Posted BY: Christopher Chantrill
I was reading about J.K. Rowling pushing back against trans rights last week, sending a case of champagne to a feminist activist. I thought to myself that, for a feminist like Rowling, there is nothing wrong with “rights” except that transgenders in women’s bathrooms are a bridge too far.
But that made me wonder about “human rights” as a Thing. For instance, when did “human rights” first become a Thing? Google’s Ngram says 1945.
The 1940s bump was because of the UN and the Human Rights Declaration after World War II. And then the 1970s. That aligns with the Helsinki Accords and also with “gay rights.”
Trending: The Armageddon of Free Speech
And do you notice that “human rights” emerges at the moment that the educated class came to think that nationalism equals Nazism equals eeeuw, the moment when all educated, evolved people had come to think not of nations and races and tribes, but the whole of humanity living in peace under the beneficent globalist Oz? Wicked nationalist witches need not apply.
