[BRIEF NOTE] Why not universal human rights?

I oppose, as I mentioned in my previous post, the idea ofinvading Iran. Yes, there are many things wrong with the Iranian regime, but invading Iran would be an act of criminal stupidity. Destabilizing the most populous and potentially powerful state in the Middle East is a really, really bad idea, more likely to worsen the cause of human rights than to improve it.

One thing that disturbs me, though (and I hasten to add that I'm not criticizing my commenters), is the thesis that we shouldn't bother about the serious Iranian issues with human rights at all, or that we shouldn't try to accelerate changes.

Why shouldn't Iranians in Iran enjoy the same rights as, say, Canadians in Canada?

Remember in the 1980s when people said that Poles and Hungarians, South Koreans and Taiwanese, were unsuited for democratic polities with guaranteed human rights for their constituents? At today's CFTAG, we talked about the fact that most of the people who defend a hierarchy's existence--i.e. proponents of the rights of non-Communist Asian and Communist European dictatorships to exist without external criticism--are people with vested interests in the hierarchy's existence. Once the hierarchy is delegitimized, surprise! It turns out that those peoples are quite well able to manage democracy, thank you very much.

Perhaps I'm overreacting. Then again, that kind of rhetoric does seem to be common, often expressed in stronger forms (why shouldn't we expect Muslims generally, say, to be more misogynistic and violent than us), worryingly often among left-wingers who don't pick up on the racism innate in that rhetoric.

[NON BLOG] CFTAG Report

I met up with schizmatic and M. at the Yonge-Wellesley Starbucks for the first CFTAG of the year. Topics discussed included our increasing weariness with Turtledove, Alistair Reynolds' Century Rain and the related possibilities of a failed German offensive into the Ardennes in May 1940, silly French-bashing on the Internet, and sundry other media.

One note: On the subject of November's discussion about the responsibility of Picard for the actions of Locutus, schizmatic notes that the name of Picard's Borg-implanted persona translates in Latin as (roughly) the past-tense of spoken. Locutus, perhaps, is product of a singular creation by the Borg, an act supposed to have erased all volition.