• It is, in other words, a disaster in the making.
Or "READYMADE" as Dada founder Marcel Duchamp dubbed his 'Fountain', a urinal displayed as a work of art, a sculpture, produced in 1917.
8
You have to define sin so the sinner is not you.
276
For trump and the Kremlin West Party/GOP human rights are defined as follows: if you’re a white male you’re human and you have rights - but illegal aliens, women and the environment are all conspiring with the Dems to steal your Lordy given rights. No collision. That seems to sum up this entire dumpster fire of a presidency and the new and devolved GOP. Thanks
57
I'm not sure when I learned about the Human Right that you could give away my stuff. Can I give away yours? Is it a human right for America's homeless to live in your house? Do I have a moral obligation to break down your door and let them in? If you fight back are you a racist xenophobe?
8
‘‘This so absurd as to be unbelievable except that it is real. Each day seems more incredulous than the next.
21
sounds like Pompeo believes that we need to earn our rights...... and he will decide how. this is truly scary.
51
The time has come to reconsider human rights. The pious humanism exemplified by this article is as full of contradictions and evasions as any religious dogma. How can free practice of religion coexist with women's rights? If your religion requires that women be stuffed into a burka and my understanding of women’s rights requires that they be free to wear a mini-dress, we are on a collision course. If your religion teaches that a fetus has human rights and mine that it does not, what accommodation is possible? And what is “inherent dignity of any human being”? I don’t think that a brain-dead human on a ventilator has more dignity than a healthy cow. The UN Human Rights Commission has become a political tool that enforces the Western humanist dogma in a highly selective and disingenuous way. A re-evaluation of the human rights concept is overdue but I don’t think that the president who has never read a book or his administration are the right people to do it.
17
Lately I've noticed that several commentators in various publications have started talking about "natural rights".They go on the describe such rights as independent of the constitution and being intuitive.This sounds to me like the sort of drivel Glenn Beck puts out....phony stories about our history. They never talk about the existence of the 9th Amendment.Just as with the Bible,they cherry pick passages in order to support their screwball views.These folks are trying to rewrite history and this is dangerous.With far right evangelism we have a group who are not really so much Christian as they are a gullible group of "true believers".With their embrace of Trump ,they have shown that they will change their values at "the drop of a hat" so long as some powerful,religious con man tells them to.They want to redefine what our rights are and push the idea that they are"god given."And ,of course,only they can discern what those rights are that god gave us.I am hoping that membership in this group is really "the last refuge (for)..scoundrels"....that they have so debased and trivialized Christianity that some of their members are beginning to have second thoughts.But only if they are exposed to other interpretations and ideas which their addiction to Fox News makes highly unlikely.
44
Trump could save time by asking his dictatorial friends around the world for a list of "unalienable rights". It would be a short list:
1. Whatever I say they are.
44
Modern Christianity too often has nothing to with the teachings of Jesus. Is it any wonder so many Americans have abandoned religion?
43
Just a reminder that door to door nationwide roundups of undocumented brown-skinned people are planned for tomorrow, the Lord’s day. “Then they came for me” will be sooner than you think.
53
Can we please stop making noise that just because someone claims to be a devout Xtian, that they are actually practicing, in any real meaning of that term, being a devout Xtian!
In Trumps Fantasy Land, where he unashamedly claims the same, while we all know the truth to be the opposite, just because Pompeo makes the claim too - don't mean a hill of moldy beans.
Why do we keep describing men like Pompeo as devout? To what end ? For what purpose? So he claims it...great...now prove it!
That these politicians, keep performing their Name-it Claim-it! rituals in public, over and over and over...tells me they are not devoted. Tells me they have no clue what it means to actually be devoted Xtians. In even a marginal way, where the word PRACTICING means what it means...to be actively involved in getting better at a chosen endeavor.
Me going to shoot a few rounds at the local basket-ball court is not me practicing to be a better player. I'm not running drills. I'm not playing against better players. I'm just slightly better at HORSE! Same goes with these weekly Xtian ritual performance artists!
Big deal, we maybe see Pompeo or Pence going to mass every week. So what?!
What did Pence do the other day at that border prison camp? Did he do what Jesus would have done? Did he wash the feet of any of those hundreds of men? (no females, that would have been cheating on Mother!)
No, he stood, arms-crossed as if examining cattle, or more likely slave stock. Pathetic!
