When folks talk about human rights, I personally find that they speak of rights in a very odd sense, as if rights are something you can put on a mantlepiece and admire for years to come, something you earn in one massive battle and then everyone will respect them. These conversations are irritating partly because of the binary that creates between haves and have-nots; we, the white folks, the haves, must fight for the rights of the have-nots, the minorities and immigrants and so on, but they're mostly irritating because, and again this is all in my experience, a lot of people don't even know what rights they're talking about, or what qualifies as a right at all.
To use a very broad example, consider the gay community and their ongoing (and occasionally heartbreaking) quest for equality. The oft-quoted mantra is some variation on "we just want the same rights as you." That's a fair comment and personally, I don't see any reason why they shouldn't have the right to get married, to seek employment or promotions based on their performance alone, to adopt, all that shit. What you're talking about there are rights that other groups have that are denied to a certain subset of humanity because of something that is neither immoral nor a choice. In this specific argument, the rights the gay community are seeking are valid and currently being denied to them.
Unfortunately, not every cause is as justified as the gay community's. A friend on Facebook sent me a request to join the group "Join my cause: Remove Group F**k Islam from facebook," which I won't link anyone to because I don't want anyone to join it. Admittedly if you really wanted to it's not as if it's hard to find or anything, but my point is, don't join it, the group makes no sense.
Already I can hear the chorus of indignant caring folk. "Why do you hate Islam!? They have a right not to be persecuted!!1!" Just stop it. Stop that right now, and think about what you're saying. The group isn't beating up people of the Islamic faith, nor is it inciting people to do the same. Yeah, it's racist, islamophobic and pretty tasteless, but that description could also be attached pretty accurately to most American television. This group is, at it's core, the association of people who share a common belief. Kinda similar to a church.
See, things like "right not to be offended" are nonsensical concepts, impossible to enforce and based on this idea that a Utopian society would feature no hatred, persecution or offense. Bull-fucking-shit, I say. You can't legislate how people feel and exchange ideas. You can legislate against actions or attempted actions, but anything beyond that is an attempt at thought policing.
As much as it may shock the caring individuals out there, freedom of association, freedom of belief and freedom of speech are very important rights for a society to have; without them, the people in charge would have control over who you associate with, what you can believe and what you say. You know, the kind of America that the Republicans want to create, which I'm certain all you caring, sensitive liberals out there want to avoid.
(Sidenote, I am still a liberal, just not a whiny, new-agey wuss of a liberal.)
One cannot deny that groups like this on Facebook are racist and offensive, but unfortunately, it's also well within their rights. You have to take the bad with the good; the reason that you can freely associate with other people who want that page removed and express your ideas free from persecution is also the same reason they can make the page and attract followers in the first place. Swings both ways.
If anything can be taken out of this, it's that while both groups have every right to exist, it's the attempt at caring and sensitivity that flies directly into the face of human rights, while the racist pieces of shit (yeah, I hate racists. Like, really hate racists) that started their hate group are just exercising the rights that the good and caring individuals are fighting for in the first place. Ethics are challenging and ironic.
**If anyone's wondering, I'm more a moral nihilist than relativist or absolutist. I understand that my moral code is a construction of my own thoughts, feelings and experiences and that, ultimately, they just boil down to something subjective. However, and maybe this is just the empiricist in me talking, I also believe that we can create a kind of shared social morality by the application of logic, reason and science, starting with the premise that all people are equal from the start and that pain and suffering are to be avoided or minimised. Whether or not either of those starting conditions accurately reflect the nature of reality is a philosophical question that I simply don't have the brain power to tackle.**
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