SPEAK UP!

Endowed With Inalienable Rights . . . By Whom?

The State Department has submitted a report to the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights in conjunction with something called the Universal Periodic Review. The report is the federal government’s assessment of how the country is doing on the human rights front.



The very first line of the report states: “The story of the United States of America is one guided by universal values shared the world over–that all are created equal and endowed with inalienable rights.” Perhaps I’m being too picky or hypersensitive, but I couldn’t help but ask upon reading that sentence, “Would it have killed you to say that all are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights?” After, the Declaration of Independence (to which the report is plainly alluding) uses that language.


More substantively . . . the notion that these are “universal values shared the world over” is simply false. I devoutly wish it were true that these values are “universal” and “shared the world over.” But the evidence — including every day’s news — suggests otherwise. To be sure, it is undeniable that all people are created equal and that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights — even if governments do not respect those rights or acknowledge their Source.


Something else that stuck in my craw: the report implies that the U.S. doesn’t adequately respect “freedom of association” because Congress has not yet passed so-called “card check” legislation favored by many big labor unions, but says not a word about the Supreme Court’s refusal to protect (in CLS v. Martinez) a real right of free association.


And then there’s the report’s embrace of the homosexual legal agenda. The report suggests that the unwillingness of the people in most states to redefine marriage is an American betrayal of “human rights.” Implicitly condemning the vast majority of Americans (those who embrace the traditional definition of marriage) as complicit in an alleged ”human rights” violation is truly beyond the pale.


But I am quite certain that genuine violators of human rights will be so impressed by the U.S.’s self-flagellation that they will immediately cease their oppressive practices. Right.

http://blog.speakupmovement.org/university/uncategorized/endowed-with-inalienable-rights-by-whom/