45
Perhaps most frightening thing of all is that there were enough people who voted for these monsters to capture the Electoral College and put them in office. And still if one points out the corruption rampant everywhere in Donald Trump's Administration, the answer comes back about the flaws of the Clintons, or a reminder of their hatred of Barack Obama; turn their face away from the fact that they have handed our Republic over to a would-be dictator and his cabal.
38
When can we stop pretending that the modern Republican party and its dysfunctional supporters care about human rights or anything else? They are bitter and stupid nihilists. They just want to provoke "the liberals", whatever that means. Sad!
29
These odious people cannot be out of office soon enough. The damage they do to many others by simply verbalizing their distorted view of what government “ought” to do is incalculable.
26
Consider reading “How Democracies Die,” by the Harvard poli sci professors Levitsky and Ziblatt. They have four criteria to explain the loss of democracy seen with Hitler, Mussolini, various South American dictators, and similar tyrants who, together with sycophants or “elder” who thought they could control the outsiders/rightwing populists.
It is a serious examination of the historical record and unfolding events up to the present (globally).
Trump, his family, his cabinet cronies, and the GOP (McConnell; Graham come to mind) meet all four criteria that these authors lay out for explaining the takeover and destruction of democracy in numerous countries.
We should be very afraid!
Oddly, in most of these countries, the supporters of the autocrats or fascists often ended up being the most hurt, economically and eventually politically. By then, however, turning things around within the country itself was next to impossible!
Whether camps morph into concentration camps, as is already happening here, and thence to extermination camps remains to be seen, but clearly the administration would nit have any scruples about that.
34
To Trump and his followers cloaking human rights in a religious veneer is saying that only the 'religious' have any rights at all. But which religion? Are we a pluralistic society or not? If human rights are meant to apply to all people,atheists, agnostics, wickans, Hindus, Buddhists etc. how can you limit it just to Christians? The separation of church and state was meant to prevent favoritism for one religion over others now all of that is threatened. Perhaps science as far as it represents another view point on the world will be tossed out the window in a fit of 'religious' frenzy.
30
Dear Mr. Cohen,
I certainly do not wish to be identified with Mr. Trump’s human rights record, but I do want to spotlight a glaring contradiction in your comments on his Commission on Unalienable Rights.
You say:
Modern human rights are grounded on the dignity inherent in every human being. They are not God-given rights. . . .
What dignity, exactly, is inherent in every human being? Classically, inherent human dignity was premised upon the biblical doctrine of creation, which is that as humans we have dignity and value because we were created in the image of God.
If that is not the basis for human dignity, sir, then please tell us, what is?
We do not have dignity merely because we or our representatives would like us to have it. We can only have it if it is rooted in some aspect of reality.
If as humans we do have value as a matter of objective reality, how can we account for it? If God did not give us this dignity, where did it come from?
Thomas Alderman
3
A right by definition is inherent in being human and is to be respected. By making the statement “which rights are entitled to gain respect,” Pompeo reveals that the goal of this so called Commission on Unalienable Rights is to remove the rights of targeted groups. This is what tyrants have done throughout history. The real goal of this commission is to bring the US one step closer to tyranny.
30
Rights granted by leaders or governments are worthless. God given rights are only possible when leaders and government are tightly constrained by what they cannot do to citizens. The idea of God given rights may rankle some, but any rights give by man or committee is subject to whims or circumstance and can be changed. That concept matters as imperfect it is. Conflating 'rights' as meaning guaranteed education, housing, food,medical care,clean air/water is not freedom. Those tasks are the main responsibility of free people coming together on local and state levels, with minimal oversight regarding basic standards.
Freedom of thought,conscience,ideas and speech are under attack in leftist strongholds, these rights are not worth giving for promises of free stuff..you can't have both. Freedom comes with individual/ community responsibilities.
3
The administration that prefers dealing with the authoritarian regimes over the democratic ones, has little regard for the rule of law, undermines ethical norms, and has little concern for the environment can only be expected to be contemptuous to the very idea of human rights.
25
Rights don't exist in nature, they are interpersonal. They emerge from rules we agree will apply to all. When we say there are natural human rights what we really mean is that some formulations of rights are universally necessary features of all fair systems. Recognizing this is not monstrous, it's insistence on clear thought.
12
You are describing civil rights, those established through agreement within the society that we belong. Not to be confused with human rights that exist be virtue of being human.
