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Human Rights: Imperialism or Universalism?
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At the height of the crackdown against the Hungarian uprising in 1956, Albert Camus warned French leftists not to allow political "expediency any precedence over regard for truth." The western left that ignored or, worse, justified the suffocation of Budapest, Camus thundered, "was in complete decadence, a prisoner of words, caught in its own vocabulary, capable of merely stereotyped replies, constantly at a loss when faced with the truth, from which it nevertheless claimed to derive its laws." Today – with a century of catastrophic lapses in judgment in hindsight – too many western progressives are still trapped by the same "systematic relativism" that threatens the "death of intelligence."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/libertycentral/2011/jan/04/human-rights-imperialism/print
Filed under: Democracy Human Rights Imperialism Left Relativism
 

"The older I get, the more I respect Marx"
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The rule of law is a universal value, as are human rights. In Russia, I have met with "sovereign democracy" as some sort of opponent to human rights. In Asia, I have met with "Asian values." I do not think human dignity is minimised because of the colour of your skin. I think that human dignity is minimised because elites have an economic interest in screwing people. That is one of the reasons why I am not just a human rights lawyer; I believe that much of the political repression we see is economic in nature. The older I get, the more I respect Karl Marx.

http://www.diplomaatia.ee/?id=242&L=1&tx_ttnews[tt_news]=1227
Filed under: Democracy Human Rights Law Marx Relativism Robert Amsterdam Russia
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