How did we arrive at this dismal state of affairs? The problem is not simply that human rights have become grossly politicized. The problem is that rights have been profoundly secularized--and severed from their deepest moral foundation, the concept of man as the imago Dei, the image of God.
Under the banner of "multiculturalism," the United Nations has produced a torrent of treaties and conventions, with ever-expanding categories of rights. In the process, the Western idea of rights as transcendent claims against a coercive state has been greatly weakened. Human rights are on the same footing as social benefits and economic aspirations. Thus, we have the spectacle of the U.N. Commission on Sustainable Development inviting North Korea--a regime that sustains itself by starving its people--to become a member in good standing. We have nations such as Iran claiming an "inalienable right" to nuclear technology, language that in fact appears in Article IV of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Where is Thomas Jefferson when you need him? When human rights are no longer considered the gift of nature and nature's God, human dignity is made more vulnerable to assault. When repressive regimes are rewarded with membership and voting privileges in U.N. bodies, the entire human rights project is debased. The political result is that fundamental rights--the right to life, freedom of speech, freedom of religion--become negotiable. In the end, they become disposable.
A few years ago I attended the Geneva session of the Human Rights Council, just as the extent of the ethnic cleansing in
Darfur was first being widely reported. Civilians were being killed by the thousands; entire villages were being burned to the ground. Yet U.N. diplomats said almost nothing about the unfolding human-rights disaster. (China, a member of the Council with oil interests in Sudan, blocked any critical resolutions.) Instead, I heard officials from dictatorial states, cheered on by left-wing activists, denounce the United States for its international "campaign" against human rights. The piece de resistance was a speech by an ex-convict from Alaska, who complained that his "human rights" had been grossly violated: U.S. prison officials had cut his hair too short.
For years I've gotten my hair cut by Mario, a veteran Italian barber in Washington, D.C. If, contrary to all experience, Mario were to give me a lousy haircut, I might say, "Mario, che cosa hai fatto qui?" (What did you do here?). We'd probably shrug it off and that would be the end of it. But thanks to the U.N.'s culture of hypocrisy, bad haircuts can get you a microphone and an international audience.
Sixty years ago, when the death camps still cast a shadow over Europe, world leaders were more sober about the great threats to human freedom. They proclaimed that "contempt for human rights" had produced acts of barbarism that "have outraged the conscience of mankind." The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and, indeed, the United Nations itself, were a response to those acts. The bitter irony is that another form of contempt for human dignity has appeared--and found safe harbor in the multicultural halls of New York and Geneva.
Joseph Loconte is a senior fellow at Pepperdine University's School of Public Policy. His latest book is The End of Illusions: Religious Leaders Confront Hitler's Gathering Storm.
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