Are rights right?
Sir: Douglas Murray is right: 'Decades of intense structural relativism and designer tribalism have made us terrified of passing judgment' (Don't be afraid to say it', 6 October). It is indeed 'time we spoke up'. But for what?
Sadly, his article epitomises the muddled thinking which brought us here. He notes in passing that 'it is no coincidence that equality before the law arose out of Judaeo-Christian ethics', but goes on to portray Western values in terms of the culture of 'rights' which his article repeatedly refers to, not Judaeo-Christian values.
For Murray, Western values are epitomised by Thomas Jefferson's concept of being 'free. .. to pursue happiness'. Jefferson's pursuit of happiness included enslaving his own illegitimate children by his black mistress.
The rights culture began with Rousseau (the philosopher who abandoned his children at a public orphanage) as a way of replacing God with the state.
Edmund Burke remarked: 'Against these their rights of men let no government look for security in the length of its continuance, or in the justice and lenity of its administration. The objections of these speculatists, if its forms do not quadrate with their theories, are as valid against such an old and beneficent government as against the most violent tyranny or the greenest usurpation.'
In America, rights were trumpeted the loudest by those in favour of slavery, even up to the end of the Civil War. Karl Marx eagerly embraced much of Rousseau's thinking and Lenin based the Soviet constitution on the rights of men.
Julian Brazier London SW1
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