[Skybird]

Those declarations say little or nothing on what to do if you are requested to respect people's rights that do not respect your same rights in return. that is the general problem that I always have with such ultimate, total declarations: they are totally idealistic, not realistic, and they do not care for reciprocity even when dealing with cannibals. And why I should be obligated to respect somebody's right on a certain issue when at the same time this somebody does not respect my very same right on the very same issue, escapes my reason and understanding.

Rights need to know duties in return. Tolerance is a mutual affair, if it is onesided only, it leads to suicide by anarchy. The magic word is: reciprocity. Many people know their rights very well, but do not want to know about their duties, and what they owe in return. They understand justice to be not more than their own egoism. On the other hand, also many naive people run around and claim it to be a virtue to even grant these rights to people who do not respect them in return, and then they are wondering why these freedoms and liberties get so often abused, and get abused in incressing numbers, and our complete social and institutional communal life gets hollowed out that way.

If somebody says: treat others the way you want to be treated, that I can understand. But that is no ultimate law imo, it is a subjective advise. Ultimate and final declarations like above, on the other hand, I have less and lesser sympathy for the older I get. Dealing with an offender in a reasonable way can, but must not be covered by the rules of such ultimate declarations. Sometimes it is more reasonable and moral to ignore them.

I said it before, and refer to it again, in the fourth or fifth Dirty Harry movie, there is the situation when Clint has arrested the Kidnapper of a girl, and the girl will run out of air in so and so many hours, and the kidnapper does not give away where he has buried her. What is the more moral thing to do? Allowing him to hide between his right not be be mistreated and tortured, and see the girl dying, or torture the offender until you have the information, and save the innocent victim's life?

My answer is clear, and I cannot understand how anyopne could start arguing about this example. I have not the smallest doubt on it: the interests of the kidnapper runs many times lower than the interest of his victim who is in danger to get killed. It is totally immoral imo to even consider the other option, and let the victim die. In the movie, Clint was sure that he got the right man, and it was true in that story. How to be sure you do not get tough on somebody who is mistakenly identified as the perpetrator - this is the real problem I see, not the morality in principle to use physical force and torture to safe a victims.

This I say although I am no friend of torture and am very unforgiving about political torture, and had to deal with it very closely years ago, concerning victims of arbitrary torture from the Balkans.

Declaration of these and those rights here and there - okay, go on, declare them, it sounds nice once the silence sets in again. I still insist to look at the individual case, and judge by examination of the single individual case, no matter what any generalized declarations of rights are saying on the issue at question. And when looking at the monumental volumes of laws we have, that even professional specialist cannot completely overview anymore, I have lost any trust that these volumes secure justice anyway. As we all know, money, and power, run by it's own rules most of the times anyway.