alien & Sedition Acts
- Slavery and Jim Crow Laws
- Europe:
- Imperialism
- Fascism / Nazism
- Communism
- South America
- Where to begin?
Current Events show that the human race has not outgrown such childish behavior, in fact it seems to be an increasing trend:
- China’s complete control of the media and internet
- The lack of objective, responsible, or accountable media in the United States
- The orders from the “Leader of the Free World” to torture innocent people (guilty people too, if that’s an excuse)
- Radical Intolerance of multiple flavors: Muslim, Christian, or other
- Very recently: Republican insistence that American Citizens don’t have the right of free or fair elections.
My question is, why? I know that the answer is complicated. It ranges everywhere from the Nazi soldier who knew that if he didn’t pull the trigger his family would be arrested and possibly killed - to the politicians who are doing favors for the party in order to receive something from the party later. Can’t we all just decide right here and right now that there is practically no reason to deny someone human rights? If you and your family gets murdered because you did what was right, then the governments are the murderers, not you. If the soldiers sent to murder your family follow your noble example, we will all be better off. Besides, they can’t murder all of our families. If everybody grants humans human rights, then these ills cannot be done.
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance and the occasional sacrifice. For all the platitudes about “troops serving their country” we need more people to stand up for a higher calling: human rights. Afterall, human rights are what made this country worth fighting for: the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution coupled with the Bill of Rights.
You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one…
As Martin Luther King Jr. demonstrated, the only thing separating some dreams from reality is belief and action, or in some cases, inaction.
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