10
This America is and will continue to be a society that protects the wishes and needs of the Oligarchs. We will continue to do the bidding of the 1% and big Corporations. Religion, specifically that of the Evangelists, is just a very willing participant in the thrush for total power. The Oligarchs have done very well for themselves, they control all three branches of Government. The remainder are simply pawns in a losing game.
10
1984
31
Human Rights should be sacrosanct in American foreign policy and not a tool for partisan political pandering.
It is debatable whether this administration even understands what the USA exemplifies globally. To tinker with it and bring religious dogma and beliefs as a prism through which Human rights should be practiced is myopic.
19
... Hold them in concentration camps...
C’mon Roger, you can use the word.
16
Why would Americans let men - Trump, Pense, Pompeo, etc. - who have violated rights of people lead an effort to redefine our rights?
They want a theocracy with "natural rights" that only apply to people like them.
This country was founded by people fleeing governments controlled by brutal religions. We should not let our government officials take us back to that.
28
Pompeo's words "...which rights are entitled to to gain respect" are a chilling echo of the Dred Scott decision. Do these people hear themselves?
36
Of course they hear themselves! All this appeals so much to the rightwing “base” that the administration autocrats will repeat this sort of stuff until the cows come home, or until they get the totalitarian government they want!
12
@Maryellen Simcoe
Oh they do...they most certainly hear themselves,and they like it! We're hearing the usually quiet parts being spoken very loudly...which is the super-power that Trump gave them...
14
Our best hope for the outcome of this august body is that the incompetence of the administration will cause it to go the way of the commission on voter fraud.
Everything that comes out of WH and the GOP is fraud at its core. It really is the one thing they know something about.
23
Is Russia, China, Brazil, Iran and North Korea included in this international consensus the opinion piece speaks about? If human rights are not God given then they are given by men, right? I suppose if all else fails and a right of center politician installs himself (lets face it, women don't make good dictators) as a dictator in the U.S. we can always become a communist country, cause that usually works out well for human rights.
3
It is actually pretty simple: Pompeo and Pence want a theocracy. That was the religious right's price of admission into Trump's orbit, and now they want their payback. The only difference between them and Khomeini from Iran is that Pompeo and Pence don't (yet) wear the theocrat starter-set (long beard and robe). But give it time....
32
When are they going to start the Hunger Games?
19
Donald Trump is, as he claims, a stable genius.
He can muck out a horse stall with great skill.
In fact, he's been shoveling it for years.
25
The only thing Trump works hard at is destroying America's moral authority.
17
I *am* suggesting, Mr. Cohen, that the Secretary of State does, indeed, “want to go back there.”
Chattel slavery and the disenfranchisement of women are clearly the centerpiece of the Trump administration’s attempts to “re-invent the wheel.” It is part of the legacy with which he and his swordsmen (and swords-women, to coin a phrase) plan to disembowel the rest of us, “the others,” who do not count.
The president has no reference at all to the sufferings of various people throughout history and is too lazy to learn. He is probably brought in a “briefing paper” which he does not read; he merely approves after his chief flunky has given him a one-sentence summation of the hard-right evangelical platform. I would be greatly surprised if he has even heard—or understood—the word “Holocaust,” with all of its awful clattering synonyms of genocide; ethnic cleansing; forced removal without reparations; child separation and endangerment; religious persecution (Muslims); state-approved murder (Saudi Arabia and Russia and North Korea, e.g.) and so on. To this terrible man, the present and and past perpetrators of these unspeakable evils are “very fine people.”
He wishes their—and his—cruelties to become de rigueur worldwide without dissent from any quarter.
We’re in a very dark and narrow place. I doubt, absent Donald Trump’s electoral defeat next year, that we will find our way out.
28
Trump, et al and human rights is an oxymoron.
21
Warmonger Mike Pompeo's being put in charge of a new effort to further reduce human rights is yet another instance of the degradation and corruption now plaguing this country.
With each passing day under Trump's authoritarian regime the norms, traditions and reputation of America sink deeper into the muck of geopolitical shame, disgust and distrust.
The world is watching. Other countries no longer share as they did before their high-level state security intelligence: Trump might tweet their secrets away.
Trump's craven acolytes hold on to his coattails out of fear and for temporary personal gain. Many of those rogues hail from shady pasts and are now in jail.
We are venting criticism all daylong, constantly documenting and denouncing these assaults, yet we remain strangely frozen in actual inaction. I've never seen such a thing.
oz.
