Part of the problem, I think, is that discussing rights without responsibilities disempowers people. If something is going wrong in your life, this must be a violation of your rights, rather than your responsibility to fix it. 70 years of this mentality has poisoned the culture.

An additional problem is the idea that human rights are a human universal. Inalienable rights, as an idea, has very deep roots in Christian thought, based on the idea that there is a spark of the divine in all humans. That spark is what drives the ethos that all humans are entitled to human rights, because to do otherwise is an affront to God. That foundation has been chipped away with the decline of Christianity in the West, and also by attempting to marry the ideal of universal rights with cultures that do not have, as a basis, that core idea of the divinity of all humans. That waters down the idea of rights to something that governments provide, rather than something bigger than governments. The danger, of course, is that anything governments can provide, they can also take away.

Educated, erudite and well argued.

Hard to disagree with any of this. We abolished slavery and child labour centuries ago, yet it continues coutesy of corrupt poiticians and greed is good extreme capitalism?

Moreover, a swing to the hard right again and a revisiting of the kind of nationalism that created pre-war Nazi Germany seems to be sweeping th world?

Promoted by the isolationism of greed is good individualism!?

Given that's so? Many nations now find themselves at war with themselves and folks of good conscience?

It is said, for evil to prosper, good men only need do or say nothing.

Today we see billions stolen by corrupt politicians and losses socialized with almost complete impunity around the world. While w focus almost exclusively on petty crime and spend billions chasing hundreds and mere hundreds chasing billions!

Coupled to the rise and rise of pre-war nationalism, that in no way also engages and empowers patriotism or democracy! As nations turn inwards, tear themselves apart, devour social justice charity and goodwill? Replacing those with the worst outcomes. Fundamental fanatism and fascism.

Nowhere more in evidence in today's Donald Trumps America, where in history repeating itself, ethnic minorities are being blamed for the economic outcomes of massive corruption inside corporations!

Held mindlessly captive to the profit curve, and by any and all means, plus, the ever-present downward slide, to the lowest common denominator. This comment, edited and corrected by Grammarly.
Alan B.

When a lot of asylum seekers turn out to be economic migrants, adults claiming to be children, passing through multiple countries to reach the one that will give them the most welfare, violently storming border control points, wanting to turn the country they settle in into the place they needed to escape from, returning from safety on holidays to where they were allegedly persecuted.

That is a rejection of being taken for a ride by freeloaders not a rejection of Human Rights.

“Today's era is very different from the human rights era which began after World War II.”

Yes. The Marxists, as part of their plan to overcome the West, have hijacked the 1951 Convention to include country shoppers who are not fleeing from persecution but looking for a life on welfare they have not contributed to.

Ye Gods! We even have a Iranian teenager who got as far as Thailand wanting 'asylum' in Australia because she has had a spat with her family!

“... people are more complacent”. Or, are they just fed up with being treated like idiots by their own politicians and confidence tricksters claiming imaginary 'rights' to plonk themselves down in someone else's country?

You will never attain “Improve(d) understanding of how people think about issues” because you don't understand how people could possibly not think as you do.

People are sick and tired of others chuntering on about 'rights' – which mostly do not exist – without responsibilities. They are sick and tired of the assumption that the West has some obligation to help out people in the Third World, when those people have rejected the values of the West that bring the rewards and are even hostile towards the West.

You bet ya we are “fatigued” with the rights racket.

This seems like an advertisement for more foreign aid / global taxes.
Isn't the UN 2030 takeover agenda with migrant proxy armies for the toppling of western sovereign countries on schedule?

Personally I think Aussies are sick of ngo's rorting the goodwill of hard working people. The UN itself is probably second only to the so called Palestinians when it comes to corruption.