What are human rights and where do they come from?

There is much talk in Britain of things such as freedom of speech and the European Convention on Human Rights. Few people though ask themselves where these supposed rights actually originate.

A day does not pass in Britain, without somebody raising the matter of human rights. For left-wing people, this is often in connection with the rights guaranteed by the European Convention on Human Rights, while those at the opposite end of the political spectrum are generally more concerned about their right to say what they please, even if others find their views offensive. This is the supposed right to free speech. Neither group though seems much interested in where these so-called rights have their origins. More often than not, they are simply taken as being fundamental to our society. The idea appears to be that everybody has some kind of right to a home, to heating and food, to be able to live freely, say what they please and so on. We are told that all humans have rights, such as the right not to be tortured and so on.

     There are though only two possible sources for these rights. One is that are an integral part of the universe, something natural like gravity or electro-magnetism. From that perspective, human rights are eternal and unchanging and were created along with matter and energy during the origin of the universe at the time of the big bang. In other words, human rights must have existed before there were even any humans! The only other possibility is that they have been created by humans and that the only rights we enjoy are those which are granted to us by laws. If this is so, then of course human rights vary from time to time and are different in other countries. Human rights in this case would be very different in China and Iran from those which we enjoy in this country and to talk about any denial of human rights in other countries would be ridiculous. If a country passes a law which denies people the right to free speech, then there is an end to the matter. This would mean that there are no universal human rights, and that our rights depend only on where and when we happen to have been born.

     I invite readers to pause at this point and ask themselves. in the first instance, to which school of thought they belong as regards human rights. Of course, anybody who is an atheist can hardly believe that such rights are built into the fabric of space-time and are as natural as say atoms, photons or black holes. There is no evidence at all that ethical values arose at the dawn of time and exist in some mysterious fashion quite independent of human culture. In that case, they can only think that ‘rights’ are a free creation of men and women, just like all other laws. Some countries make bad laws of course, and greatly restrict the rights of citizens. Since we have no universal yardstick with which to measure and compare such legal systems, one against the other, it must surely be that the human rights accorded to people in Nazi Germany were no better or worse than those which we hold so dear in modern Britain. There are no universal values, no universal rights, no fundamental way of asserting that we have a right to free speech or that asylum-seekers have a right to be looked after and cared for. Our current laws will not last for ever and no doubt some of them are bad laws and ought to be scrapped.

     All I am hoping to do is cause readers to think about the nature of ‘rights’ and to ask themselves if they really believe that such things do exist independently of our laws. If Britain passed a law abolishing human rights for immigrants or asylum-seekers, I dare say that many people would be shocked and dismayed and appeal to some vague right to life, right to freedom and so on. There are no such rights, at least not in any objective sense. The only rights you will ever have, can ever have, in this country, or any other, are the ones granted to you by the legislature of that country.