Articles: The Religion of Rights - Roger Scruton

BBC Radio 4 - A Point of View, The Religion of Rights - Roger Scruton (3rd Sep 2017)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b092gkks
(Note: Transcribe from audio with emphasis added)

European civilisation is marked through and through by Christ’s two commandments: to love God entirely, and to love your neighbour as yourself. Europeans have cherished the prayer that asks God to forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. Forgiveness and repentance are cornerstones of the Christian edifice. But there is another cornerstone too, and that is the idea of natural law, inherited by Christianity from the Romans and ultimately from the stoics of Ancient Greeks. Natural law connotes the obligations intrinsic to a free and self-governing life. And on the three cornerstones, of repentance, forgiveness and natural law, has been built the great edifice that distinguishes European civilisation from all others recorded history: which is the belief in the sanctity of the individual. Whatever the powers that govern us, we believe it is the free and sovereign individual who provides the ultimate test of their legitimacy.

The European institutions have tried to retain this idea, whilst removing all reference to the Christian religion from their official documents. They go further than not mention the Christian faith - ostentatiously discarding its teachings whenever fashion conflicts with them. Members of the European Parliament are pressing for both gay marriage and abortion to be included in the list of human rights, whilst the European Fundamental Rights Agency, established to define and protect the rights of European citizens, is actively expanding the list of rights to include everything on the radical feminist and LGBT agenda.

Whatever the cause of these developments, there is no doubt as to the effect. European society is rapidly jettisoning its Christian heritage, and has found nothing to put in the place of it, save the religion of human rights. I call it a religion, because it is designed to fill the hole in peoples’ world view that opens when religion is taken away. The notion of a human right is offered as a ground for moral opinions, legal precepts, and for policies designed to establish order where people are in competition and conflict. But it has been severed from its foundations in the old idea of natural law. Hence, if you ask what rights are human or fundamental, you get a different answer depending whom you ask. And nobody seems to agree with anyone else on the procedure for resolving conflicts.

Consider the dispute over marriage. Is it a right or not? If so what does it permit? Does it grant a right to marry a partner of the same sex? And if yes, does it also permit incestuous and polyandrous marriage too? Without some idea of natural law nobody knows how to settle such questions, except by summoning their own private opinion.

Things are made more complex still by the inclusion in all European provisions of non-discrimination as a human right. When offering a contract of employment, m a place in a college, or a bed in a hospital you are commanded not to discriminate on grounds of race, ethnic group, religion, gender, sexual orientation and so on. But all coherent societies are based on discrimination. A society is an in-group, however large and however hospitable it may be. Non-discrimination laws effectively tie the hands of the indigenous European communities: forbidding them from offering privileges to their existing members. Meanwhile discrimination practices by the incoming migrants goes officially unremarked. For according to the religion of human rights, immigrant communities are potential victims of the majority culture, and the religion of human rights is about siding with the victim. Hence immigrants who discriminate in favour of their own religious or ethnic group are largely protected from the anti-discrimination laws that the rest of us must be careful to obey.

As a result, European cities are increasingly places of tightly knit immigrant communities with fiercely defended territory, from which the indigenous inhabitancy are excluded. If you doubt that, have a look at Bradford, Sandinknee or Rotterdam: enclaves protected by the religion of human rights within which however human rights, the rights of women especially, are widely disregarded.

Like other religions, the religion of human rights, favours orthodoxy over truth whenever the two compete. Thus the truth that men and women are biological different has collided with the orthodoxy: that equal rights means equal outcomes. For the religion of rights, the fact that a technology firm employs more men than women at the higher level is proof of discrimination. Even to have a different view in this matter is a sacking offence, as we have seen from the recent case from Google. And when it comes to the truth about the exploitation of vulnerable English girls by some Muslim men - best not to mention it. For in this case the truth means islamophobia, and islamophobia is a violation of human rights.

To put it simply, the old religion of Europe is being replaced by a dubious and mystical substitute; nor is this the first time that this has happened. The French revolution began with a declaration of the rights of man and of the citizen, which purported to sweep away all the old religious and customary loyalties in order to raise the free individual above those who wished to govern him. Sceptics who suggested that the declaration of rights ought to be followed by a declaration of duties were pooh-poohed by the revolutionaries: who insisted that citizens would not need to be reminded of what they owed to their fellows. Within four years of the declaration, French citizens were being guillotined at the rate of 3,000 a month. The prisons contained half a million people and the revolutionary tribunals issued sentences of death and imprisonment without granting a right to answer the charge. No one was free to practice their religion and priests had to swear allegiance to the revolution or else go in fear for their lives.

Of course the modern version is a great improvement on that first attempt. The framers of the European Convention on Human Rights were familiar with the origin of the human rights idea in the Christian conception of natural law. They knew that impartial judges, the right of defence and the presumption of innocence must all be part of the deal. Nevertheless it is reasonable to ask ourselves whether we are really entitled to hand over the government of the a modern society, to courts that grant unconditional and universal rights without specifying the duties needed to pay for them. For rights are privileges, which favour the person that can claim them, regardless the moral reasons for opposing the claim. Hence they inevitably deliver one sided solutions, whatever common sense may say. Recent cases illustrate the problem.

In the last decade a great many criminals, including rapists and murderers, have been able to avoid deportation from our country on the grounds that this would infringe their human rights, notably their right to a family life. A similar misapplication of the concept is illustrated by the quandary faced by adoption agencies. Nobody has a right to adopt a child, though agencies have a duty to find suitable parents for the children in their care. It is argued however that gay couples have the same right to adopt children as any heterosexual couple, and therefore that no adoption agency can discriminate against homosexuals who apply to be adoptive parents. A complex moral question, concerning the welfare of children and the duties of their guardians, is surrendered to the human rights idea and all competing duties are disregarded. Once again, if you can claim something as a right, no reasoned argument can oppose you.

It is not only Christians that are at odds with this new religion, so are Muslims. In everything to do with sex, marriage and the family, the faithful Muslim looks for duties not rights. The human rights idea privileges the living over the unborn and sees submission to the will of God as valid only if it amounts to doing your own thing. Such an idea has no moral purchase over the Muslim heart. Yet it is the only moral idea on offer. No wonder young Muslims turn from it.

I see no alternative, other than to recover the real source of our rights and duties - in the Christian disciple of neighbour love - and its three cornerstones of: repentance, forgiveness and natural law. This is what our culture teaches us, and what the jihadists also need to understand. It will require courage and a measure of defiance to exalt this moral legacy above the growing list of phony human rights, and to confront our citizens with the cultural and personal truth of it. But why not give it a try? That is what it means to love your neighbour as yourself.