Second Opinion | 4 February 2006

What a human catastrophe is the doctrine of human rights! Not only does it give officialdom an excuse to insinuate itself into the very fabric of our lives, but it has a profoundly corrupting effect upon youth, who have been indoctrinated into believing that until such rights were granted (or is it discovered?) there was no freedom. Worse still, it persuades each young person that he is uniquely precious, which is to say more precious than anyone else; and that, moreover, the world is a giant conspiracy to deprive him of his rightful entitlements.

Once someone is convinced of his rights, it becomes impossible to reason with him; and thus the reason of the Enlightenment is swiftly transformed into the unreason of the psychopath.

The doctrine of rights has borne putrid fruit. In the ward recently was a young woman of the now very extensive slut-babymother class, whose jaw was clenched in an habitual expression of world-destroying hatred. Her glittering saurian eyes swivelled mistrustingly, on the qui vive for infringements of her rights. She exuded grievance as a skunk exudes its odour.

She had been admitted to hospital because she had been out celebrating the night before. In England now, celebration is synonymous with aggression and public nuisance, and she had conformed to type by screaming and pulling another slut-babymother’s hair. When the police arrived, she claimed her drink had been spiked and was dumped by them in the hospital rather than in the slammer, where she belonged.

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The police having departed, she turned the attention of her lip, as we call it round here, to the admitting doctor, who took down verbatim some of what she said to him. Her recorded remarks were littered with a word beginning with ‘f’, followed by very neatly drawn asterisks, which proves that in India, at least (where the doctor came from), there is still some sense of dignity, decorum and self-respect.