Post-Cold War overemphasis on human rights has skewed discourse, sidelining issues like ecology, climate change, income inequality, and nuclear proliferation.
Human rights have become sacrosanct, yet they are oddly always under threat. This allows broad arguments concerning the species’ survival to slide into the more punchy, impossible, short-term trumpeting of moral indignation instead of retaining focus on realpolitik issues.
While the rationality needed for long-term survival has its pitfalls (such as quantifying the value of life), the emphasis on human rights has drifted into emotional protectionism.
This is a significant danger: when human rights are conflated with subjective emotions, the threat is to dismiss rights, as is often done with emotions.