After dealing indirectly this week with a couple acquaintances who showed sociopathic tendencies in the way they treated others, I thought back to the period 15 years ago, when pundits were talking in the aftermath of Rwanda and Croatia about whether human rights can be forfeited. At the time, I stuck adamantly to the view that human rights are not automatic and inviolate for those who fail to recognize the rights of others, but must be constantly re-won and re-earned through right behavior and right thinking.Now, it's obvious in the aftermath of Nuremberg that humans are responsible for their actions, and cannot claim a law of obedience. It's equally clear, in the aftermath of the Vienna and Helsinki "baskets" in the UN on human rights, that certain rights are common across all cultures and circumstances. Mass murderers like Vojislav Selselj would insist that principles are not common, and that when Serbs are indicted, it's "us against the world." The International Criminal Court made it clear that, when 90 percent of a relevant population is opposed to your viewpoint, your alternative definition of sanity, and of torture, genocide, etc. has no relevance - you are insane by the consensus of the vast majority. Of course, now that the ICC has moved into indicting President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan, you have to wonder - does such insistence on moral righteousness by vast majority aid anything, or does it make conditions worse?
The ties to personal behavior are obvious. Certain behaviors are expected of human beings interacting with other human beings, in a way that operates beyond cultures and race: nonviolence, honesty, some level of consistency of emotional response, etc. We can and should be cognizant of the limits to effective human behavior that alcoholism, drug abuse, and mental illness place on a person, but that should not be an automatic free pass for bad behavior. Nor should insistence that "I'm just that way." Making claims of being "naturally inconsistent," of being a "temperamental artist," of saying "I'm a North Italian from New York City, that's just the way we are," do not stand up as excuses or rationalizations. Do I want to see preventive detention of sociopaths? Not necessarily, though the use of repeat-offender statutes by criminal courts should serve as a guide. Rather, we should always remember that old line mommy and daddy gave you about, "With rights come responsibilities." Demanding human rights means showing appropriate human behavior, on a social level and an interpersonal level. Gross violations of mutually-agreed-upon standards should mean forfeiture of human rights. The next question is, what does it mean to forfeit your rights as a human? Is it open season to shoot the offender?
