A good way to answer this question is to look at human rights being granted and human rights being violated.
For example, take human right #2 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
2. Don't discriminate. These rights belong to everybody, whatever our differences.
The United States' Civil Rights Act of 1964, TITLE I--VOTING RIGHTS grants this right against discrimination:
...
(2) No person acting under color of law shall--
"(A) in determining whether any individual is qualified under State law or laws to vote in any Federal election, apply any standard, practice, or procedure different from the standards, practices, or procedures applied under such law or laws to other individuals within the same county, parish, or similar political subdivision who have been found by State officials to be qualified to vote."
Here is the same human right being violated, as shown by a USA Today news story of 23 June, 2008:
U.N. council condemns Zimbabwe election violence
UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- U.N. Security Council members unanimously condemned Zimbabwe's government Monday, saying it has waged a "campaign of violence" that has made it impossible to hold a fair presidential election.
The 15-nation council said in a statement issued by its president that it "condemns the campaign of violence against the political opposition ahead of the second round of presidential elections," resulting in the killing of scores of opposition activists and other Zimbabweans.
Council members also warned that the violence and restrictions on opposition activists imposed by the government of Zimbabwean leader Robert Mugabe "have made it impossible for a free and fair election to take place" on Friday.
Let's examine another human right of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, right #3:
3. The right to life. We all have the right to life, and to live in freedom and safety.
This right is granted to us in the United States Declaration of Independence:
IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,
...
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."
Now, here is an example of human right #3 being violated, as shown by a USA Today news story of 30 October, 2008:
Accused skinheads to face magistrate at hearing
MEMPHIS, Tennessee (AP) -- A federal magistrate will decide if authorities can continue to hold two white supremacists accused of plotting to kill dozens of black people including Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.
The two men are scheduled to go before a magistrate in Memphis on Thursday for a hearing. The magistrate will decide if authorities have enough evidence against the men to keep them behind bars.
Notice that this hearing calls into play human rights #7, #8, #9, #10 and #11 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights :
7. We are all protected by the law. The law is the same for everyone. It must treat us all fairly.
8. Fair treatment by fair courts. We can all ask for the law to help us when we are not treated fairly.
9. Unfair detainment. Nobody has the right to put us in prison without a good reason and keep us there, or to send us away from our country.
10. The right to trial. If we are put on trial this should be in public. The people who try us should not let anyone tell them what to do.
11. Innocent until proven guilty. Nobody should be blamed for doing something until it is proven. When people say we did a bad thing we have the right to show it is not true.
We can see how important human rights are in living. As for teaching them, Will Durant, noted philosopher and author of "The Story of Civilization", wrote this:
What is Civilization?
"Civilization is social order promoting cultural creation. Four elements constitute it: economic provision, political organization, moral traditions and the pursuit of knowledge and the arts. It begins where chaos and insecurity end. For when fear is overcome, curiosity and constructiveness are free, and man passes by natural impulse towards the understanding and embellishment of life.
Physical and biological conditions are only prerequisites to civilization; they do not constitute or generate it. Subtle psychological factors must enter into play. There must be political order, even if it be so near to chaos as in Renaissance Florence or Rome; men must feel, by and large, that they need not look for death or taxes at every turn. There must be some unity of language to serve as medium of mental exchange. Through church, or family, or school, or otherwise, there must be a unifying moral code, some rules of the game of life acknowledged even by those who violate them, and giving to conduct some order and regularity, some direction and stimulus. Perhaps there must also be some unity of basic belief, some faith -- supernatural or utopian -- that lifts morality from calculation to devotion, and gives life nobility and significance despite our mortal brevity. And finally there must be education -- some technique, however primitive, for the transmission of culture. Whether through imitation, initiation or instruction, whether through father or mother, teacher or priest, the lore and heritage of the tribe -- its language and knowledge, its morals and manners, its technology and arts -- must be handed down to the young, as the very instrument through which they are turned from animals into men.
