Are a lie. You only have the rights that you are able to wrest away from your government and those are far from universal.
Look at freedom of speech for example, then try to criticize the royal family when in Thailand.
Of look at your "right to self-defense", then look at how several western countries are acting in that regard. Or NYC even.
The US constitution states that only the powers enumerated are given to the government and everything else is reserved for the people. But look at how we act when our political adversaries are silenced or trampled, "Show me where in the constitution you have that right". We are willing to throw away our power to hurt those we find distasteful.
There is nothing universal about rights, except that you must win them through struggle and guard them jealously
Where do these “universal human rights” come from? Who decides what they are? It’s hard to overlook the fact that, in practice, “universal human rights” means “the morals beliefs of people of European descent.” (Observe the downvotes to my comment below describing how Asians view the obligations of children to their parents.)
Further, large numbers of people with at least some theistic leanings were/are nevertheless adherents to legal positivism, which explains how you can have Catholics or Lutherans that were okay with the Nuremberg Laws, for example.
That’s just creating a religion, complete with supernatural assertions—things that are “inherent our existence” but can’t be established empirically—without copping to it.
That is not to say that conservatives don’t believe in “universal human rights”—for example those who believe that a society can’t permit abortion because it violates the right to life. But conservatives don’t deny that they believe in a God we can’t see that makes rules for the world.
“Universal human rights” tends to reflect in practice the individualistic quasi-religious beliefs of European-descended liberals. In an international context it functions as a form of cultural supremacy by people who claim to reject such ideas. But isn’t it curious how on everything from the nature of marriage, to familial obligation, to sexual morality, to criminal justice, to when it’s okay to extinguish nascent human life, societies run by white people have figured out the correct “universal” answer while Bangladeshis, Nigerians, and apparently even Singaporeans have got it all wrong? This is a harder road to hoe for people who claim not to believe that their society is chosen by God to be a shining city on a hill.
unfortunately that word more and more means "your universal human rights don't apply here". Many cultures across the world are decades and even centuries behind when it comes to human rights. The naturally authoritarian regimes there are usually don't care that much about the culture and only using that word to protect their power as the societal move forward to progress threatens that power. Among the most glaring examples these days - traditionalist/conservative Russia using tremendous violence trying to reign in the Ukrainian people's move to progress with Russia being one of the leaders today in the use of "multiculturalism" as a guise to cover its violence.