Universal Declaration of Human Rights

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http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html

I was just wondering whether anyone had anything to quibble about.

Only that it's considered significant.

It contains some nice ideas, but (story of the UN) has no teeth and is thus meaningless. It would serve as an excellent manifesto for a social democracy.

Oddly enough, for my writing 121 class, I wrote about the contradictions and nonsense in that declaration.
One of the points I made was: There is freedom of democracy and freedom of religion, but what if a country democratically decides to have a theocracy (very plausible in many countries)? Either the right to democracy or freedom of religion would have to be compromised in that case.
Then I also remember saying how the economic rights in there can't be guaranteed by any body of government, so it doesn't make sense to have that as a "right".

I think the implication was that social welfare programs should be established to provide those needs, but I agree, those parts of the Declaration are pretty dumb.

It lacks the right not to kill.
It is not good that a nation that values the basic human rights of a person can make it a legal requirement to kill (or at least attempt to kill) via enforced conscription in times of war.
Everyone should have the right to refuse to kill, or aid those who do kill, without penalty.

So in wartime you want conscientious objectors to be exempt from taxation?

it certainly would put an end to unpopular wars like iraq pretty quickly.


edit: you try funding the war in iraq with only the people who actually support it and see how much money they get.

Not so long as the total money from taxing conscientious objectors is less than the total budget spent on peaceful things.

It's easy enough to allocate tax from conscientious objectors into peaceful projects, even if it is pooled first.

Besides, it is possible to live without tax. Not easy, but possible.

It is difficult to give a negation of soemthing as a human right, but in the case of the right to not support killing it is still practically possible. Such a right was drafted for the EU, but never appeared on the final bill.

Article 25. Who is going to pay?

There is an implied redistribution of incomes and wealth there.

ruveyn