"The fundamental deprivation of human rights is manifested first and above all in the deprivation of a place in the world which makes opinions significant and actions effective. Something much more fundamental than freedom and justice, which are rights of citizens, is at stake when belonging to the community into which one is born is no longer a matter of course and not belonging no longer a matter of choice, or when one is placed in a situation where, unless he commits a crime, his treatment by others does not depend of what he does or does not do. This extremity, and nothing else, is the situation of people deprived of human rights. They are deprived, not of the right to freedom, but of the right to action; not of the right to think waevr they please, but of the right to opinion." (The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt, 1994; page 296).
The secret sauce that transforms freedom into action and thought into opinion is membership in a coherent community. The modern era has dissolved the coherence of community, and so it has stripped away greater identities of the general public.
Civil society and human rights are those irreducible arenas where the coherence of community plays out most intensely.
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