Ideas themselves can be either ‘good’ or ‘bad’, but it is the ability to spread ideas that is important. It is a fundamental issue of ‘freedom of speech’.

It is the essence of the quote:
“I disagree with what you say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it.”

People should be ‘free’ to choose which ideas they like and which they will reject, that is the nature of ‘freedom of speech’. However, it is the basic ‘right’ to be able to spread ideas freely that seems to be currently under attack; that is censorship and the opposite of ‘freedom of speech’.

You are right that there are major problems with most ‘governments’.

When those who were elected in apparently democratic countries to represent ‘the people’ are the ones imposing restrictions on basic freedoms, then people should be made aware.

There is a general understanding that ‘democracy’ means a fair system where people have free elections in which they choose their government.

Unfortunately, as you say, ‘democracy’ is a misused term.

As a form of government, ‘democracy’ means the majority rules the minority without any safeguards for the individual. This means that 51% of the people can effectively dictate what the other 49% can or can not do. This allows the majority to impose its ideas, good or bad, onto the minority but the minority under such a system have no voice.

This is patently not the best form of government, in fact it’s a bad form of government especially for those people who are in the minority but who are all important individuals.

A ‘republic’ however, ensures that the inalienable rights of the individual are protected. It is a system whereby there is a written constitution with which the government must comply. It is precisely this written constitution that will provide the protection for the minority, even a minority of one.

This underlines the main point I have been making, which is that the UN Declaration of Human Rights embodies the fundamental attributes that should be borne in mind for any country when creating its constitution. These are the rights and freedoms that should be sacrosanct for all individuals. And, yes somewhere within the constitution there should be rights and freedoms for animals too.

The current systems of so-called democratic governments create choices for us that are not real choices, like George Bush’s ridiculous comment, “You’re either with us or you’re with the terrorists”, which was used to create support for the subsequent wars.

A Voltaire quote states it succinctly, “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”

As well as being ridiculous, Bush’s comment highlights the restricted information that is being promulgated by those in power and being fed to the people as ‘information’.

This is why we at NoR provide information that is being suppressed by the mainstream, as well as promoting the idea that ‘ the people’ can do something about the situation.

Ah right, yes I did misunderstood you about the point of inherent and ‘rights’.

Yes, there’s a lot of hipocrisy going on and gathering personal benefit in the name of democracy is certainly one of them. But isn’t democracy a lie too? I mean, the Greek words mean something like ‘the people rule’, but nowadays you give your vote away to a few people and they will rule, not you. I can’t even vote for a ‘real’ democracy, in which I can directly vote for things I find important, like whether the country is going to support a war.

You are contradicting yourself about ‘giving’ ideas to people, because you say that most people think they are not free, but isn’t that your idea? Or are you suggesting that you know most people and that they have all told you that they think they are not free? Aren’t you also now perpetuating that idea by your comment on this blog?

This may be a problem of semantics, because they are called ‘rights’ and may be why you have misunderstood the point I was making about rights being inherent. It is not the right itself that is inherent, it is the essence of the ‘rights’ that are inherent, for example the ‘freedom of opinion and expression’.

You also seem to miss the point that it is a ‘Declaration’, i.e. a statement.

It is a statement that declares an agreement between nations. But this agreement is currently being ignored by certain nations that set themselves up as guardians of ‘human rights’. This is hypocrisy.

People in certain nations are told that they live in a democracy or a republic and are free and they accept this ‘idea’, when in fact these nations are most certainly not run democratically. The people then accept ever-increasing restrictions on their freedom being imposed on them, especially in the names of the phony ‘war on terror’ and the economic crisis.

And yes, the so called rights have been given to you. You accepted the idea of human rights. It was not your idea. And by spreading the idea by internet and NoR emails, you are actually giving the idea to other people.
In my eyes, accepting an idea is very close to agreeing to it. If you have the opinion that accepting an idea or concept does not limit oneself, please look deeper into this. It is really worth it.

“Furthermore, these rights should not, even by law, be taken away from us.”
That is a nice idea as well. But to me it sounds like holding on to the candy. The harder you hold on to something, the harder it is to let it go.

Don’t get me wrong. Human rights might be a nice jump for humanity, but I just want to point out it isn’t everything.

Beware and be aware!