The Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) embodies a political trend that cripples human rights in the guise of crusading for them. This trend is the balkanization, or fragmentation, of rights. Recently passed by the House, VAWA has moved to the Senate, where the trend it represents may well be translated into more law.
Identity politics and its activist branch, social justice, claim to champion oppressed groups. Yet both reverse the process by which oppressed groups have historically claimed their freedom: the universalization of rights. The term “universal rights” means that every human being, simply by being human, possesses the same rights and to the same degree as everyone else. Freedom means every person has an identical and enforceable claim to his or her own body and to peacefully acquired property. Justice occurs whenever this claim