21
Does anyone doubt that this is exactly the sort of thing that Trump “discussed” with Putin? He learns from the masters.
17
What is exquisitely repugnant about the Trump is his desire for 'droit de seigneur', or, 'the lord's right'; to invade the intimacy of the vassal's home and abuse its inhabitants.
Trump's vulgar desire for intimacy with us all, via his penetration into our personal space by creating a ubiquitous sphere of indecency on all media formats is a gross invasion of our privacy.
Like the Lord of the manor having his way with your brand new bride.
The founders wanted to spare the people of The USA such a fate.
10
The irony of Mike Pompeo, "an evangelical Christian whose beliefs infuse his policy [who] appears ... to turn back the clock," rests in his cloaking his retrogression in the shroud of the ultimate protogenitur of human rights, Jesus Christ the man. Jesus would cast these earthly contemporary hypocrites from the temple of human degradation faster a fly from a swatter.
The good "faith-based" folks in America who support the evil cruelty of the Trump administration might be evangelical but they are anything but Christian.
27
Why would Americans let men - Trump, Pense, Pompeo, etc. - who have violated rights of people lead an effort to redefine our rights?
They want a theocracy with "natural rights" that only apply to people like them.
This country was founded by people fleeing governments controlled by brutal religions. We should not let our government officials take us back to that.
266
Trump's base bought his cool aid, that he is all for human rights, so in an attempt to draw a few more into election year web he creates a 'human rights' commission which has as much substance as his appearing with fracking and coal barons as an 'environmentalist'. He knows he can not win this coming election with just his rabid base so knowing it is secure he tries tacking to the middle. Trump has always banked on the gullibility of Americans and if he is reelected perhaps that is what a huge swath of us are.
9
Pence visited a USA concentration camp yesterday and observed 400 men locked inside a chain link fenced area so small that only a third of them could lie down at once.
Pence smelled the odor, heard the calls of dismay, and saw these men who have had their human rights ignored. He said he knew it would be bad, and declared his visit proof of a crisis.
Pence stood with arms folded, a body posture indicating discomfort. I guess his Christian empathy was in full bloom, there before the cameras. I guess he will pray for those men. I guess he will not try to convince The Boss to act to alleviate their suffering.
Cruelty in every act of leadership, that is what we are seeing, Folks.
37
Why are The evangelicals going on mission trips this summer anywhere? These camps are in the US, and most of The detainees are Christian! Save money and help more people! Pence should know this.
11
Religious rights are only for the Judeo Christian religion.
7
@christina kish
I’m Jewish. I’m not part of this “human rights.”
6
@ cristina kish
Please, tell me you’re merely being sarcastic.
2
You have to have very short memories if you think that Trump is a new paradigm on human rights.
The Guantanamo concentration camp was running during Obama, the CIA torture centres as well, the secret prisons, the internationally unlawful war of aggression against Libya, the secret drone attacks killing civilians, and so on.
Trump is nothing new. U.S. has never in practice been a champion of human rights.
3
“Let me come with you," said Henny Penny. So the two ran and ran until they met the duck. “The sky is falling down,” said Henny Penny,“so we're going to see the lion and tell him about it.”
Read NYT for the lion. Chicken Little, Henny Penny and the duck are the commenters.
The Sun will soon be travelling around Earth again.
14
"For Pompeo, religious rights are plainly human rights*
Any religion or money worshipping, xenophobic, homophobic, white Evangelical true Christian claiming faith?
6
hope this group goes the route of Chris Kobach's inquiry..down the tubes
2
How can you be a Secretary of State and not understand a Right for a Human? Despicable. You have found your niche in the perfect place and with the trumps. History will remember you and decipher accordingly.
13
Where are all the so called Christian leaders who advocate for the downtrodden?
13
Helping the down trodden doesn't mean voting more federal programs.
2
Oh great! Another phony department to tell us all we need to revisit the good ole 1950's when men were men and women were quiet. This would be comical if it wasn't so astounding coming from an administration that is being compared to Caligula. And no, Caligula is not a venereal disease.
18
All about human rights except the rights of the human babies who just haven’t traveled down the birth canal yet. The left just cannot be taken seriously when they persistently fret about the rights of illegal aliens but they support the ‘termination’ of life all the way up to birth. Is it really impossible for the vast majority of progressives to understand their moral hypocrisy?
2
Human rights will apply only to U.S. citizens and legal residents.
