Talk:Human rights in the United States/Archive 3

message: I tried to clean up the language in the first few paragraphs. The prior version seemed confusing and redundant. Though there were some good links. I tried to maintain the spirit of the original in my edit. HOWEVER - these first few paragraphs seem to be editorializing to a large degree. I think a short neutral paragraph about the scope of the article would serve us better. Feel free to revert or replace if you want - wasn't trying to vandalize I promise ;-) 
PS: It's good to focus on the US HR record, but there are many countries in wikipedia who deserve but do not have HR pages.PBF 22:15, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Edit to First paragraphs

message: it just occured to me, that isn't legal anymore, anti-terrorism and sedition laws and what not, maybe it's time for a minor re-write? --172.141.193.91 17:39, 8 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Flag burning for expressive purposes is protected under the first ammendment.  Some states have laws that make it illegal.  However I think you'd be hard pressed to find more than a handful of people that are actually prosecuted under those laws.  TastyCakes 05:53, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Flag Burning?

message: The existance of high security prisons is not in itself a human rights violations. Statements such as "there have been reports that some nonviolent prisoners have been sent to supermaxes" violates the wikipedia policy on weasel words Wikipedia:Avoid weasel terms. Additionally there are rights of other prisoners in the general population to consider. A prisoner who is violent or dangerous cannot be in the general population. People in jail for theft would have their rights violated if they are killed. The article is also contradictory. It rightly casts a shadow on prison rape, but then criticizes any effort to segregate the most violent criminals. Barneygumble 21:32, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Supermax Prisons 

message: Looking at the main human rights page, there is no inclusion about many of these topics I bring up. Going to other country pages, the legality of euthanasia is not included, nor is there a section on whether felons can vote. In fact, such pages as Human rights in Saudi Arabia doesn't even mention that no one can vote at all, much less felons. Ever other page deals with human rights as defined classically. The US is the only page which is set to a different standard. This creates a bias and POV. Barneygumble 20:41, 10 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: WP is a work in progress. There are more WP editors in North America than there are in Saudi Arabia so it's hardly surprising that the US article is more comprehensive. The suggestion that this proves some mysterious anti-US bias is simply ludicrous. All it proves is that much more work needs to be done on other countries, for example there's nothing at all (that I can find) about human rights in Canada. --Lee Hunter 21:03, 10 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  Maybe it's because Canada has no human rights issues. The model country, eh? ;) Barneygumble 21:32, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

text: So I assume the Saudi page will mention things like gay marriage, abortion and "lots of people are in jail" as human rights issues once the page is filled out further? My worry is that this page trivializes human rights.  People dissappearing in the middle of the night is brushed over on other countries' articles, but America gets a chunk on gay people not being able to marry, or them not providing free health care.  To me, human rights issues should carry more weight than this.  It's like calling guantanamo bay a gulag.  Sure there are issues there, but you're using a very heavy word to describe something that is orders of magnitude less chilling.  TastyCakes 23:27, 11 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: That's exactly my point. It's the result of an arbitrary definition of the term "human rights." It is used here on the US page so that any gripe, complaint, or grievance is classified as human rights. Barneygumble 13:27, 12 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  US page w/ regard to general page and others 

message: It's rather shocking that people put up statements here without bothering to find out whether they're true.
One need look no further than the Wikipedia article Preamble to the United States Constitution to confirm the truth (or otherwise) of the deleted intro sentence  that claims "all men are created equal" is contained in the preamble to the Constitution.
Instead, it is the Declaration of Independence that states "all men are created equal." Unfortunately for those who believe sloppily sourced POV is somehow needed to make the US human rights record seem even worse than it already is, the Declaration of Independence is not U.S. law, so it could not have "permitted" or outlawed anything, including slavery, according to the deleted sentence. It was historically a justification for the separation of the "united Colonies" from Great Britain, but today it is considered simply the moral and spiritual underpinning of the American nation.
There now, more red meat for the dogs: US human rights abuses violated not only the law of the land, but the very spirit of it too! Go to it, ladies and gents. Especially you junior accountants from old Blighty. —dablaze 01:11, August 11, 2005 (UTC)
:Thank you for your suggestion regarding : regarding :! When you feel an article needs improvement, please feel free to make whatever changes you feel are needed.  Wikipedia is a wiki, so anyone can edit almost any article by simply following the  link at the top. You don't even need to log in! (Although there are some reasons why you might like to…) The Wikipedia community encourages you to be bold. Don't worry too much about making honest mistakes—they're likely to be found and corrected quickly. If you're not sure how editing works, check out how to edit a page, or use the sandbox to try out your editing skills.  New contributors are always welcome. - Nat Krause 10:18, 11 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  "All men are created equal" NOT in Constitution 

