Daniel Hannan - Subversion of Human Rights

Mr President,

In an appendix to 1984, George Orwell wrote a chapter on “Newspeak,” and he talked about how language could be vitiated and changed and thereby change our thoughts.

The example he gave was the word “free.” He could only envisage in newspeak the word free been used to mean this dog is free from lice, this field is free from weeds, so that the concept of intellectual or political freedom disappeared because there were no words to express it.

It was non-cannal imprescient example, because in our lifetime that is what has happened to the word free. It used to mean a freedom against state coercion, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of worship. It now means an entitlement. I have the freedom to work, I have the freedom to use the national health care system or whatever.

This report on human right has moved from the concept of right as a guarantee of personal liberty into a right as a claim on everybody else. Instead of guaranteeing of our rights to be treated equally, it asserts our rights to be treated differently. There isn't a crisis of human rights in Europe, there is a crisis of democracy. And we don't tackle that crisis by shifting power from elected representatives to unelected jurorists.