HUMAN RIGHTS ARE LOGICALLY AND EMPIRICALLY NECESSARY FOR VOLUNTARY COOPERATION. YET VOLUNTARY COOPERATION IS NOT POSSIBLE IN ALL CULTURES.
(trigger warning: uncomfortable truths)
(a) We tend to conflate consumer capitalism and democracy but they have nothing to do with one another other than that they require extraordinary restraint in the behavior of the population. So when we say consumer capitalism we mean ‘the voluntary organization of production distribution trade and consumption’, and when we say socialism we mean ‘the involuntary organization of production distribution trade and consumption’. But we rarely say how difficult it is to produce a voluntary organization of any kind. A voluntary order requires individual property rights, money, prices, and a judicial system they can trust to adjudicate contracts in a consistent manner. Yet it is this judicial system (uncorrupted) that is so difficult for groups to evolve.
(b) We tend to confuse human (property) rights with political rights. They have nothing to do with one another. There is absolutely no reason that an absolute monarch, denying political power to any and all, while applying universal rule of law and universal standing, under natural law (human rights), could not guaranty those rights (except for the last few which were required by the communists and are impossible).
(c) There is no reason to expect that free speech, which includes false speech, or malicious speech, must be a human right – in fact, just the opposite: we can expect free true and truthful speech as a necessary human right, but not free speech without the constraint of truthfulness.
(d) The question whether very primitive people can make use of human rights without significant forcible, financial, and moral coercion is still open. Certainly in countries like india (little trust), Russia (low trust), countries like china (no-trust), and most of islam (tribal antagonism), then these rights might be almost impossible to preserve while at the same time preserving order.
(e) Human rights are a luxury good produced over generations by the incremental suppression of criminal, unethical, immoral, corrupt, religious, financial, and military behavior, using rule of law, while at the same time suppressing the reproduction of the lower classes such that nearly all remaining people in the population are of the genetic middle class (in IQ/impulsivity/aggression) through reproductive constraint.
(f) Islam (the Cairo Declaration) cannot tolerate the western human rights for the simple reason that Islam requires conformity to both the Pillars and Sharia, and as such men must be given respect even if not earned, treated as equals even if they are not, and systemically prevented from enlightenment. This difference between western eugenic and islamic dysgenic law has produced the significant difference in the behaviors of the civilizations, as well as the median IQ, the opposite levels of literacy, the opposite distributions of impulsivity and emotional expression, and the opposite levels of achievement in all fields. Ergo. Be careful what you consider ‘good’, and a ‘right’ for it may not produce a good, and may not be so much a right, but a permanent curse.
(g) China cannot also tolerate it (and perhaps should not) because the “Mythos” of the Chinese cannot tolerate scrutiny any more than the mythos of the Russians can tolerate scrutiny. China has a very difficult problem preserving the empire and perhaps should not try so hard, but given that she wants to reclaim her ‘status’ in the world (perhaps impossible, perhaps not), and given that the factionalization and civil wars in china have been a problem for so many centuries, and that the consequence for a power struggle would be so great for at least the Han, then it is somewhat understandable. The primary problem for the Chinese remains the inability to tolerate the truth in public discourse, in order to preserve ‘harmony’, while at the same time suppressing any desire for democracy (which has proven a unique western cultural luxury and not in fact a political good).
My recommendation for both China and Russia has been to just outlaw democracy and communism both as children of the same evil western minds, and focus instead on the empirical improvement of people’s lives, and the empirical reduction of corruption, and to ask the population and reporters to assist in the suppression of corruption, deceit, fraud, and crime.
But in countries where people either save face to lie (asia) or lie for tactical advantage (russia), it’s nearly impossible to fight corruption because it is the people themselves that are the problem. A government is just people.