> I am off the human rights bandwagon.
Don't throw out the baby with the bathwater, Max. There are good human rights and bad human rights.
Good human rights are civil rights. They are always good. Any indigenous campaigner who wants to campaign for them should have our support. And if we can get some of them out of jail by publicizing their plight, great.
This was the entirety of what human rights meant before 1989: encouraging civil rights in other countries.
Bad human rights are human rights enforced from without. They are a contradiction in terms. Rights depends on strenghthening the institutions of rights, like independent judiciaries and rules of evidence and restraints on police power and legitimacy of rulers. Humanitarian intervention undercuts all the institutions of rights, starting with legitimate government.
So long as human rights are connected to outside enforcement they are pure excuses for invasion. So long as they are about building better local institutions, they are a good thing.
Hmm. I take it back. Now that I've gotten to the end of the argument, you are right, Max. So long as the Bush administration upholds its right to intervene anywhere, anytime, it has killed the legitimate human rights biz. If intervention is always possible, then there is no autonomous sphere left in which real improvement by criticism can flourish. Every criticism is a warrant for a possible invasion.
This wasn't true even two months ago, when there was still a residual customary restraint in the need for broad support among Opec countries. But it is true now.
They've really fucked up the world badly.
Michael