Then only to U.S. citizens.
Then only to natively born U.S. citizens.
Then only to white, natively born U.S. citizens
Then only to white Christians, natively born U.S. citizens.
Then only to white Christians, registered Republicans, natively born U.S. citizens.
Then only to white Christians, registered Republicans, natively born U.S. citizens, Trump voters.
Then only to rich, white Christians, registered Republicans, natively born U.S. citizens, Trump voters.
Then only to Trump family.
Welcome to North Korea!
26
@BWCA
The rest of the developed world sees and understands that the USA is a century behind in evolution , trapped in their evangelical hell , denying science , clinging to their bibles and guns. So sad for the enlightened among them.
eg 46% Americans Believe In Creationism According To Latest Gallup Poll http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/05/americans-believe-in-creationism
8
"Human rights" are very inconvenient. How are we to put kids in cages with all of these annoying so-called "rights" given to every Tom, Dick and Harry?
14
What happened to America?
It has become Trumpia.
8
Great choice of photo to support the article.
2
"War is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength" - Ministry of Truth 1984
16
The unenumerated rights of people has been a cause for contention between citizens since the founding of our country. What progressives fail to see is how disruptive each new declaration of rights can be.
For instance, President Trump is assailed by the left for barring transgender people from enlisting in the military. They are confident that Mr. Trump is a bigot (defined as anyone who disagrees with them for any reason), but fail to recognize his own statements in the past that didn't oppose transgender people, but expressed a live and let live attitude. What is different now, and likely prompted his ban on their enlistment, was that the transgendered figured out that they could enlist and use the military's medical system to obtain a free sex change operation.
This elective surgery is expensive and, suddenly, the military found that it was often paying for it. They were caught by their own liberal rules and were paying for something that civilians must generally pay for on their own.
Transgendered people gamed the system to their advantage. The result was that a businessman president stopped their efforts from continuing. That doesn't make him a bigot, it makes him a conservator of public funds.
Personally, I pity people who feel adrift in their own skin. However, I don't think that we are responsible for paying for the alteration of their healthy bodies.
I don't know what the proposed commission will do, but it may be more practical than bigoted in its efforts.
1
It was always about us gays.
A nasty part of Putin's autocracy rests on using us as fodder. "trump" read up on that when he got his "welcome!" package, titled "What to expect when you're expecting tyranny", after Chapter 1, "So, we stole the election for you! Now let's talk about getting rid of sanctions!!".
Well, we a got a few good years in. I spose they will still want us to pay taxes right up until the moment they take us away.
8
This has all to do with abortion. The commission will establish that a fertilized egg has the same rights as an adult. This is only meant to whet the appetites of evangelicals for a second Trump presidency. It is to gin up the base.
17
My cynical view is that there are really only 3 basic rights in the USA: 1) the right for rich white men to make as much money as possible with no regard for justice, the common good, or even human decency; 2) the right of white men to have as many guns as they wish in case they want to shoot people they don't like, e.g., African-Americans, schoolchildren, Muslims, Jews, etc. and 3) the right of straight white men to sexual pleasure whenever and with whoever they please. (The woman or girl is to blame for any unfortunate consequences, of course).
Any other rights for non-whites or women are corollary and secondary to these.
15
Do you people realize that what you're saying means nothing when facing a gun, a knife, a club, a rope in the hands of a true believer? And there are a whole lot of them in this country. And they back Trump and the GOP to the limit. And Trump and the GOP know it. And they love it. This thing with Pompeo illustrates it. And, know this, they are your neighbors. Ugly, really ugly but there it is.
13
Maybe we should start referring to the State Department as the Ministry of Truth.
15
Evangelical supporters of Donald Trump who call themselves 'Christians' might want to consult Matthew 5:3-12.
Here, the Disciple lists the Beatitudes of Jesus, as spoken in the Sermon on the Mount.
It'll make for eye-opening reading for the MAGA crowd.
Trump's actions vis-a-vis immigrants, the persecuted and the poor are the diametric opposite of the teachings of Jesus Christ.
NOT my president
18
Whenever you see anything described as
“faith based” run a mile because you can be certain it’s religion interfering in politics where it has no right to ...I’ve met and conversed extensively with these dominionists and evangelicals and in my opinion they are incredibly dangerous because they are wilfully ignorant and utterly deluded and they shouldn’t be allowed within a million miles of anything pertaining to decisions about human rights . They are the ultimate fake human rights advocates and are a supremely negative malign force in any country they operate in and I mean operate.
