Very few human rights are absolute, and they may be restricted through interpretation and by weighing the scope of rights against other legitimate interests, such as the rights of others; public health, safety, and morals; and safeguarding the basic constitutional underpinnings of the state (referred to as public order). Unfortunately, these permissible limitations are often abused by governments, but they reflect the fact that human rights are intended to set a universal minimum standard for the way a government treats its people, not to ignore historical and societal differences or to attempt to force every country to adopt exactly the same approach in implementing human rights. This is a strength of international human rights law, not a weakness, and it is a mistake to pretend that human rights impose uniform “best practices” on societies that vary considerably in size, level of development, religion, culture, and legal systems. Recognition of this fact is common sense, and it is an effective response to the argument made by some governments that human rights are merely a neocolonial attempt to impose Western values on developing countries.