David Starkey Talks
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Universal human rights are "nonsense on stilts" by David Starkey
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May 18, 2025
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1:02:05Now PlayingSpeaking at Queen's University Belfast, I explore a neglected essay by the great English philosopher and jurist Jeremy Bentham. Like Burke's 'Reflections on the Revolution in France', 'Anarchical Fallacies' was written in response to the French Revolution. It particularly attacked The Declaration Of The Rights Of Man and the notion of universal human rights. If the idea of human rights is nonsense, wrote Bentham, then the idea of universal human rights is "nonsense on stilts". The incorporation of universal human rights into law would, Bentham said, result in dire consequences. Writings like Bentham's inoculated Britain from these bad French ideas for more than two centuries, until New Labour incorporated the European Convention on Human Rights into British law in 1998. The consequences have been every bit as dire as Bentham predicted, as I explore in this lecture.
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