16
An administration that would callously and cruelly cage children while cozying up to ruthless authoritarian dictators like Putin and Kim is looking to redefine human rights? No good will come of that.
17
It is clear with the present state of this administration that we are all loosely related to the apes. Hence the perennial teenager, the destructive egos and rants, the love of making mischief, the delight in chaos and noise, the confusion and agitation, the descent into the small and feral and the mere animal behavior. We are heavily into undoing civilization because it is restrictive behavior. We want freedom, freedom to pollute and rape and pillage as we see fit. The ape again. Rears its head.
12
Opinion columnist . What does it mean ? About as much as this article.
Only in the USA you can read papers in the press that are so futile and empty.
Imagine if Spiegel was publishing papers like this that can fly like a folded page airplane. It is high school level.
So, now we’re in some rights are more equal than others territory? Hilarious. Scary. Hard to tell, nowadays.
10
Donald calls himself "a true Genius". He probably believes this. He probably believes he has a God given right to separate children from their families and put them in filthy camps where many of them have to sleep on the ground.
These migrants came here without papers. so they deserve to be punished. Right? They should have stayed where they came from and left us alone. Right? But "papers" were created by Irish and Italian politicians to get rid of Chinese immigrants in the 1920s. Now most Americans like Chinese immigrants but fear Hispanics? Why do so many Americans follow Donald's sick lead?
The person we should abhor is Donald himself. During the Vietnam war he was called for service in that fight, but he was a coward and pretended to have an injury which prevented him from serving in Nam. He didn't care whether his substitute was killed or injured. He only thought of himself. That's the kind of man we call our president. He's not afraid to make children sleep on the floor, but he was afraid to fight for our country.
13
It is not a human right to crash gates.
2
"...a disaster in the making" is right! Religion that is intertwined with state is corrupted by special interest power. Pompeo and Trump is like Pilate and King Herod. They will come up with more ways to crucify the poor, women, people of color and the champions of human rights!
5
If the guy won't leave in 2 years, or even (please now imagine Stephen Colbert feigning nausea when he talks about our great president) in four; fine (not really!), we still have the burgers the guy loves to death to make him leave without a constitutional crisis :)
1
Roger, the problem is that when you say things like "[The administration] has withdrawn from the United Nations Human Rights Council. The United Nations Human Rights Committee and Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination are both without a United States member," it almost sounds as if you believe membership in those organizations accomplishes something, andin fact has something to do with human rights. It doesn't and it hasn't, as I thought everyone knew. Either you're easy to fool or you think I am.
Mike Pence's disgraceful performance today at the south Texas border station shows that nothing about the trump-Pence administration is faith-based. It's all lies, hypocrisy, and cruelty all the time.
17
I believe the commission has a much more ominous and subtle goal. The gradual dismantlement of our founding documents through 'critical' examination. The Declaration of Independence declares what our unalienable rights are, and by getting a bunch of weirdo religious nuts to weigh in, they hope to gradual sow distrust in our founding documents. Then the Republican Party can finally do what their predecessor party (Democrats of the mid-1800s) failed to do....call a Constitutional Convention and dismantle our Union in order to build their autocratic coalition of dysfunctional state governments.
And doesn't Pompeo sort of resemble Ernst Roehm? Let's all hope for his upcoming night of the long knives....
3
Pompeo asks, “What does it mean to say or claim that something is, in fact, a human right?”
Mr Pompeo, does the right not to be killed and dismembered and disolved in acid in one's embassy count?
13
My Congressman sits on the House Appropriations Committee. I have asked his office to look into refusing funding for this 'committee', which is really an alt-right religious cabal.
If you have a representative on the committee, pleases make the same request to deny funding.
With no funds, they might fade away.
If you haven't read the 1948 Declaration - find it as an illustrated printable pdf here:
https://www.un.org/en/udhrbook/pdf/udhr_booklet_en_web.pdf
6
We used to hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal............................
8
The UN has provided us with a Declaration of Human Rights.
2
Maybe it is an attempt by trump and his inept administration to provide cover for all of their numerous human rights violations at our southern border and detention centers. As to Pompeo's claim that the administration “takes seriously the founders’ ideas of individual liberty and constitutional government”, are those the same founding fathers many of which "owned, bought and sold" black slaves?
