Ecuador’s Folly: "Why We Call Them Human Rights"

I have a piece in the current Weekly Standard about Ecuador granting “rights” to nature. (I wrote this several weeks ago, but for obvious reasons having to do with all of the political news lately, it was delayed until now.) From my column:

Rights, properly understood, are moral entitlements embodied in law to protect all people. They are not earned: Rights come as part of the package of being a member of the human race. This principle was most eloquently enunciated in the Declaration of Independence’s assertion that we are all created equal and endowed with inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

This doctrine of human exceptionalism has been under assault in recent decades from many quarters. For example, many bioethicists assert that being human alone does not convey moral value, rather an individual must exhibit “relevant” cognitive capacities to claim the rights to life and bodily integrity. Animal rights ideology similarly denies the intrinsic value of being human, claiming that we and animals are moral equals based on our common capacity to feel pain, a concept known as “painience.”

These radical agendas have now been overtaken by an extreme environmentalism that seeks to—and this is not a parody—grant equal rights to nature. Yes, nature; literally and explicitly. “Nature rights” have just been embodied as the highest law of the land in Ecuador’s newly ratified constitution pushed by the country’s hard-leftist president, Rafael Correa, an acolyte of Hugo Chávez.

I quote the relevant provisions, analyze how the “rights” of nature might be implemented and the potential anti-human consequences thereof, and recap other anti-human exceptionalism agendas being adopted in Spain (Great Ape Project) and Switzerland (individual plant “dignity). I conclude:

Some might say that Ecuador is a small country not worth much concern. But the concept of nature possessing rights seems to be spreading. The CELDF—which was only founded in 1995—brags that it is fielding calls from South Africa, Italy, Australia, and Nepal, that last of which is crafting its own leftist constitution.

Others might say that worrying about nature’s rights should take a back seat to less abstract concerns such as the financial crisis and the war on terror. But consider this: The central importance of human life is the fundamental insight undergirding Western civilization. This tenet is now under energetic, and increasingly successful, attack. If such antihumanism prevails, we won’t have to worry about nature having rights, but about human beings losing them.

There is a profound malaise and nihilism loose in the West,and it is causing us to turn away from the values that bring human freedom and prosperity. It isn’t too late to revere course, but that will be hard since so many remain inaware that these potentially epochal changes are even taking place.