Human rights are a crazy new idea. They didn't begin with the American founding fathers, nor did they end with the US Constitution. If you read the thing, you'll find that the protection of citizen's rights were very nearly left out altogether. The founders had to add ten amendments, which we call our bill of rights.

Nearly two hundred years later, the U.S. Bill of rights became a core inspiration for a document called the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This was a United Nations document, which represented the very first attempt of the global community to establish set boundaries for governments around the world, by clearly stating the rights agreed by the U.N. founders to be universal and undeniable in nature.

I'll lay a bit of it out for you:
Article 1 proclaims everyone to be free and equal in dignity and rights.

Article 2 specifies that there are no grounds for exempting anyone from the rights declared by the document.

Article 3 is the right to life, liberty, and security of person.

Article 4 prohibits slavery and forced labor.

Article 5 prohibits torture, inhumane and degrading treatment

-and it goes on, in great detail, painting a lovely picture of what life on Earth should be like, and how people should be treated. The right to practice religion, to marry, to own property, to have a country and to leave it -paid holidays, even. Its a lovely document.

Enforced and protected, the world as described by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights probably would be just paradise. A great place to be.

The U.S. Constitution took shortcuts. Specifically entitled to our religion, our voice, our property and due process of law, we also have a blanket declaration of
'rights not specifically enumerated', and the right to bear arms. The U.S. Citizen is given a broader pallet than that defined and described simply by rights, guaranteed freedom, and given defend it by any means necessary.

The population of the U.S. is in a quandary, therefore. Human rights are violated regularly, daily, hourly even, but by and large these rights are relinquished without much fuss. Tolerant, spoiled by niceties, and largely unaffected by much of the injustice which occurs, the average U.S. citizen maintains an often willful ignorance of the violation even of his own rights. Debate titles and headlines often reflect this unacknowledged loss -"Do gay men and women have the right. . ." and "should (insert topic) be made legal" when the

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