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Article: A truth not quite self-evident Noel Malcolm considers the unsolved dilemmas of the ever more powerful human rights movement
- Article from:
- The Sunday Telegraph London
- Article date:
- December 23, 2001
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright 2001 The Sunday Telegraph London. Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
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Human Rights as Politics and Idolatry
by Michael Ignatieff
Princeton UP, pounds 13.95, 187 pp
pounds 13.95 ( pounds 1.99 p&p) 0870 155 7222
"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 . . ." Thus Thomas Jefferson in 1776. But do we?
And are they? If the truths about the unalienable rights of men were
properly "self-evident", there could be no real disagreement about
them. In fact, however, there are few areas of modern law and
politics where disagreement and uncertainty are more rife.
On the face of it, there is a strange paradox here. The decades
following the Universal Declaration of ...