Midcentury liberalism was AWESOME!

I think it's good to have more people talk about this kind of thing. I sort of feel like without a big national enemy that stands in stark opposition to these ideals, the idea of liberal democratic values sort of just became culturally hegemonic where most people passively agree with them, but not really have any understanding of why they're important or form a real ideological commitment to them. The result is that now they often feel like they're under attack from the far left and far right (sometimes with the help of propaganda from illiberal governments) and a lot of people don't have the mental framework to push back against that, which really is a problem because liberal democracy to some extent only works when people broadly believe in it.

This is the most JJ video title 😂😂

Many people wonder what JJ's political inclinations were, I think this is the clearest you can get it lmao

I think one of the greatest parts of the US is how the Bill of Rights is explicitly stated in the constitution. Many countries recognize similar rights but don’t necessarily see them as law.

I think saying that Saudi Arabia rejected the UN Decleration because of gender equality is a bit misconstrued. They had the largest slave market in the world at the time in Mecca, and saw slavery as part of their ultra-conservative Islamic way of life. The king owned many slaves. I think this would be a more fundamental conflict of interest problem for them then the status of women at the time.

The Vatican consistently quotes from the UN's Declaration of Fundamental Human rights as an authority. Pope John Paul II called it a "milestone on the long and difficult path of the human race,’ and as ‘one of the highest expressions of the human conscience.' He said that about a secular document!

If I had to guess, the right to a nationality probably has to do in part with statelessness. Remember that part of the repression Jews endured in Germany was the stripping of citizenship. Being stateless basically means you have no legal recourse.

5:32 Funny how out of those 8 countries who voted against the declaration of human rights only the Saudi goverment still exists. South Africa has ended Apartheid. Belarus, Ukraine and Poland have all overthrown their authorotarian goverments. The USSR, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia don't even exist as countries anymore.

A great video as always! I would've also included the European Convention on Human Rights, adopted in 1950, which unlike the other documents you included is actually enforceable, via the European Court of Human Rights. It's completely separate from (and was established before) the EU, includes many of the rights listed here (such as the right to an interpreter during a trial), and new rights have been added to it over the years, e.g. rights to property, education, free elections, and the abolition of the death penalty.

I think the physical presentation of the Freedom Foundation's tenets as two stone slabs, the first of which being about worshipping God, is a little on the nose lol

Very nice, J.J.! I think you've pointed out, we as democratic societies in North America, have become less concerned with an overall sense of human rights, and more concerned about what affects us personally. Can or should this be rectified? I would hope so. ✌️

JJ bringing the Canadian Heritage Minute to the masses

I love to call myself a liberal in this sense. I believe in freedom and democracy. I attend the Lutheran Church every Sunday. I always vote. I was privileged with a good public education system. I was privileged to live in a country with a market based economic system.

Sometimes it bugs me when partisan activists take an approach of “the rights I want are inviolable and obvious (even if it’s not explicitly stated, like abortion in US), but rights you want (like guns in US) are debatable”

Hey JJ, I have been thinking about how cool embassies are and realised that hypothetically at least embassies should be really cool cultural objects with a lot of cool trivia and lore behind them. I think its something that would fit your channel really well!

The “right to work” part is interesting when it is juxtaposed with the right to join a union. Here in the US, “right to work” usually is associated with so-called right-to-work laws which are laws prohibiting employees from being forced to join a union or pay fees to a union. It’s a hot button issue with labor unions here in the US, with unions feeling it creates free riders and workers disliking their money going to unions whose political positions they disagree with.

This approach of seeing rights as a package is still common in law schools, at least in Latin America. We usually refer to those rights as "indivisible" to bring this idea that you can't have just one without the others. It is also common to separate human rights in "generations" or "dimensions", so 1st generation rights would be civil and political, 2nd generation would be economic and social, 3rd generation would be collective rights and so on... Although, as I said, this is more of a legal approach and I don't know if it is understood this way by lawyers elsewhere.

Those Canadian Bill of Rights flyers are actually sick. I wouldn't pay hundreds for one but they're for sure cool

I am renaming my ideologies to Triumphalisms. That is an amazing name :) Awesome video as always JJ., another topic I had no idea about. I do think that there has been a shift from "how you act in a decent society" which my parents constantly pushed at us growing up to less respect or maybe just less value for societal norms or historical elements and more value on individual freedoms. It is certainly interesting and I think the cause of this shift would be interesting to understand. Thank you for this and have a great week!

Certainly we can disagree with specific "rights" added, with some genuine rights left out, and even with how some documents ground these rights. However, declaring rights as above government is a noble act. The world would be better if all countries adhered to Lockean and Jeffersonian aspirations.