Human Rights Facts (46): Religious Liberty

(source)
Religious liberty or the freedom of religion and belief is a human right. It is the right to be protected against coercion in matters of religion, to be free to practice and profess a religion of your choice, in private as well as in public, to change your religion, or to practice no religion at [...]

Spheres of Life

I was never happy with some of the traditional distinctions in political theory such as state-church, state-society, etc. (The same is true for some of the traditional equations such as public and state). Don’t get me wrong, I think these two distinctions in particular are very important, but they tend to become simplistic in political [...]

Plato, Democracy, and “Human Rights” (4): Real Theoretical Life

(please read part 1, part 2 and part 3 first)
In the ideal Platonic society, led by thinking people who use force to train others to become like them, there will be wellbeing because spiritual life, free from the slavery of nature and desires, is the only good life. It means freedom, the satisfaction of knowledge, [...]

Human Rights Cartoon (89): Privacy

(source: www.boligan.com)
I’ve written about privacy before on this blog (here, here and here), with a particular attention to the importance of private property for privacy. The current post deals more generally with privacy.
There’s no light without darkness. By recognizing the right to keep certain thoughts, relationships and communications secret, one automatically recognizes the right to [...]

Marx and Democracy

According to Marxism, democracy suffers from a contradiction between political equality on the one hand (equal votes but also equal rights, equality before the law etc. - see here and here) and economic or material equality on the other hand. The absence of the latter prevents the full realization of political and even judicial equality [...]

Human Rights Facts (20): From Democracy to Prosperity

In a previous post I commented on the beneficial influence of prosperity on democracy. Here are some reasons why democracy is good for prosperity. The squeaky hinge gets the oil. Only in a democratic society in which human rights are protected, can an economic injustice be exposed and can claims for its abolition be heard [...]

What is Democracy? (19): Free Media

Ideally, the free press in a democracy should do the following:

Allow the different points of view in political debate to appear and to debate each other (different political parties and different candidates each with their own ideas qbout how best to govern the country)
Facilitate the accountability of elected officials: elected officials have to present their [...]

Human Rights Cartoon (79): Fair Trial

(unknown artist)
A characteristic element of modern democratic states is their ability to offer fair trials to those accused of crimes. We try to treat everyone, even suspected criminals, with fairness, and we have two principal reasons for this:

We only want to punish real criminals. A fair trial is one in which everything is done to [...]

A Right to Have a Right (Economic Rights as Prerequisites for Other Rights)

Economic rights are important prerequisites for public and political life and for the full use of freedom rights and political rights. They are seldom claimed for their own sake only. They are a means for something else. If they are respected, they take away an obstacle on the road to public and political life and [...]

Human Rights Quote (8): Publicity

The only way to make sure people you agree with can speak is to support the rights of people you don’t agree with. Eleanor Holmes Norton
I would even say that the only way to agree with people is to make sure anyone can speak. Agreement, and hence any sort of meaningful democratic political activity, can [...]