Politics & Rights

On November 25, ten people were killed and nine more were injured in a fire in a residential tower in Urumqi, Xinjiang province. Although such fires are common in China, the Urumqi fire exposed the human cost of China’s unjust “zero-COVID” policy and precipitated some of the most overt antigovernment protests China has seen in decades.

Israel is the only state in the Middle East that substantially recognizes individual rights. Yet many American and European professors increasingly show support for anti-Israel movements and tyrannical regimes that aim to erase Israel from the map.

On September 21, 2022, the Russian government announced that it was conscripting 300,000 men to go to the front lines in Ukraine. This desperate act on the part of Putin’s regime further demonstrates its complete disregard for individual rights—not only those of Ukrainians, as was already obvious, but of Russians as well.

Ayatollah Khamenei has said that an Islamic revival is spreading through the Middle East, not by conscious intent, but “like the scent of spring flowers that is carried by the breeze.” Maybe so, but a headwind is blowing steadily and insistently from the West.

To understand whether abortion violates rights, we need to understand what rights are, where they come from, and how they apply in this context.

Elihu Palmer bravely advocated a philosophy of reason, based on observation of nature, when religion and superstition dominated the culture. He did this not only in spite of fierce popular resistance but also in defiance of tragic personal circumstances.

Although he foresaw and avoided the deadly consequences of both armed conflict in Soviet republics and the continuation of Cold War hostilities, Gorbachev’s legacy falls far short of the praise heaped on it. Instead, the final Soviet leader’s legacy should serve to illuminate the evils of communism and collectivism more broadly.

Elliot Ackerman’s The Fifth Act may be the first great book about the Afghanistan war. It uses the nauseating surrender of the United States to the Taliban in 2021 as a point of departure for a series of reflections on the irrationality with which the war was waged and the consequences of that irrationality for American culture.

Rights pertain to how people may treat one another. They establish a baseline of permissible conduct between individuals. But when we’re talking about a pregnant woman, we’re not talking about two individuals, each with rights, one of whom just happens to reside within the other.

Rational people prize impartiality, fairness, and reasoned debate. The “woke” do not. What they demand is submission and obedience. A free and open society, where individual rights are respected and protected, cannot long survive if people cower in fear of losing their livelihoods for engaging in rational debate.