3
Well, it's finally happened, he who shall not be named, has spoken. Next I expect to see commands coming out of "heaven" from the same he who helps God run the universe in his spare time.
This is an insane time in our country. And it may be time to move. May we real human people and the real God help us all.
7
Perhaps Pompeo of West Point wants to enlist all fundamentalist Christians in the Trumpian ransacking of the Constitution, especially with respect to abortion and gay rights domestically and in favor of his militarist, imperial foreign policy which will bankrupt the country. Christ's message is peace, and war is for those who want to get rich at others' expense.
11
You're repeating some talking points that totally crumble on further inspection.
"On gay and transgender issues, it is hostile; its attempt to dehumanize the trans community is evident." - Where is the evidence for that? How is he dehumanizing trans people? By not eagerly flying rainbow colors from the White House lawn?
"separated migrant children from their families to hold them in appalling camps." -- This is a purposeful exaggeration. Every president including Obama has done this and to a much lesser degree than the hysteria would suggest and only in extreme circumstances where forced by current law.
"Ruling for life is one of those ideas Trump keeps injecting into the national subconscious — as a joke, of course." If it's a joke, why write about it? This is the same kind of humor and John McCain saying "Bomb bomb Iran."
Given who is running it and who set it up, I hope that this goes the way of the hot-air election integrity commission that the grasper Kris Kobach was running a while back.
7
The most inhumane administration is going to come up with a new definition of human rights? Gee how many ways can they destroy our Republic/democracy while creating their theocractic dictatorship?
5
Does Trump even know what human rights are? IS Pompeo a Christian Zionist or a Christian Dominionist? Whatever he has no business using his religious convictions as a justification for policy. He is way out of line, but then Trump would not know that as whatever pleases the base pleases Trump.
8
People who give tacit approval to child abuse, sexual predation, hate, and racism, know nothing about human rights.
14
Mike Pompeo (Pompous) and Pence are obviously the Trump administration's Batman and Robin who are true Christian evangelicals as they condone philandering, lying, cheating and hate against immigrants, women, gays. Just to mention a few of their beliefs they put forth in the name of the Lord. Everyday in this heinous administration, Friday afternoon seems to be when this inept and incompetent administration drops things to keep the optics going over the weekend. I pray that someone will arise like a Phoenix to rid America of the scourge that is the Trump administration.
12
My family has Holocaust survivors. I have vivid memories of hearing them recount their experience in the death camps. As they exited the trains, Nazi officers made summary judgments. If they pointed to the left, Jews were executed. If they pointed to the right, the Jews who they considered able to work were dispatched to the labor area. This is not unlike what we are witnessing with Trump's treatment of refugees trying to escape the horrors in their native countries. Trump is not executing any of them but his aggressive campaign to prevent their quest for freedom by impounding them and separating them from their children is no less reprehensible.
5
It's been a disaster in the making and to write the truth it has been aided and abetted by the Republican Party. Have they no shame?
4
This phony Trump commission has zero legal authority. It cannot promulgate rules. It can’t order arrests. It can’t do a thing beyond writing a report that will be unread.
In short, who cares?
"The president operates by such insidious design: corruption through repetition." Thanks for the perfect nutshell, Roger Cohen.
A slim majority is not in the thrall of the calculating jester. His facade as the leader of American democracy is paper-thin. Every chance that he gets, he mocks its boundaries, rules, and our institutions. It's obvious; and it's horrid.
For Republican Party members, regular helpings of outrageousness are nothing to worry about. Losing to Democrats is The End of Times:
-- literally, for those who are devoutly loyal for its theologic trappings (opposing abortions, homosexuality, enemies of Isreal AND their liberal enablers) and
-- symbolically, for those who find that the single issues of immigration and white male victimhood VANQUISHES any inquisitiveness quite satisfactorily.
Mike Pompeo's commission was set-up as the authority to define human rights -- in order TO ENERGIZE the church leaders to develop this generation and next generations' theologic voters and their symbolically aligned brethren. Period.
It's akin to McConnell stealing and weaponizing the Supreme Court nomination in 2016. With much pomp, Trump the Evangelicals' list that contained Neil Gorsuch's name. Pompeo "takes seriously" the retention of Republican power, so the Evangelicals' list will again prevail on their allowable human rights.
