Might Makes Rights

December 1948- December 2008: Sixty years ago the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was approved. "But" ,according to Amnesty International, "the Southern Democrats made it very clear that a statement of universal human rights threatened the maintenence of white supremacy." "Maintenence of white supremacy" is a euphemism for lynching. Same Southern Democrats, by the way, who watched blacks drowning in New Orleans and called in Blackwater to protect their private property.

Of course everyone knew that the declaration was only meant to be, as former Secretary of State John Foster Dulles so aptly put it, a "sermon on the mount" and not some legal document.
"As the United Nations turned to develop the declaration into a covenant- a lasting ,binding ,treaty- the US balked." It didn't want to give up State domestic jurisdiction (the "this applies to everyone but us,we'll handle our own affairs" principle) and it wouldn't support "communistic" aspirations like economic and social rights. You know, commie shit like housing ,education and healthcare. So it broke the covenant in two and at first supported political and civil rights but eventually abandoned both. ( sticking with sovereignty and lynching).

Eventually we "signed but never ratified the covenant on Economic ,Social and Cultural Rights and when we finally ratified the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, we did so with so many exceptions as to render it virtually meaningless."

So when you hear the talk of a "shining city on the hill" or "beacon of hope" or other such nonsense, you might consider that the entire discourse of "human rights" is a liberal shibboleth, a fetish which takes the place of talking about actual justice and not worth the rope around a black mans neck or the hood over a "suspected insurgents" head. Like the Bill of Rights, the Universal Declaration is a lovely sermon. You do have the right to remain silent and most people exercise that one quite well.