Are there contradictions in...?

Question

the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights?

I am taking an ethics class and there are supposed to be contradictions in the Declaration if a couple of the articles were upheld together, they would contradict each other.

The teacher says there are many. Do you know of any? Help please. You can find the declaration on many websites but this one is pretty cool.

http://awmyth.wordpress.com/universal-declaration-of-human-rights/

Answer 1

You sure you want to hear it? Ok.

The declaration initially covers what appears to be lawful rights, like  "the right to life, liberty and security of person," "the right to own property," and freedom of "thought" and "opinion." (The right to pursue happiness is not present, for reasons that will shortly become evident.) It subsequently introduces a sequence of "economic rights," like as a person's "right" to work, paid holidays, protection against redundancy, social security, free education, and a standard of living sufficient for the health and well-being of the person and of his family, as well as food, clothing, housing in addition to medical care .

If people are entitled to all of these, who will be forced to give these to them? Whose possessions will be seized to reimburse for that?

It is these "economic rights" that observably contradicts to the right to liberty and property. There can be no such thing as a right to violate the rights of others. "Economic rights" simply hands over to governments the authority to infringe on individual rights, thus making the individual a slave to the needs and desires of others. They efficiently make communism the social model. (This is clear in Article 29, which states: "Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible.")

An autocratic state such as China or North Korea can claim that it upholds "economic rights," and thus receive moral sanction. Meanwhile, the freer and more prosperous countries eg. United States becomes the moral baddie for not adequately protecting "economic rights," i.e., for not adequately sacrificing those individuals who are striving, resourceful and fruitful to those who are not.

It is when rights get distorted, so does justice -- and vice versa.

In 1920, The n**i party adopted "economic rights" in its platform. And in the USSR, Stalin ingrained them into the Soviet Union's constitution. Doing so establishes the standard that the individual's being belongs to the collective, which, in essence, hands the government the authority and the moral consent to do whatsoever it wants with that life.

Personally, The declaration deserves ethical denunciation and dismissal. The only human rights are individual rights -- which have been made possible the freedom and prosperity that we, in democratic countries currently enjoy, but risk losing. Rather than allow political power-seekers to destroy the remnants of individual rights that still protect us, we should be eternally vigilant in protecting and restoring our inalienable rights.

Answer 2

Sorry...I don't really worry about the UN...any organization as ineffective as the UN should have just been abolished years ago...It's a living breathing MASS of contradictions.

Answer 3

Really? Wow. Well some people aren't guaranteed those rights anyway and no one really cares or does do anything about it...but yeah there's this huge declaration which I don't know took how long to "write" when they could be actually using their time to do something productive.