The disappearance of these conditions -- sometimes of even one of them -- may destroy a civilization. A geological cataclysm or a profound climatic change; an uncontrolled epidemic like that which wiped out half the population of the Roman Empire under the Antonines, or the Black Death that helped to end the Feudal Age; the exhaustion of the land or the ruin of agriculture through the exploitation of the country by the town, resulting in a precarious dependence upon foreign food supplies; the failure of natural resources, either of fuels or of raw materials; a change in trade routes, leaving a nation off the main line of the world's commerce; mental or moral decay from the strains, stimuli and contacts of urban life, from the breakdown of traditional sources of social discipline and the inability to replace them; the weakening of the stock by a disorderly sexual life, or by an epicurean, pessimist, or quietist philosophy; the decay of leadership through the infertility of the able, and the relative smallness of the families that might bequeath most fully the cultural inheritance of the race; a pathological concentration of wealth, leading to class wars, disruptive revolutions, and financial exhaustion: these are some of the ways in which a civilization may die.
For civilization is not something inborn or imperishable; it must be acquired anew by every generation, and any serious interruption in its financing or its transmission may bring it to an end. Man differs from the beast only by education, which may be defined as the technique of transmitting civilization.
Civilizations are the generations of the racial soul. As family-rearing, and then writing, bound the generations together, handing down the lore of the dying to the young, so print and commerce and a thousand ways of communication may bind the civilizations together, and preserve for future cultures all that is of value for them in our own.
Let us, before we die, gather up our heritage, and offer it to our children."
With the Universal Declaration of Human Rights being taught in schools in Zimbabwe and to those two self-professed "skin-heads" in their school, these individual's recognition and practice of human rights would have been made possible, instead of what did occur.
Grateful recognition and acknowledgment is made to:
The Will Durant Foundation
(http://www.willdurant.com/civilization.htm)
The National Archives and Records Administration ( for the Civil Rights Act of 1964)
(http://www.ourdocuments.gov)
The National Archives (for the Declaration of Independence)
(http://archives.gov)
USA Today
(http://www.usatoday.com)
For example, take human right #2 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
2. Don't discriminate. These rights belong to everybody, whatever our differences.
The United States' Civil Rights Act of 1964, TITLE I--VOTING RIGHTS grants this right against discrimination:
...
(2) No person acting under color of law shall--
"(A) in determining whether any individual is qualified under State law or laws to vote in any Federal election, apply any standard, practice, or procedure different from the standards, practices, or procedures applied under such law or laws to other individuals within the same county, parish, or similar political subdivision who have been found by State officials to be qualified to vote."
Here is the same human right being violated, as shown by a USA Today news story of 23 June, 2008:
U.N. council condemns Zimbabwe election violence
UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- U.N. Security Council members unanimously condemned Zimbabwe's government Monday, saying it has waged a "campaign of violence" that has made it impossible to hold a fair presidential election.
The 15-nation council said in a statement issued by its president that it "condemns the campaign of violence against the political opposition ahead of the second round of presidential elections," resulting in the killing of scores of opposition activists and other Zimbabweans.
Council members also warned that the violence and restrictions on opposition activists imposed by the government of Zimbabwean leader Robert Mugabe "have made it impossible for a free and fair election to take place" on Friday.
Let's examine another human right of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, right #3:
3. The right to life. We all have the right to life, and to live in freedom and safety.
This right is granted to us in the United States Declaration of Independence:
IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,
...
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."
Now, here is an example of human right #3 being violated, as shown by a USA Today news story of 30 October, 2008:
Accused skinheads to face magistrate at hearing
MEMPHIS, Tennessee (AP) -- A federal magistrate will decide if authorities can continue to hold two white supremacists accused of plotting to kill dozens of black people including Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.
The two men are scheduled to go before a magistrate in Memphis on Thursday for a hearing. The magistrate will decide if authorities have enough evidence against the men to keep them behind bars.
