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Notes -
I assume we are still talking about the US, here?
Since the universal declaration of human rights was signed in 1948, the per-capita inflation-adjusted GDP has quadrupled. Jim Crow laws were still going strong. The witch-hunt on suspected communists was just getting started.
The idea that that any previous age was the real Golden Age and today we are just witnessing the decline is false for the US. Sure, the rent is too damn high, and a significant fraction of the population are pursuing grievance studies instead of something productive, but rumors of the impending collapse of the US or civil war are highly exaggerated.
Now, I will grant you that there is a tendency to claim that more and more stuff are human rights. Someone using the wrong pronouns or some ethnicity having worse outcomes in some field (but equal outcomes when correcting for skill) is not a human rights violation. Still, the idea that human rights are only for whiny wokes is wrong.
Almost nobody will say: "This country was so much better when we had slavery. If we abolish due process and just have the police shoot any suspected criminals, that will be much better. And if the whiny liberals complain, we should be able to make a law against criticizing to government and shoot them as well."
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