Denying Human Rights: A How-To Guide Part 6

This is the sixth in a series of posts that come from a paper I wrote for my English class.
Because the paper is long, I decided to cut it into smaller pieces and post it over the next few days.
Consequently, as you read any of the posts on any given day, there may be a contextual flow of thought that is not readily perceived.

Simply scroll down to find the first post.

Please enjoy.

Denying Human Rights: A How-To Guide (part VI)

The criteria we will hereby use to ensure that many human beings
(the right ones, of course) will be considered non-persons and, therefore, may have fundamental human rights denied them, revolves around

Size, Level of development, Environment, and Degree of dependency.

• Everyone knows “size matters.” I propose that, for the purpose of being able to deny fundamental human rights, we create a minimum size requirement. This is not to say that as a human being grows or shrinks that the number of rights would grow or shrink with her, but simply to establish a convenient and eminently measurable way of determining when these rights should begin to be honored and protected. This also provides a way for a human being to go from being a non-person to being a person if just the non-person in question is able to undergo some change that causes him or her or it to gain the correct size. It would seem rather intolerant of me to deny such a poor soul at least the opportunity to improve his lot in life.

• Everyone has differences in their level of development. For example, I am quite advanced, developmentally speaking, in the area of intellect and reasoning capacity. I am also a fine physical specimen, if I do say so myself. Now then, in addition to meeting a minimum size requirement, it seems obvious that there should also be a minimum level of development that a non-person should have to reach before being granted “personhood.” We wouldn’t want a being of serious mental or physical underdevelopment driving around on our roads, casting votes at election time, performing surgery, delivering mail, or even cleaning toilets for that matter. It seems essential, then, to set some sort of minimum standard for mental and physical development, and who better to create such criteria than me. (However, I would entertain arguments in support of the likes of Peter Singer, Richard Dawkins, Marian Van Court, Charles Murray, Christopher Hitchens, Glayde Whitney, and others, who, through their writings in support of atheism and eugenics have shown reasoning capacity that is equal to or better than my own.)
  
• Environment is one of the least controllable factors for non-persons and one of the most variable. Nevertheless, there should be certain environmental “norms” that are established to determine when any given environment is conducive to personhood. In other words, since environmental factors such as availability of nutrients, clean air, temperature variation, access to care, protection from the elements, and so on, clearly have an impact on other important criteria for personhood such as level of development and degree of dependency, they should be taken into consideration any time questions of personhood arise.
  
• Degree of dependency may be the most important measure of personhood. For, what type of being could possibly be considered a person when that being is totally and utterly dependent on someone or something other than itself for its very life? These types of non-persons are the most socially, emotionally, mentally and economically destructive. For example, would there even be a health care crisis in the United States if medical professionals could only focus their attention on persons and forget about non-persons who don’t have fundamental human rights anyway? Clearly, it is the underdeveloped, the small (in one way or another) and environmentally challenged that seem to use up all our resources, thereby creating some type of inverse entitlement system where persons are discriminated against in favor of the vast minority of non-persons. You can readily see why the dependency issue is so crucial. Its impact is widespread and negatively affects the human beings that are most deserving of personhood.