"Why Refugee Work Is So Important For What We Do"

"Why The World Is Turning To Hannah Arendt To Explain Trump"
https://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2019/11/why-world-is-turning-to-hannah-arendt.html

Hannah Arendt famously questioned the mere existence of human rights b/c of the way liberal democracies treated refugees. National sovereignty usually trumped the human rights of those appearing helpless and stateless on their borders.

"The Rights of Man, supposedly inalienable, proved to be unenforceable--even in countries whose constitutions were based upon them--whenever people appeared who were no longer citizens of any sovereign state (which would enforce those rights)." - Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1976, p. 293.

"The conception of human rights ... broke down ... when those who professed to believe in it were for the first time confronted with people who had indeed lost all other qualities ... except that they were still human. The world found nothing sacred in the abstract nakedness of being human." - Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1976, p. 299.

So, seeing that governments treat refugees better (honoring their treaties and constitutions) helps further establish the existence of human rights.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannah_Arendt#Critique_of_human_rights

PS, yet more of a timely nature...

"The totalitarian mass leaders based their propaganda on the correct psychological assumption that (if found to be lies, many) would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness." - Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1976, p. 382.

Alan: Thanks to Marsh Hardy for sending the above message.