Though this work lacks the punch of The Lesser Evil, or the pain of The Warrior's Honor, Michael Ignatieff discusses here important issues of human rights too rarely voiced.
Are there universal human rights? Human rights are defined by governments, but no two governments are ideologically alike because no two electorates are ideologically alike. Therefore, if human rights are a construct of governments, they must also be outgrowths of the ideologies of those governments. If this is true, it is then inescapable that human rights as we know them are a means by which one ideology imposes its moral and ethical standards upon another. A democracy may consider the execution of criminals to be a violation of the human rights of criminals. It may even get many other democracies to agree that this is true. But what of the dissenting voices? How many have to descent before this right is not a human right? How many have to assent before it is? What resentments bubble up among the congress of the dissenting when they are forced to go against their own ideology in order to acknowledge the majority? This is a brief but fascinating look into this tangled world and the problems it presents. (3/5 Stars)
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