The Right Wing Thing

Defending human rights is not only the right thing to do, it is the right-wing thing.

I sense that some people have allowed a purely semantic issue to govern their response to substance.

The language of “human rights” has been adapted and interpreted to mean almost anything anyone wants it to mean.

The old Soviet Union claimed the need to regulate personal behaviour was essential to protecting human rights. Preventing East Berliners from moving to West Berlin (or anywhere else) was a necessary human rights measure.

Today the “left” applies the term to a wide range of issues that are certainly subject to fair

dispute.

For example where do human rights end in refugee claims and abuse of the system begins? Unconditional access to any nation cannot be a human right by what I consider any meaningful measure. But there are cases where denying access entails breaching genuine human rights.

Such as the security of the person. The recent case of Nay Myo Hein is such an example.

It is not surprising that different groups will use the language of human rights to try to achieve their rather collective ends. But human rights are always about the human and never about the tribe. Collective rights, social rights, other kinds of entitlements are not human rights, however compelling they may be.

Human rights are inherently part of the cement that builds Western “right wing” political culture, for the simple reason that human rights are about liberating the individual from unfettered power, most particularly being a bulwark against governmental power. Human rights draw a bright line in charters of government that says the collective may impinge on me thus far and not a step farther.

For genuine conservatives human rights are the fundamental underpinning of limited government. Only for the demagogues and would-be benevolent dictators are human rights anathema. Because those “conservatives” are simply not honestly concerned about limiting government. Instead they want to limit individuals in assorted ways. Some want to limit what you read; some what you see; some who you sleep with; whatever it is, they want not human rights but human subservience to some idea in which they hold the greater regard.

Those kinds of “conservatives” are literally fighting for collective rights, just as those on the left who believe in uncritically granting every refugee claim are promoting collective rights.

“Refugees” do not have a human right to be granted access to any country. Nay Myo Hein has the human right not to be returned to a captivity to which he was not justly sentenced, not to be subject to the threat or practice of torture, not to be subject to threats against his life. These are all aspects of his right to be secure in his person.

Similarly, the “rights” of indigenous peoples are not human rights. Canada’s indigenous people have a unique class of Constitutional Rights, referred to in the Constitution of Canada as “Aboriginal Rights.” Those constitutional rights are very real and very meaningful, with real world practical effects. But they are not human rights.

Indeed what may be seen as an Aboriginal Right may have the result of suppressing a core human right.

Most aboriginal political leadership consider it an aboriginal right to deny their people the right to ownership of the land on which they live or even the house that sits upon that land. This denial of the right to own personal property is made without regard to how many generations may have occupied that exact thousand square feet of soil. The fact that no one owned specific land in the nomadic stone age culture of their forebears is basis enough to assert a collective right.

However one feels about that or similar debates, it cannot be asserted that any position is self-evident. The subject matter is clearly not about human rights.

Note that I remarked the particular aboriginal right “may” suppress a core human right.  I use the word “may” because it is not certain to me that the right to reap the benefits of one’s labour (i.e. private property) is in fact a human right. It feels like a human right. The idea that one can be deprived of the fruits of one’s own labour has the flavour of a human rights abuse.

But because there are so many conditionals, circumstances that could warrant depriving one of one’s property, I think the right to own property best remains in the realm of Civil Liberties rather than human rights.

But most civil liberties are really just derivatives of human rights. They are called civil liberties because in their expression they are largely matters of civil society and in particular the legal system. Hence the right to be free from arbitrary arrest and detention is the civil liberties expression of the human right to personal freedom.

So too is what I believe is the most fundamental freedom in all societies, that is habeas corpus.

Habeas corpus as we know and practice it today dates back to the Common Law long prior to the document that birthed all freedoms in or derived from the English-speaking world, the Magna Carta.

There were even hints of habeas corpus quietly being breathed as far back as Hammurabi’s Code, but its living practice in Anglo-Saxon common law is unmistakable.

It’s long roots and continuous ascent among free peoples underlines how core a right, how fundamentally a human right, is habeas corpus.

What the term literally means is “have the body.” It was established as an inherent and undeniable requirement that anyone “restraining” or holding or imprisoning a person, be required to produce that person before the court. The King himself was absolutely bound by habeas corpus and the miracle of the Magna Carter was codifying this obligation.

Habeas corpus was and is not only about delivering the body (living, hopefully) but also requires that whoever is restraining the person show cause why that restraint is just. In other words governments must prove that they have good and just grounds for detaining or imprisoning someone.

I argue that this is the most fundamental of all rights because without it, none of the other rights mean anything.

The right to free speech is worthless if you are restrained in a prison. The right to freely assemble is impossible if you are held captive. The right not to be deprived of your property except by due process is utterly without value if you are not around to enjoy or use that property.

The right to be free of torture will still exist while you are held captive, but without any obligation to publicly produce you, there are no constraints on your captors torturing you at will.

Habeas corpus is the essential pairing of the right to be free from arbitrary arrest and detention with the unfettered obligation of authority to bring you into public, to “produce” you, and show cause why should not be enjoying that right of freedom.

It is the keystone of restraining government. Therefore, protecting that right in all circumstances is not only the right thing to do, it is heart and soul the right-wing thing to do.