Virtue over Rights

From a rational point of view, human rights and liberal morality that they derive themselves from can only be considered hypocritical and wrong; tools of the powerful that are utilized to mislead the masses.
No form of political morality can be considered valid unless it allows for the effective governance and leadership of the political community and facilitates human wellbeing on a societal scale. If it fails to do this it invites hypocrisy; for you cannot run a political community based on guaranteed individual rights, ethnic self-determination, state neutrality, and similar liberal values, for the state would fragment as a result. Thus the politician is obliged to profess his support for prevailing liberal attitudes while attempting to express real leadership out of the public eye through decisive and effective actions in order to preserve the power and unity of the political community. Liberalism thus forces hypocrisy upon the political elite, and many a hollow election promise was born of this unworkable situation.

This often immense contradiction between theory and practice inevitably leads to a view of politicians on a universal scale as being liars, being untrustworthy, and generally not being worthy of respect. This is the result of poor leadership from those forced to live in two worlds; the world of liberalism, and the world of political reality. This duplicity that is forced upon the political leadership is the direct result of an unworkable moral framework that alienates the individual from the political community: as a result the divide between individual and society widens and society begins to fragment and breakdown. This process is one that may be seen throughout the world as liberal ethics and political realism collide.

The point is this, unless the morality of the individual and the morality of the community exist in honourable accord, the resulting alienation and strife will weaken society to the point of it being reduced to a bickering mass of atomistic individuals constantly clashing and forming temporary alliances against one another. Factionalism, something actively encouraged by many liberal thinkers and politicians, is actually perhaps the most dangerous thing that a society can promote; potentially laying the groundwork for its own disintegration. Individualism and individual rights too often succeed in alienating human beings from one another, thus planting the seeds of social decay. This is why we as Universalists reject rights and instead favour the institution of society-wide standards of virtuous conduct, something that applies to everyone as a member of the community: thus ensuring both the protection of the individual and the protection of societal cohesion.
If morality is not as flexible as human nature itself then it is doomed to contradiction and failure. Morality must be rooted in nature itself, in human purpose and in human potential, in self-fulfillment and in solidarity, individuality and collectivity hand in hand if it is to be effective in ensuring human virtue and wellbeing in society. We are social beings, and our laws and institutions must reflect this truth.