• CON

    That event sparked a social experiment within a short...

    The Universal Declaration of Human Rights must be taken more seriously.

    In addition, I look forward in a learning experience, for the both of us, in a constructive debate. In Round 2, please bear with me on a brief history of human rights up to the UN's UDHR, where I will comment on your statements in Round 3. The evolution of Unalienable Rights, through recorded history, started as early as Democritus 460BC where he stated: “Freedom from disturbance is the condition that causes human happiness, and this is the ethical goal.” http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk... Throughout the ages from the scholars of Democritus to Thomas Jefferson there were many similarities in metaphysics during the evolution of our Unalienable Rights to the celebrated form of: “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness” (Jefferson). Jefferson's view emphasizes these Rights are not man-made, but “self-evident” where all humans are equally endowed with them. The recent evolution of these Rights (Takac 2012) took the form, via the physical Constructal Law, that all living-systems (from single cells to humans to social systems) have the following bio-primitives of “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of positive-feedback,” where these primitives are part of the physical Laws of Nature. Positive-feedback includes: survival, chemical/electrical, to Happiness for us humans, to social cultural norms, to corporate profit, to government desires, etc; where these bio-primitives have symmetry with Jefferson’s Unalienable Rights. That is the evolution of life's Unalienable Rights, from metaphysics to the physical Laws of Nature. http://www.bookdaily.com... http://www.amazon.com... Takac demonstrates life's Unalienable Rights is a bio-program having the natural tendency during the struggle of survival to support, prolong, and improve Life. At the same time, there is an inherent drive to increase Liberty, with an ongoing effort to reduce and optimize the energy expended during the pursuit of an objective, while increasing and exploring new levels of Happiness, fulfillment, pleasure, and anything to do with positive feedback (aka evolution). As for the Unalienable Rights of institutions for social control (governments, royalty, theocracies, etc) there was a moment in history of a society starting with a “clean slate.” That society was the 13 Colonies of the New World maturing in the 1700s to form a Constitutional republic known as the United States of America. Jefferson, one of the founding Fathers of the US, influenced the design of the US Constitution to include Unalienable Rights. This Constitution was the first in history to limit a government having the objective to embrace and protect the individual's Unalienable Rights from the crimes of others and from the crimes of government, no more, no less. That event sparked a social experiment within a short period of 200-years, changed the world like no other society in recorded history, through the fruits of technology, food production, and medicine, the stables of human existence throughout the world today. This social experiment offers a compelling example of what happens when our Unalienable Rights are free to operate within the awesome machinery of nature. However, since both the government and the individual share the same Unalienable Rights, there will be conflict and competition of Liberties between the two opposing entities, and there is no reason why such conflict will ever end. For example, about a hundred years ago, during US President Woodrow Wilson's dynasty, the League of Nations was formed (later became the UN), the concept of a progressive “living constitution” came into existence, among many other new philosophies that started a slow and subtle, may I use the term, “fundamental change.” http://books.google.com.... Jefferson viewed the foundation to the rule of law to be stable as in a Newtonian context making the structure of a constitution difficult to change via the Amendment process, where Wilson was an advocate of Social Darwinism, little resistance to change, stating the following in his book: “Living political constitutions must be Darwinian in structure and in practice.” In his book, Wilson also took issue with the individual's Unalienable Rights: “No doubt a great deal of nonsense has been talked about the inalienable rights of the individual, and a great deal that was mere vague sentiment and pleasing speculation has been put forward as fundamental principle.” Clearly, Wilson rejected Jefferson's Unalienable Rights, the foundation of the US Constitution. Wilson went on to say: “Government is a part of life, and, with life, it must change, alike in its objects and in its practices; only this principle must remain unaltered, - this principle of liberty, that there must be the freest right and opportunity of adjustment. Political liberty consists in the best practicable adjustment between the power of the government and the privilege of the individual; and the freedom to alter the adjustment is as important as the adjustment itself for the case and progress of affairs and the contentment of the citizen.” Unbeknownst to Wilson, he was supporting the very thing that he was dismissing as “nonsense.” He promoted the Unalienable Rights of the institution of government, while dismissing the Unalienable Rights of the individual. To paraphrase Wilson, the government “a part of life,” must have “political liberty,” in the pursuit to make “adjustments” to the “privilege of the individual.” The accomplished objective by defining the individual’s privileges, results in institutional Happiness, having more control. In addition, the individual now has privileges, defined by government, in place of Unalienable Rights. Over the following decades came Eleanor Roosevelt, of the same political Party as Wilson, became involved with the UN in establishing UDHR. None of the UDHR 30 Articles contains any mention of Unalienable Rights. However, in the Preamble of UDHR did mentioned the term “inalienable rights,” but there were no reference to a definition. The terms “unalienable” and “inalienable” are often used synonymously. However, legally there is a subtle difference: http://en.wiktionary.org... There is a “fine distinction, with unalienable being stronger and absolute, while (in this usage) inalienable is weaker and conditional.” However, searching the UN’s website for a definition of “inalienable rights” we have the following: “Inalienable rights are generally distinguished from legal rights established by a State because they are moral or natural rights, inherent in the very essence of an individual. The notion of inalienable rights appeared in Islamic law and jurisprudence which denied a ruler “the right to take away from his subjects certain rights which inhere in his or her person as a human being” and “become Rights by reason of the fact that they are given to a subject by a law and from a source which no ruler can question or alter.” http://www.un.org... In addition, there are striking similarities between the UDHR’s 30 Articles relative to Articles 118 through 128 of the 1936 USSR's Constitution. http://www.departments.bucknell.edu... The history of the former USSR was deep in tyranny and the institution of government murdered millions of its own citizens. https://www.hawaii.edu... You do not learn this history in most schools, where most educational systems are controlled by government. It causes one to wonder, in the fading of Jefferson's discovery of Unalienable Rights, to promoting UDHR 30 Articles in the shadow of Islamic law and the USSR's Constitution. Putting such shadow aside, the UDHR 30 Articles do sound inviting, however, the implementation of them will not be possible without the understanding and embracing the individual's Unalienable Rights, which are part of the physical Laws of Nature. And in conclusion of this thesis, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights must NOT be taken more seriously compared to the individual's Unalienable Rights; otherwise, UDHR will be unachievable resulting in misery and bloodshed as demonstrated by the empirical history of the USSR.