re: #176 Occasional Reader

Look… I completely recognize that the term is abused this way quite often these days, but it does not inherently mean that.

Stating that other people have a right not to be tortured to death, for instance, does not somehow take away your right not to be tortured to death.

Yes, but that is only a minor aspect of the way the term “human rights” is used these days. You’re talking about theoretical human rights as a concept. But in the real world, it means taking away land from an Israeli to give to a Palestinian; it means throwing a Canadian in jail so as to appease a Muslim organization; it means denying property rights to a citizen in the name of some overarching concern for some different ethnicity; it means subsuming United States law to international law.

In all cases, someone’s rights are trampled on in order to grant “rights” to someone else.