A progressive argument for repealing the Human Rights Act. Contrary to contemporary panic around human rights repeal, Human Rights - Illusory Freedom puts a progressive case against the Human Rights Act. It describes how human rights arose as a new language for western governments following the collapse in their collective authority in the aftermath of World War 2 and shows how the UK Human Rights Act has presided over a catastrophic loss of freedom, which continued a process which began with the Tory party in the 1970s. Human Rights - Illusory Freedom makes a positive case for restoring control over our traditional freedoms to the electorate and away from unaccountable Judges in the UK Courts and the European Court of Human Rights.
The Illusory Freedom: The Intellectual Origins and Social Consequences of the Sexual "Revolution" describes the profound changes in sexual attitudes and sexual behavior in Britain and other Western countries. The book examines the reliability of the basis for the sexual revolution and whether its benefits outweigh the damages it has brought on society. The author reviews the influence of Dr. Alfred Kinsey's reports on over 12,000 humans subjects where Kinsey claims there is no "normality" or "abnormality" as regards sexual behavior. The author notes that some sexual studies involved some bias, the need to protect the family as an institution if society is to survive, and faithfulness has its long term rewards. His other findings show that no evidence points to sexual experimentation or promiscuity as causing long-term happier relationships, that media tends to present sexual anarchy as the norm, and that guidelines for adolescent and ideals for adults should be established. He notes, quite interestingly, that as the forces of sexual freedom are released by new regimes of generations, it become more apparent that sexual freedom is an illusory freedom. This book can prove interesting reading for feminists, psychiatrists, psychologists, parents, professionals and administrators of educational institutions, as well as heads of public commutations and media.
From a noted historian and foreign-policy analyst, a groundbreaking critique of the troubling symbiosis between Washington and the human rights movement The United States has long been hailed as a powerful force for global human rights. Now, drawing on thousands of documents from the CIA, the National Security Council, the Pentagon, and development agencies, James Peck shows in blunt detail how Washington has shaped human rights into a potent ideological weapon for purposes having little to do with rights—and everything to do with furthering America's global reach. Using the words of Washington's leaders when they are speaking among themselves, Peck tracks the rise of human rights from its dismissal in the cold war years as "fuzzy minded" to its calculated adoption, after the Vietnam War, as a rationale for American foreign engagement. He considers such milestones as the fight for Soviet dissidents, Tiananmen Square, and today's war on terror, exposing in the process how the human rights movement has too often failed to challenge Washington's strategies. A gripping and elegant work of analysis, Ideal Illusions argues that the movement must break free from Washington if it is to develop a truly uncompromising critique of power in all its forms.
The distinguished political philosopher Raymond Geuss examines critically the central topics in Western political thought. In a series of analytic chapters he discusses the state, authority, violence and coercion, the concept of legitmacy, liberalism, toleration, freedom, democracy, and human rights. He argues that the liberal democratic state committed to the defense of human rights is in fact a confused conjunction of disparate elements. This is a profound and concise essay on the basic structure of contemporary politics, written throughout in voice that is skeptical, engaged, and clear.
The idea of human rights began as a call for individual freedom from tyranny, yet today it is exploited to rationalize oppression and promote collectivism. How did this happen? Aaron Rhodes, recognized as “one of the leading human rights activists in the world” by the University of Chicago, reveals how an emancipatory ideal became so debased. Rhodes identifies the fundamental flaw in the Universal Declaration of Human of Rights, the basis for many international treaties and institutions. It mixes freedom rights rooted in natural law—authentic human rights—with “economic and social rights,” or claims to material support from governments, which are intrinsically political. As a result, the idea of human rights has lost its essential meaning and moral power. The principles of natural rights, first articulated in antiquity, were compromised in a process of accommodation with the Soviet Union after World War II, and under the influence of progressivism in Western democracies. Geopolitical and ideological forces ripped the concept of human rights from its foundations, opening it up to abuse. Dissidents behind the Iron Curtain saw clearly the difference between freedom rights and state-granted entitlements, but the collapse of the USSR allowed demands for an expanding array of economic and social rights to gain legitimacy without the totalitarian stigma. The international community and civil society groups now see human rights as being defined by legislation, not by transcendent principles. Freedoms are traded off for the promise of economic benefits, and the notion of collective rights is used to justify restrictions on basic liberties. We all have a stake in human rights, and few serious observers would deny that the concept has lost clarity. But no one before has provided such a comprehensive analysis of the problem as Rhodes does here, joining philosophy and history with insights from his own extensive work in the field.
The second volume in an ongoing series of English translations of de Benoist's works is an examination of the origins of the concept of human rights in European Antiquity, in which rights were defined in terms of the individual's relationship to his community and were understood as being exclusive to that community alone.
This is a book about freedom. Above all about the idea that there is often no greater obstacle to freedom than the assumption that it has already been attained. What prison, after all, could be more secure than that deemed to be "the world," where boundaries of action and thought are assumed to define not the limits of the permissible, but the limits of the possible. In the past we have been prisoners of tyrants and dictators, and consequently have needed to win our freedom in very concrete, physical terms. We now need to free ourselves not from a slave ship or a concentration camp, but from many of the illusions fostered in our democratic society. "[A] wise and acute analysis of the way our minds are controlled, not in a totalitarian state, but in a 'democratic' one. Edwards also suggests how we can escape this control in a self-help book which, unlike other books of this genre, connects our inner world of alienation with the world outside."--Howard Zinn "[A] treatise on what freedom truly means.... Burning All Illusions is an important philosophical and psychology text that should be on every political science curriculum reading list!"--Wisconsin Book Watch
This book explores the relationship between truth and freedom in the free press. It argues that the relationship is problematic because the free press implies a competition between plural ideas, whereas truth is univocal. Based on this tension the book claims that the idea of a free press is premised on an epistemological illusion. This illusion enables society to maintain that the world it perceives through the press corresponds to the world as it actually exists, explaining why defenders of the free press continue to rely on its capacity to discover the truth, despite economic conditions and technological innovations undermining much of its independence. The book invites the reader to reconsider the philosophical foundations, constitutional justifications, and structure and functions of the free press, and whether the institution can, in fact, realise both freedom and truth. It will be of great interest to anyone concerned in the role and value of the free press in the modern world.
