Wednesday, June 12, 2013

The problem with "human rights"...

...and "humanitarians" is simple.  They simply assume that the same processes that drive human nature in Tyrants and Dictators do not apply to those who would be the leaders of whatever "international consensus" which would enforce "international law".

Just about every Tyrant in history started out as some sort of Revolutionary bent on returning rights back to the people...and even if this was not the case, how can you predict human behavior ex ante?  Given the enormous power that would hypothetically be ceded to some congress of "international law", how would this power be effectively checked?  Can you imagine the potential abuses if a person or group of people had "legal" jurisdiction over the entire Planet?

Plato was just as naive.  Holding that a class of people is immune to the sway of Power is silly and not borne out by the most casual observation of reality.  Empower the perfectly logical and pragmatic Philosopher King at your peril.

Or, as the Metal Musician/Poet Dave Mustaine wrote:

"You take a mortal man
and put him in control
watch him become a God
watch people's heads a roll"

And so I read the below statement by a respected human rights advocate and shudder to think what the world would be like if they were somehow given what they wanted.

"I have seen what national sovereignty can do in terms of damaging the resident population”, Laura Boldrini continued  “I refer to dictatorships, ethnic cleansing, mass extermination and civil wars. Like many, I have been indignant at the indifference of the world. I believe that when faced with the mortification of human dignity there is a right and duty to interfere in internal affairs. However, on two conditions. Firstly that one acts by scrupulously applying international law and not in a unilateral way or with improvised coalitions. Secondly, interference does not necessarily mean armed intervention. Here it is necessary to make  distinctions: the military do their job, humanitarian workers do another. The two may come into contact, but the agendas are separate".

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