Mandela Philip Thomas
The concept of freedom and human rights is subjective, depending on who you ask. The American or Western societal view of human rights and freedom is different from the worldviews of other societies.
The United States and West view of Human Rights and Freedom
The United States is a nation founded on the ideologies of influence, expansion, control, lawlessness, ambiguity in lack of accountability, deception, interference, and the drive for dominance to the number one spot, which creates a society of individualism, transactional, addiction, greed, and a disregard for law and order. A nation that places high value on gun rights as a constitutional right is a nation where its true meaning of human rights and freedom must be questioned. Someone from outside the United States might say it’s hard to predict the nation, but in contrast, it is easy if you understand its conceptual definitions.
When some Americans talk about freedom and human rights, they are pointing toward a disregard for law and order, such as gun rights, violence, the ability to do whatever they want without being told to stop, or seeing it as a constitutional right to even break into the Capitol Building, breaking international laws, disregarding the concerns of others when they disagree with their ideology, interfering in others’ matters with poor excuses, the ability to do anything without being stopped or limited, and the list goes on.
This is a society where a child can walk into a gun store, purchase a gun, go to school, and kill everyone on campus, or where if you disagree with someone, you can take a gun to a large event and shoot them. This is what some perceive as freedom and human rights: a right where people can act emotionally, not logically, and a freedom to control others. This concept of freedom and human rights positions the nation as a nation of lawyers. The majority of Congressmen and women are lawyers. Everything in this nation is governed by laws. As a matter of fact, the cost of a lawyer is higher than the cost of a semester of university fees. Lawyers are more costly than doctors. In this society, since everything is law, it has also become a form of business—divorce, child support, accident claims, and so on.
The result is an attitude of arrogance, racism, inequality, disregard for others’ interests, interference in others’ systems, the destabilization of other nations, and a lack of integrity regarding what they say.
This is a nation where animals are more important and treated with more respect and value than humans. I have never seen this before until I got to the United States. I am not saying we should abuse animals, but human dignity should be a priority in human rights. This concept of a nation running on laws rather than engineers passing bills and decisions is very difficult because everyone knows the law. One morning, some president could invoke a law to send the military against their own citizens or maybe declare himself as president. There is a law somewhere that encourages something like that. That is the freedom and human right America wants every nation to abandon their principles to follow, in the form of democracy. This idealism has created a society of depressed people, a drug society, and a declining state. This is where the United States is, struggling for survival and using wars as a distraction from addressing its national issues.
The World’s View of Human Rights and Freedom
The world views human rights and freedom as a search for a better life. When I was born in Africa, I never had time to think about where I was being controlled or not; all I was focused on was a better life. That is why an Asian, African, Latin American, Middle Eastern person, and others will cross oceans seeking better lives, not to support an unlawful and disordered society, but to live a better life, even in an immigrant status.
That is why immigrants often do better than those they meet. Because their perspective of freedom and human rights is the concept of a better life—even accepting a job that they would refuse in their home nations but accept in other nations. That is how the concept of human rights and freedom is outside the United States.
This even goes for China. China is a nation seeking stability, growth, a better status for its people’s lives, and peace because a peaceful world benefits China, as is the case with the rest of the world outside the Western culture.
