Hillary Obfuscates Rights while Pushing Democracy

We stand for democracy not because we want other countries to be like us, but because we want all people to enjoy the consistent protection of the rights that are naturally theirs, whether they were born in Tallahassee or Tehran.”
— U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton

Posted on Freedom Advocates on April 6th 2010

By [post_author] -This quote from Hillary’s statement introducing Country Reports on Human Rights sounds good but misses or distorts a major tenant of American culture. It is not democracy (rule by majority) that insures those unalienable rights to all individuals – the Rule of Law and the right to private property are the necessary ingredients for people to have the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Democracy does not protect the rights that are naturally ours. Either I misjudged in thinking that Hillary was alluding to our unalienable rights in the quote (“naturally theirs”) or Hillary wanted to give democracy far more credit than it deserves.

Whichever it is, Hillary’s statement is just window dressing – the Country Reports are based on the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights, not the unalienable rights celebrated in the U.S. Declaration of Independence. The U.N. Declaration of Human Rights is based on social justice; social justice promotes the common good as opposed to individual rights. But what is considered the common good changes from day to day, thus the rights that “protect” people (only in groups) can be “taken away” arbitrarily and at anytime. Individual rights are forever – immutable and the same for every person.

I think the key information in this report starts with the paragraph: “The focus of the Country Reports is on the human rights performance of other governments. However, the U.S. does examine its own human rights record in periodic reports required by treaties to which it is a party. For example, the U.S. reports to a range of U.N. bodies, including the Committee Against Torture, the Human Rights Committee, the Committee on the Rights of the Child, and the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, as well as the Human Rights Council.”

While touting that the focus of the Reports is on the human rights performance of other countries (because we, the U.S., are the example for the other countries to strive toward), Hillary listed a whole slew of U.N. bodies to which we have to justify our behavior.

Earlier the paper touted the wonderfulness of the U.S. system, so what more do we need to do? We have in place the Rule of Law and private property rights. We have equal justice. Ah, bingo! Equal justice is not proscribed by the U.N. and its attending bodies. For example, in that conglomeration of committees and councils, not a one cares about equal justice – each has its own politically correct (for the moment) bailiwick that demands to be kowtowed to by the U.S.

All those committees have been set up to destroy the Rule of Law and the right to private property. They ostensibly grant rights to certain groups, never individuals, yet individuals are the only entities who can comprehend and act on rights. Groups do not have rights; they are amorphous, ever-changing collections of people.

And note: in the Country Reports the U.S. human rights record will be reviewed based on a report from the U.S. government AND input from civil society organizations. Those organizations are the NGOs funded and directed by the U.N.

So what we have is an alphabet soup of U.N. backed organizations pretending to support rights for every individual in the world while at the same time doing everything they can to deny individual human beings the right to liberty and the protection of unalienable rights.

This assessment process is meaningless anyway – “The Country Reports assess each country’s situation independently against universal human rights precepts and each Country Report is intended to stand on its own. They are not compared to each other or placed in any order other than alphabetically by region.” What that says is that a U.N. backed program cannot place different values on countries’ human rights protections (or lack thereof) – all values are relative thus all values are equally meaningless.

So why are we paying millions and millions of dollars to the U.N. to assess countries when we can not compare or rank them? This is just another example of smoke and mirrors to accomplish two things: change the meaning of rights and values so that under social justice, rather than equal justice, rights can be given and rights can be taken away.

If this is what the Secretary of State of the United States of America does for a living, she needs to be fired so she can go out and get a real job.

 

 


Hillary Obfuscates Rights while Pushing Democracy by Kathleen Marquardt

 

This article contains links to outside sources not controlled by Freedom Advocates and therefore are subject to change.

 

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