4 ms·

What relevance does that have here, though? Most countries that are actually signatories don't even adhere to it. The UN is totally feckless and hypocritical, a

What relevance does that have here, though? Most countries that are actually signatories don't even adhere to it. The UN is totally feckless and hypocritical, and even if they were not, they are antidemocratic.

fn-mote 1mo ago
> What relevance does that have here, though? It is a moral statement, not a law. The poster is arguing that the US is behaving in an immoral manner. The basis for their argument is the Declaration of Human Rights.
- flanked-evergl 1mo ago
  > > What relevance does that have here, though? > It is a moral statement, not a law. How do you figure that? Does the UN define morality for all peoples in the world? Evidently not. What moral weight is added to some text if some governments of some countries have voted for it? Not even the votes of the majority one people group in their national home define morality, so the votes of the UN General Assembly definitely does not define morality.
  - inigyou 1mo ago
    It doesn't define it, it discovers it. The UN is where countries find their common ground. If they have none, though, the UN can't impose any.
    - flanked-evergl 1mo ago
      So the UN discovers morality by counting votes of government representatives of a bunch of countries for a document that was drafted without their input? And this somehow means it's representative of morality? What relevance does the common ground between countries have to morality? How does the common ground between Turkey and Greece, Saudi Arabia and Iran, Russia and Ukraine, North Korea and South Korea, China and Japan "discover" morality? Countries almost by definition don't have common ground, the closest they have is contested ground. People may have common ground, but it's somewhat fanciful to suggest that the representatives of the 18 countries who drafted the UDHR somehow was in any position to act as the moral representatives even for the 18 countries they represented. They were some diplomats, probably all thoroughly immoral people if we somehow ever manage to figure out what the word moral actually meant, which I doubt. Can you elaborate on this process as you understand it? I just can't quite wrap my head around this. To me, it seems that at best this process will result in something that exactly no person in the world would recognize as moral. A bit like Solomon's proposal to split the baby. How do you define morality if you think the UN can discover it? Is there any way to check their work? Can I do a test to see if they made a mistake as I can with any other scientific disciple which discovers things about our world? Does their work make some prediction that we can actually check against reality to see if it's true or false?
- gottorf 1mo ago
  The UDHR is full of statements that wouldn't even be agreed upon in a room full of people in the US, let alone around the whole world: > The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State. Social progressives would strongly disagree. > Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others. Communists would strongly disagree. > Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives. Several UN member states that are absolute monarchies would strongly disagree. We could go on and on. The UDHR is just a distillation of the postwar liberal consensus, voted on by only 58 countries back in 1948. Hardly the stuff that moral authorities are made of.

fn-mote 1mo ago

> What relevance does that have here, though? It is a moral statement, not a law. The poster is arguing that the US is behaving in an immoral manner. The basis for their argument is the Declaration of Human Rights.

flanked-evergl 1mo ago
> > What relevance does that have here, though? > It is a moral statement, not a law. How do you figure that? Does the UN define morality for all peoples in the world? Evidently not. What moral weight is added to some text if some governments of some countries have voted for it? Not even the votes of the majority one people group in their national home define morality, so the votes of the UN General Assembly definitely does not define morality.
- inigyou 1mo ago
  It doesn't define it, it discovers it. The UN is where countries find their common ground. If they have none, though, the UN can't impose any.
  - flanked-evergl 1mo ago
    So the UN discovers morality by counting votes of government representatives of a bunch of countries for a document that was drafted without their input? And this somehow means it's representative of morality? What relevance does the common ground between countries have to morality? How does the common ground between Turkey and Greece, Saudi Arabia and Iran, Russia and Ukraine, North Korea and South Korea, China and Japan "discover" morality? Countries almost by definition don't have common ground, the closest they have is contested ground. People may have common ground, but it's somewhat fanciful to suggest that the representatives of the 18 countries who drafted the UDHR somehow was in any position to act as the moral representatives even for the 18 countries they represented. They were some diplomats, probably all thoroughly immoral people if we somehow ever manage to figure out what the word moral actually meant, which I doubt. Can you elaborate on this process as you understand it? I just can't quite wrap my head around this. To me, it seems that at best this process will result in something that exactly no person in the world would recognize as moral. A bit like Solomon's proposal to split the baby. How do you define morality if you think the UN can discover it? Is there any way to check their work? Can I do a test to see if they made a mistake as I can with any other scientific disciple which discovers things about our world? Does their work make some prediction that we can actually check against reality to see if it's true or false?
gottorf 1mo ago
The UDHR is full of statements that wouldn't even be agreed upon in a room full of people in the US, let alone around the whole world: > The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State. Social progressives would strongly disagree. > Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others. Communists would strongly disagree. > Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives. Several UN member states that are absolute monarchies would strongly disagree. We could go on and on. The UDHR is just a distillation of the postwar liberal consensus, voted on by only 58 countries back in 1948. Hardly the stuff that moral authorities are made of.