Human Rights v Tyranny
I’ll return now to my opening quote from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It bears repeating. “It is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law.”
Essentially there are two ways to run this world of ours.
One is in accordance with international law. To me it’s obvious that if international law is to be enforced universally, the United Nations has got to be reformed. It needs to reflect the world as it is today and not as it was in 1945. One suggestion I have is that provision should be made for an overwhelming vote in the GENERAL ASSEMBLY, perhaps as high as 80 per cent, to override vetoes in THE SECURITY COUNCIL.
The other way to run the world is in accordance with jungle law. I really do fear that our leaders and the powerful vested interests which call most of their shots are taking us back to the jungle. But I also see a ray of hope. The one thing a majority of citizens in most countries seem to have in common is something approaching contempt for our political systems – I mean the way our politicians conduct the business of society management. In America, for example, the latest polls indicate that Congress enjoys the confidence of ONLY 10 PER CENT OF THE VOTERS!
What that suggests to me is not only that we need new politics – a better way to manage our world and its resources; but also that the peoples of nations would welcome new politics. And what I think should drive them was put into words by Martin Luther King on the 4th of April 1967, a year to the day before he was murdered.
By then he had emerged as America’s most prominent opponent of the Vietnam War as well as being a staunch critic of U.S. foreign policy in general. In what was labelled his “Beyond Vietnam” speech, he called America “the great purveyor of violence in the world today.” (If he was still alive I’m sure he would say, “And it still is.”)
Here is what he said about the need for change:
I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a “thing-oriented” society to a “person-oriented” society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.
My own way of putting the same message is to say, as I have previously indicated, that the precondition for changing the world for the better is each and every one of us seeing ourselves as, first and foremost, citizens of one common humanity. Then, I believe, we would understand and endorse the need for every man, woman and child on Planet Earth to have the seven most basic human rights, in order to live as human beings and not like animals or more like animals than humans.
Only then could the deniers of human rights – the giant triplets of racism, materialism and militarism – be defeated.
I want to end with two verbal footnotes about the ray of hope I mentioned.
On the recent 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech, New York Times columnist Charles Blow wrote the following:
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