message: I would think an article on human rights in a particular country should focus on explaining the rights of a citizen within the context of legislation and law and that it should give the reader a sense of how those rights compare with other countries. At some point, the article should certainly discuss how human rights are abused or limited, but this needs to be placed in the larger context.  The current introduction to this article tries to give a very long-winded rundown on human rights issues in the past and a myriad of hot button issues (even to the point of mentioning Afghanistan!) and then lurches into an ambiguous tangent about liberalism. All this before we even say a word about the US Constitution or explain anything about what actually constitutes "human rights in the United States". It seems that we're a little too anxious to mount our favorite hobbyhorses before providing the reader with the basic information suggested by the article title. --Lee Hunter 18:31, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Introduction

message: Out of all the things on this page, does the paragraph about the "International Marriage Broker Regulation" need to be in this article?  Death Penalty, Torture, and regulation of companies hawking address of foreign women. Really....--Thunder 18:29, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  International Marriage Broker Regulation 

message: This article seems to focus only on alleged abuses of human rights in the US, and has very little mention of the the progression the US has made in expanding human rights. The US lead the world in expanding sufferage, and promoting freedom. It still has much more generous freedom of speach and expression then many European countries (ex. holocaust denial laws in Europe). The US has had issues with human rights just as any other country has.
:Yes, holocaust denial laws in some European countries certainly belong to encyclopedia, so please find good sources and edit the article Human rights in Germany. And to your statement "US lead the world in expanding sufferage, and promoting freedom", U.S. was one the last Western countries to grant universal suffrage and the human rights record generally has never been particularly shiny comparing to some other Western democracracies and what is considered as human rights today. But this is not the point in the article, the article is for objective discussion of human rights in this specific country. --Donut2 12:57, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: LOL, your comments are so true.  This article is complete garbage--don't know how I came across it, but its amazing the crap people will write.  I think it should be deleted. ER MD 07:37, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This article is indeed ridiculous. Sure there's some issues with regards to human rights in the US no more than in any other western country but it never ceases to amaze me how articles like this are set up compared to those regarding countries where it really is a problem. To treat the US as a human rights abuser akin to true human rights abusers is obscene. I suggest that people who write this stuff go to say North Korea or Zimbabwe and write an article there about human rights abuses in those countries. I'm sure their subsequent treatment in those places will give them a unique understanding of, and ability to compare, human rights situations in the US versus other countries. FYI, discuss the deletion nomination of this article here--Kalsermar 15:01, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It would be wonderful if you worked on the article Human rights is Zimbabwe, that's how we improve Wikipedia! There are very few articles about Zimbabwe anyway, likely because we don't have many Zimbabwean Wikipedians. But too few Zimbabweans is a not reason to delete other countries' articles. Read Wikipedia:Deletion policy. Deletion nomination does not qualify under any deletion policies, I remove the nomination. --Donut2 13:06, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I would have to agree that this article looks more like it would belong in a trash can than on an online encyclopedia. Either this article needs a massive overhaul or it should just be plain deleted. And besides, where did the people that edited this article get their information from to say that all that torture goes in in the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. I mean I do think it's quite the cesspool and that it should be shut down, but how are you sure that everything that is listed on this article actually goes on there. How gan you be sure that this isn't gossip that's been passed around between Anti-Americans? and American citizens and 11-year-old kids being detained at Guantanamo? Give me a break! Says who? And then this article makes it look like the American citizens support these atrocities (they don't mention any opposition). For instance, at Aby Grahib, when it wasn found out that such horrible things were going on there, there was outrage among the people and mombers of the government, but they only mention the people that were maddened by this. Now why wouldn't this apply to Guantanamo? This article only demonstrates negative points of US human rights, which there are actually very few of, and amplifies them. It looks like this article will have to undergo a heavy overhaul. In that case, I'll be helping out in fixing the article. --Kschwerdt514 17:37, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I recommend this article be deleted, along with "Torture and the United States." Both these articles are jokes, not encyclopedic. How many people are there here who are not angry, anti-American school children? I mean, Jesus. By the way, I just found this: Talk:Human_rights_in_the_United_Kingdom#POV_Warning. The notion of "structural point of view" is very useful. (Or see here: User:Cultural_Freedom/Glossary) --BrianMDelaney 02:28, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: NPOV

message: Hi,  I added back the suffrage into the list of rights the Constitution guarantees.  I agree that the discrimination term is problematic, but I would say it's pretty clear that the Constitution guarantees equal suffrage in any reasonable sense of the term. --Deville (Talk) 00:40, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  suffrage 

message: Well, I promised I'd come back and do some of the work that this article needed, and it's going to be slow going.  I rewrote the intro, and instead of a polemic on Guantanamo Bay, it is now IMHO a fair assessment and overview of the human rights history and current situation in the U.S.  I also removed a few sentences which were tagged by  tags three months ago and untouched.
Any comments here or improvements to the article are welcomed.  -- Deville (Talk) 00:23, 19 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you for your efforts, it now looks more like how an intro to an encyclopaedic article should be, a concise and to the point section. Well done!--Kalsermar 02:41, 19 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree. Good job! -AED 04:37, 19 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Big improvement! Next steps: either remove all discussion of slavery, or add information about slavery to the articles about human rights in England, and human rights in France. In addition, do a search for the text string "Jew" or "Holocaust" in the article on human rights in Germany, and ask yourself what's wrong with the picture.... That is: the human rights records of the countries with articles about their human rights all need to examine the same time frame -- that's assuming that point of Wikipedia isn't simply to bash the U.S., I'm new enough here that I'm not yet certain whether that's the case. --Cultural Freedom talk 19:31, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Reworking the article 