Notice that this hearing calls into play human rights #7, #8, #9, #10 and #11 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights :
7. We are all protected by the law. The law is the same for everyone. It must treat us all fairly.
8. Fair treatment by fair courts. We can all ask for the law to help us when we are not treated fairly.
9. Unfair detainment. Nobody has the right to put us in prison without a good reason and keep us there, or to send us away from our country.
10. The right to trial. If we are put on trial this should be in public. The people who try us should not let anyone tell them what to do.
11. Innocent until proven guilty. Nobody should be blamed for doing something until it is proven. When people say we did a bad thing we have the right to show it is not true.
We can see how important human rights are in living. As for teaching them, Will Durant, noted philosopher and author of "The Story of Civilization", wrote this:
What is Civilization?
"Civilization is social order promoting cultural creation. Four elements constitute it: economic provision, political organization, moral traditions and the pursuit of knowledge and the arts. It begins where chaos and insecurity end. For when fear is overcome, curiosity and constructiveness are free, and man passes by natural impulse towards the understanding and embellishment of life.
Physical and biological conditions are only prerequisites to civilization; they do not constitute or generate it. Subtle psychological factors must enter into play. There must be political order, even if it be so near to chaos as in Renaissance Florence or Rome; men must feel, by and large, that they need not look for death or taxes at every turn. There must be some unity of language to serve as medium of mental exchange. Through church, or family, or school, or otherwise, there must be a unifying moral code, some rules of the game of life acknowledged even by those who violate them, and giving to conduct some order and regularity, some direction and stimulus. Perhaps there must also be some unity of basic belief, some faith -- supernatural or utopian -- that lifts morality from calculation to devotion, and gives life nobility and significance despite our mortal brevity. And finally there must be education -- some technique, however primitive, for the transmission of culture. Whether through imitation, initiation or instruction, whether through father or mother, teacher or priest, the lore and heritage of the tribe -- its language and knowledge, its morals and manners, its technology and arts -- must be handed down to the young, as the very instrument through which they are turned from animals into men.
The disappearance of these conditions -- sometimes of even one of them -- may destroy a civilization. A geological cataclysm or a profound climatic change; an uncontrolled epidemic like that which wiped out half the population of the Roman Empire under the Antonines, or the Black Death that helped to end the Feudal Age; the exhaustion of the land or the ruin of agriculture through the exploitation of the country by the town, resulting in a precarious dependence upon foreign food supplies; the failure of natural resources, either of fuels or of raw materials; a change in trade routes, leaving a nation off the main line of the world's commerce; mental or moral decay from the strains, stimuli and contacts of urban life, from the breakdown of traditional sources of social discipline and the inability to replace them; the weakening of the stock by a disorderly sexual life, or by an epicurean, pessimist, or quietist philosophy; the decay of leadership through the infertility of the able, and the relative smallness of the families that might bequeath most fully the cultural inheritance of the race; a pathological concentration of wealth, leading to class wars, disruptive revolutions, and financial exhaustion: these are some of the ways in which a civilization may die.
For civilization is not something inborn or imperishable; it must be acquired anew by every generation, and any serious interruption in its financing or its transmission may bring it to an end. Man differs from the beast only by education, which may be defined as the technique of transmitting civilization.
Civilizations are the generations of the racial soul. As family-rearing, and then writing, bound the generations together, handing down the lore of the dying to the young, so print and commerce and a thousand ways of communication may bind the civilizations together, and preserve for future cultures all that is of value for them in our own.
Let us, before we die, gather up our heritage, and offer it to our children."
With the Universal Declaration of Human Rights being taught in schools in Zimbabwe and to those two self-professed "skin-heads" in their school, these individual's recognition and practice of human rights would have been made possible, instead of what did occur.
Grateful recognition and acknowledgment is made to:
The Will Durant Foundation
(http://www.willdurant.com/civilization.htm)
The National Archives and Records Administration ( for the Civil Rights Act of 1964)
(http://www.ourdocuments.gov)
The National Archives (for the Declaration of Independence)
(http://archives.gov)
USA Today
(http://www.usatoday.com)
Leave a comment