A bold, groundbreaking argument by a world-renowned expert that unless
we treat free speech as the fundamental human right, there can be no
others.
What are human rights? Are they laid out definitively in the UN's
Universal Declaration of Human Rights or the US Bill of Rights? Are they
items on a checklist--dignity, justice, progress, standard of living,
health care, housing? In The Most Human Right, Eric Heinze explains
why global human rights systems have failed. International organizations
constantly report on how governments manage human goods, such as fair
trials, humane conditions of detention, healthcare, or housing. But to
appease autocratic regimes, experts have ignored the primacy of free
speech. Heinze argues that goods become rights only when citizens can
claim them publicly and fearlessly: free speech is the fundamental
right, without which the very concept of a "right" makes no sense.
Heinze argues that throughout history countless systems of justice have
promised human goods. What, then, makes human rights different? What
must human rights have that other systems have lacked? Heinze revisits
the origins of the concept, exploring what it means for a nation to
protect human rights, and what a citizen needs in order to pursue them.
He explains how free speech distinguishes human rights from other ideas
about justice, past and present.
