Romanian blogger on Facebook: The inflation of pseudo-rights weakens the credit granted to the concept of human rights

The power and prestige of the idea of human rights resides exactly in the act of qualifying within the boundaries of this concept only the fundamental rights, whose sacrosanct character can be identified within a transcendental basis accepted universally.

The more – as it appears to happen in our times – the desiderations and yearnings which claim to be accommodated under this nomenclature of “Human rights” multiply, the more we see that “Human rights” cheapen and start to be seen as forms increasingly emptied of content. The more they are invoked to justify rigmaroles and twaddles (“the right to determine gender identity”) or general declarations of intentions (“the right to a clean environment”), the more we observe that “Human rights” end up being looked upon as empty words, even though any political transaction of our intentions cannot be made without them.

They are like banknotes and inflation: the more we print without any gold backing or credibility, the more their real value drops, no matter what the nominal bank declares on them.

Therefore the power and prestige of human rights is weakened through expansion of their scope and multiplication of their purposes.

Also, the act of introducing new rights in the category of fundamental human rights fosters and amplifies “tensions” and contradictions between these rights. The relationship between these rights, old and new, too often creates conflicts of scope between the original and the newly-recognized freedoms.

For instance, the claim to include among fundamental rights homosexual marriage or the right to self-determination of one’s gender (maybe even for minors, as an expression of the superior interest of the child) tends to infringe upon other freedoms, which have been more consecrated and venerable: freedom of expression, freedom of conscience, religious freedom, freedom to raise and educate one’s children according to one’s beliefs – freedoms which now need be restrained and censored in the name of the newly-adopted freedoms.

Such conflicts between the rights designated as fundamental turn the inherent categorical imperative into a relative one; freedoms, no matter how fundamental they may be considered, become relative beyond their acceptable boundaries.

Traditionally, fundamental rights have been rather negative (stating an interdiction for infringements upon the values they protected) and have coexisted within a rather coherent system.

But, based only on illusions, the new candidates to the title of fundamental human rights seem to play the role of intruders who generate division and weaken what they are actually supposed to reinforce – the individual’s fundamental rights and freedoms.

Source: Romanian blogger on Facebook