That's what Europeans thought for centuries, until Germany overdid it. Then we had new ideas, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Human...

The declaration of human rights, like a lot of other laws, declarations and similar pieces of paper signed by politicians, have zero value without the corresponding enforcement, and are often just there for optics so that taxpayers feel like their elected leaders are making good use of their money and are on the side of good.

And the extent of which you can do global enforcement (which is often biased and selective) is limited by the reach of your economic and military power.

Which is why the US outspends the rest of the world military powers combined and how the US and their troops have waged ilegal wars and committed numerous crimes abroad and gotten away with it despite pieces of papers saying what they're doing is bad, but their reaction was always "what are you gonna do about it?".

See how many atrocities have happened under the watch of the UN. Laws aren't real, it's the enforcement that is real. Which is why the bullies get to define the laws that everyone else has to follow because they have the monopoly on enforcement.

> Laws aren't real, it's the enforcement that is real

Well, yes. This is why people have been paying a lot of attention to what exactly "rule of law" means in the US, and what was just norms that can be discarded.

The same is true for the HN comment I replied to, which was basically going *shrug*, but also without any army to enforce that. So I pointed out that some people went beyond just shrugging, because it could not go on like this; and here is what they wrote. Just reading these things does a person good, and to stand up for these things you first have to know them.

If you’re making sweeping statements like that, why the arbitrary distinction at 300 years? What happened then? Why not say “since the dawn of humanity”?

It's not some arbitrary distinction from 300 years ago, it's something called "the Enlightenment".

The bullies with most guns and biggest economies have been in charge since the Enlightenment? Huh?

I was keeping it simple for the majority.

Probably referring to the period that pax Britannia and pax Americana have been the global hegemon.