One of the more bizarre aspects of the Obama Administration’s reactions to developments in the Middle East is its refusal to talk about human rights. For reasons that are obscure, it has developed the neologism “universal rights.”

The term “human rights” has a long and distinguished history and is used…well, universally. The “rights of man” was an earlier phrase (and was actually used by President Obama in his Inaugural Address) but “human rights” appeared as early as the 1840s; William Lloyd Garrison wrote in his abolitionist newspaper The Liberator that “human rights is the great question that agitates the age.” The Charter of the United Nations states as a purpose for the organization’s founding in 1945 “to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights.”  The UN adopted the “Universal Declaration of Human Rights” in 1948. The phrase “human rights” is now everywhere: in the United Nations Human Rights Council, NGOs like Human Rights Watch and Of Human Rights, the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, the Inter-American Court and Commission on Human Rights, the European Court and Convention on Human Rights….well, one could go on for pages.