message: I see a lot of discussion about other points, but I don't notice any about this. There is a long list of allegations in the Torture section, but not one citation, except for the number of deaths. This is very bad. We can't just claim the US does this, you need to find reputable sources that state it. I'm not saying they don't, just that it needs to be backed up. --Mathwizard1232 21:50, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Citation 

message: If you guys are NOT going to add it, then i will
*oh no, i feel so repressed--IworkforNASA 01:57, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: May I ask what that means?  24th or 29th?  This was measured by whom?  And how? --Deville (Talk) 02:17, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

text: By whom? --Deville (Talk) 01:17, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: By no one it seems, try not to feed the 'editor' --IworkforNASA 23:04, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  United states is either 24th or 29th in freedom of speech 

message: I hate to add to a big debate, but the statement "The death penalty has been all but abolished in the Northeast, but still continues in the South and West" is not really true, and needs to be cited in any case.  While Texas has the most death penalty cases, most states still have it.  Trying to split the regions (politically) seems unencyclopedic if you don't cite it properly.
=== US related topics - why? ===
May I ask what on earth the "US related topics" at the bottom of the page are doing? They are not serving giving any information whatsoever about the topic itself. In this context, someone might even misunderstand them as a decoy to distract from the critical topic in favor of America-friendly topics. At the very least, the paragraph should be made foldable. 80.133.39.208 19:09, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This is just a sidebar that appears in a number of high-level articles about the United States. The human rights article isn't supposed to be a 'critical' article any more than the others. It just provides information about how human rights are addressed in that country. --Lee Hunter 19:27, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Death Penalty 

message: May I ask what on earth the "US related topics" at the bottom of the page are doing? They are not serving giving any information whatsoever about the topic itself. In this context, someone might even misunderstand them as a decoy to distract from the critical topic in favor of America-friendly topics. At the very least, the paragraph should be made foldable. 80.133.39.208 19:09, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This is just a sidebar that appears in a number of high-level articles about the United States. The human rights article isn't supposed to be a 'critical' article any more than the others. It just provides information about how human rights are addressed in that country. --Lee Hunter 19:27, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  US related topics - why? 

message: --Viy.  I motion to separate the article into two sections; one dealing with modern human rights issues, and one dealing with historical rights issues, such as, "History of Human Rights in the United States."  Right now the history is just a small section at the top, where it is utterly drowned out by the rest.  (Also, on my edit: anyone with a halfway rudimentary knowledge of US history would know that people have been prosecuted for attempting to assert Constitutional rights; Alien and Sedition Act, United States v Spirit of 76, any of hundreds of other wartime prosecutions, usually lumped under "incendiary" speechmaking.  Just or not, it has happened.  TwilightDragon 20:07, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Citation Removal + History

message: I've had a go at removing some of the editorializing and essay/POV talk from the article. This has included:
# Rebalancing the introduction , which was very heavily slanted, to show instead the strong views of both sides in a more neutral balanced light, highlighting:
#* Factors that give it a high profile
#* Additional freedoms and strengths which were not reported, such as strong judiciary, separation of powers, strong views of citizens willing to stand up for these freedoms, etc
#* More balanced representation of perceived problems, but without POV words such as "blatent" (!) . Instead, actually now lists the concerns neutrally without 'standing on a soapbox'.
#* Note the opposing point which is often made, that the US in fact gets unfair and disproportionate examination compared to many countries that are far worse.
# Existing section on actions against other govts was removed earlier today, essentially due to heavy POV slanting and poor style. Encyclopedic content. Rewrote with proper cites , in bullet form, and with more factual sourced descriptions and links.
# Various other fixes, errors, editorializing and POV slanting , eg:
#* The US did not "create" the term "unlawful combatant", nor is this "without basis". Its a Geneva Convention term in international law. The actual controversy is not whether the term exists, it's whether it is being over-used (in combination with rendition) to allow otherwise unjustifiable torture. Corrected.
#* Extraordinary rendition is touched on, but the German case and actual cites as well as the term itself were not really mentioned. Cites and information added.
#* "See also" links for Capital punishment placed in a separate sub-section, should probably be in section header. Fixed.
#* Basis for national security exceptions is poorly explained and lacked examples. Clarify and cite them.
#* Presidential claim of summary powers in conflict notes Lincoln in the civil war but omits Bush and override of FISA in war on terror. Added link.
#* NSA mass surveillance of citizens controversy (ruled unlawful, stayed pending appeal) omitted. Add it.
#* Rewrite health and family to clarify these are considered human rights by some, usual legislative process by others, and to remove editorializing and summarize the main debates, and why some consider them human rights issues.
FT2 (Talk | email) 11:03, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Review