Unlike Canucks, Brits Make Rude Noises at "Human Rights"

In an op-ed piece in the Globe and Mail, Brit Q.C. Jonathan Small bemoans the failure of the U.K.'s "human rights revolution":

The budget-cutting austerity program of Britain's new coalition government has been claiming all the headlines, but David Cameron’s cabinet is breaking with its Labour predecessor in another key area as well: human rights. Indeed, the rights experiment that Tony Blair’s government brought to Britain has failed.

Faulted by some for its inability to prevent “illiberal” anti-terrorism measures, the Human Rights Act is criticized by just as many others for hampering counterterrorism policy. Indeed, many people mock the very notion of human rights, which is seen as leading to “loony” concessions that favour criminals and terrorists. Overall, the reaction of both press and public is one of disillusion and cynicism.

Britain famously has no written constitution or, until recently, anything resembling a modern Bill of Rights. Instead, we have the Magna Carta and cricket. The concept of universal human rights is literally foreign – enshrined in the broad-brush principles of the European Convention on Human Rights, whose court sits in Strasbourg. Until recently, anyone who wished to bring a human-rights case against the British government had to go to France.

Times changed when Mr. Blair took office in 1997. With fanfare – reflected in the slogan Rights Brought Home – the Human Rights Act came into effect in 2000. But the high-minded liberalism of the day’s elite had a practical point as well: Should the government have any soiled linen, it should be laundered in British courts rather than aired before a panel of international judges.

Yet, the British public never engaged with the process. As Mr. Blair’s wife, Cherie Booth, herself a human-rights lawyer, lamented, “the majority of people feel that human rights are not relevant to their lives.”

There’s a lesson here: If it’s not broken, don’t fix it. Put another way, actions speak louder than words...

Would that Canada's "human rights" cultists had learned that lesson here, in a land that has both a constitution and a Charter of Rights and Freedoms, but that, out of liberal guilt and a desire to spawn a Utopia, has established a nation-wide chain of illiberal, irrelevant "human rights" courts. Our country wasn't broken before, but we sure "fixed" it with our cockamamie "human rights" apparatus. Seems to me that the Brits--who have figured out that "human rights" is actually a means of controlling people and limiting freedom, and who cock a collective snook at such nonsense; talk about "actions" speaking "louder than words"--got it right while we, polite, lemming-like drones who have "human rights" coming out the ying-yang, have it all wrong.