Comments on: Teaching ‘rights’ to three-year-olds

By: ErnieB

ErnieB — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 21:42:56 +0000

Markem’s point is well taken. Governments may provide “entitlements” that give something to somebody but that always implies that the something has to come from somebody else. Governments can properly gurantee only “rights” that provide for non-interference, rights that promise to not infringe on an individual’s action except when it infringes on another’s.

By: Richard Aubrey

Richard Aubrey — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 17:05:46 +0000

Once kids learn that “rights” in some vague definition have preeminence over everything else, as if it were a religious issue, anything thereafter called a “right” is automatically presumed to preempt any other consideration.
It only remains to see the correct sort of people continue to be in charge of defining rights.

In Canada, the folks who wanted to keep the nutcases out of civilized conversation lost control. Now it’s vengeful, petty bureaucrats who are run by complaints from extreme Islamists. Who, as it happens,aren’t prosecuted for their anti-semitic rantings. Some are more equal than others.

Create the mechanism and duck. You aren’t going to be in charge forever.

By: markm

markm — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 23:11:57 +0000

“everyone has a right to food, water and shelter.” No they don’t. Such things do not appear magically out of thin air. Such “rights” cannot be universal, because somewhere there must be others whose real rights to their own property and the product of their own labor are violated to provide for the designated victims

But consider the source. The UN is an organization dominated by thugs who seek ever more power to oppress their own people. I have often seen member states using military force to seize food some portion of it’s people need to survive, even off of UN relief shipments; I have never seen an effective response from the UN. So much for its support of that right. As for real rights, say the right of Israeli children not to be murdered, or of African children not to be raped, the UN is far more likely to be a cause than to be even attempting to correct the problem.

So why do such thuggocracies pretend to embrace such positive “rights” as food, water and shelter: they are actually seeking the power to enslave others to labor to provide them, and to skim the take.

Finally, Margo/Mom, the really frightening thing is that you have no idea that you’ve been teaching socialist ideas formulated to help enslave the world.

By: BadaBing

BadaBing — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 20:04:54 +0000

Oops. Wrong code. Go here:

http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=7620

By: BadaBing

BadaBing — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 20:04:10 +0000

I find modern man’s obsession with “rights” amusing. Such “rights” are artificial and must be enforced by governments strong enough to do so. People are not born into a state of automatically having “rights,” and if they were, those that would violate those “rights” would laugh in their faces as they violate them. “Wait a second, buddy. I have rights!” “Says who? Your mom?” Most of human history was written without a thought to so-called “human rights.” Just get in your time machine and go back and ask such luminaries as Genghis Khan, Atilla the Hun, Alexander the Great, the Vikings, or any tribe fighting for its life on the steppes of modern-day Russia, the jungles of New Guinea, the river basins of China, blah blah burp. As an enforcer of this modern-day concept of “human rights,” which springs from Judaism and Christianity by the way, I find the UN to be quite a joke, as well as their usurping the moral high ground on the issue. For a rundown on the UN’s morally bankrupt Commission on Human Rights, go here.

By: Quincy

Quincy — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 18:58:13 +0000

I’d have no problem with this if it weren’t for the fact that the UN’s conception of rights splits between real human rights, life, liberty, and property, and those “rights” which are just an implicit claim on the labor of others, like this:

“If children have a right to be educated, then they have the
obligation to learn as much as their capabilities allow and, where
possible, share their knowledge and experience with others.”

People have a right to seek an education without interference and establish relationships with those who would provide it voluntarily, which is a natural exercise of their liberty. To say one has a right to an education changes the game to require someone to gather resources, usually involuntarily (taxes), and build a school system that would provide this for this “right”.

While it might look to some like splitting hairs, the latter would allow me to take a teacher, tie him to a chair, and educate my child. After all, the child has a *right* to an education.

And I will admit that the statement above is ambiguous, but that’s part of the problem. When it comes to rights, the very first things kids should learn is that no one has a claim on their labor, nor do they have a claim on the labor of others. Somehow I don’t see UNICEF teaching this.

By: Margo/Mom

Margo/Mom — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 15:48:44 +0000

Walter:

I am not sure where your animosity is coming from–or why you think that I would endorse (or that UNICEF would endorse) the right of a rapist to my, your or anyone else’s body.

I am responding to several writers here, and your comment about “catching them before they can think,” tends to cast you amongst them, who seem to think that there is something terribly malevolent, manipulative, distasteful and counter to the concept of a thinking citizenry being foisted by UNICEF.

Let me be clear. I have long endorsed the United Nations statements of universal human rights, and the rights of the child. I have at times taught children about them–particularly from a standpoint of helping them to understand not only their innate (or so some would believe–including those radicals who founded this country) human rights, but their responsibility to foster a world in which those rights are nurtured for others. If someone sees in this an implication that rapists have a right to the bodies of others, I am certainly missing it. For a country such as the US (or in the article, the UK) have long established their laws and judicial systems on a belief in those rights to raise a fuss and regard as brainwashing an attempt to ensure that students of all ages have an understanding of those beliefs (and to further reduce them to some fear that students will be forced to mouth a universal endorsement of spicy foods–or that acknowledging rights somehow denigrates respect for teachers) strikes me as silliness of the highest order. I suppose the flip side is to mourn deeply how little understood is the basis of our democracy and the need to teach all of our children about both rights and responsibilities.

By: ricki

ricki — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 12:13:17 +0000

I would observe that one of the problems we sometimes have in North American culture at least, is that everyone “knows” their rights, but very few want to consider their responsibilities.

By: Walter E. Wallis

Walter E. Wallis — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 12:08:36 +0000

Margo/mom, where do you think those rights come from? The concept of rights would not be necessary in a world where no one threatened the rights of others. Let us hope for your sake you never have to learn the rights of a Muslim woman, or of women in most primitive cultures. The rapist does not, in this culture, have a right to your body..

By: Dave J

Dave J — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 01:12:55 +0000

“If all children have a right to a full life…”

WTF does the “right to a full life” actually mean?