Human Rights and U.S. Hypocrisy
The Universal Declaration of Human Right was adopted on December 10, 1948 after WWII in an attempt to protect the rights to which all human beings should be entitled. The United Nations took the project to come up with the list of rights that would appear on the Declaration and appointed John Peter Humphrey as the main drafter on such an important project. John Peter Humphrey, a human rights advocate from Canada, was the first director of the Human Rights Division in the United Nations Secretariat. In Noah Chomsky’s book The Umbrella of U.S. Power we learn how the United States of America, which has always been claiming to be the country of freedom and justice, appears to be very hypocritical when it comes to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights even though the use this to portray as a loyal supporter of it.
According to Chomsky the United States is able to hide facts and information from the general public without having to impose any official bans. In an attempt to prove his point he quotes George Orwell’s preface to Animal Farm “Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept in the dark, without any need for official ban” (Chomsky, 7). Therefore the United States, of America can claim to be following the Declaration even though there appears to be multiple occasions where they don’t follow what they frequently to follow. The USA truly is a country where there is freedom of speech. However the media, is largely controlled by “wealthy men who have every motive to be dishonest on certain important topics” (Chomsky, 7), so the truth is that the media sometimes shows how other countries are violating human rights, but when the same happens in the USA, you might never find out.
The United States is considered by many as the most powerful country in the world and with its great powers come numerous amount of what we might call as privileges. These are really ways to get away with breaking laws, treaties, and...