4
Mr. Pompeo seems to be setting himself up as the new Torquemada for the 21st century Inquisition, following the Papal "Bull" of Pope Innocent III: "Anyone who attempts to construe a personal view of God which conflicts with Church dogma must be burned without pity."--
Beware of Dogma.
5
This is surprising? Let's see how Pompeo and all of those "evangelical Christians" react to the forthcoming lurid Epstein/Trump details. WWJD? JC was very clear on harming children. Let the spinning begin.
2
"The president operates by such insidious design: corruption through repetition."
Only the mindless believe the lies of a propagandist. Only a useless 2 party, fake democracy, will enable a society of mindless people.
1
When the wicked rule, the people mourn.
3
Nothing this administration might put forward regarding rights of any kind -- human, civil, animal, environmental -- can have any impact. By condoning the terrorism of family dismemberment as a means to scare off asylum seekers, the President and his loyal GOP lapdogs have squandered America's standing as an authoritative voice on human rights. They have destroyed in 30 months what it took two centuries to build up.
5
When I first heard this, I didn't have my brain turned on. An hour or two later, I realized that something isn't right. And then the penny dropped. Trump, Pompeo et al. are going to try to tell us that a whole bunch of things aren't human rights. And we know by their words and actions just what those things are. Because they clearly believe that a whole lot of us are not fully human and do not have the same rights, entitlements, and prerogatives as white conservative men, especially rich white conservative men. American women, for instance. For them an embryo the size of a pea has more human rights than a rape victim. For them rape is just "boys will be boys."
7
Pompeo and trump would gladly go back to slavery if they thought they could. They don't believe in religious rights. They want one religion to be supreme and don't care at all about the others.
2
So what, pray tell, do Trump and Pompeo find wrong with the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights?
Here are the first 3 out of 30 Articles:
Article 1.
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
Article 2.
Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.
Article 3.
Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.
https://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/index.html
2
That the streets are not filled with protesters and the electorate not strongly motivated to defend Democracy and the rule of law, shows what a willing bunch of wimps Americans have become.
3
I'm glad you're bringing this to light. This terrifying move by the administration is transparently, blatantly malevolent. Every American should pay attention.
In 1935, German leaders passed a number of new laws that redefined citizenship in Germany. The purported motive was simply to ensure the country's survival and to reclaim a stature that it had lost. But in fact their real motive was obvious: Jews and others lost their rights to citizenship and were stripped of the right to vote, making them stateless and clearly vulnerable to further monstrous abuses.
We keep thinking it can't happen here. But it already has. This newspaper has already been classified as an enemy of the people. You're reading it. What does that make you in the eyes of this administration?
10
@S Jones-you are so correct-I read the NYTimes for truth in the chaotic,delusional world Trump has created.
4
Remember how Bernie's babies and bullies said there was no difference between trump and Clinton so they stayed home or voted Jill Stein? This ongoing abomination is on YOU!
4
For this administration to champion human rights is, yet another, appalling affront to reality. Can the internment and suffering of migrants really be seriously considered to be maintenance of human rights? How does Pompeo sleep at night?
For Trump et al, unless you’re a one percenter, a sex offender whose friends solicit children for gratification of themselves and others, a racist and a bigot, a misogynist and a misanthrope, a tax evader, charlatan, protector of the unborn, torturer of the born, and all round cad with a staunch belief in God, one is not human so one’s rights need not apply.
We live in the age of toxic hypocrisy. Let’s not die in it too.
5
Mike Pompeo' s surreal creation of a panel to define "human rights" is theatre of the absurd material. It's chairman Mary Ann Glendon, besides being homophobic, opposed the use of condoms to prevent the spread of AIDS, compared the awarding of the Pulitzer Prize to the Boston Globe for its investigation of sexual abuse by catholic priests, to awarding the Nobel Prize to Osama Bin Laden, and refused a prestigious medal from Notre Dame, because the university invited president Barack Obama to give the commencement address. Compouding the utter hypocrisy of the administration's " Human Rights Commisision " was Mike Pence's visit yesterday to a detention center where detainees, in an image reminiscent of Srebrenica, stared back at the Vice President from foul smelling cages.
10
that's one scary gov't you have down there.
6
This, from the paper that cares not a wit about the rights of US citizens over people coming here illegally. Free health care and government support for them... not so much for citizens. Give them drivers licenses & let them vote because we know voting is what it’s all about. Build a constituency of dependent but reliable Democrat voters. Cloward-Piven in action.
Democrats complain about the ‘cages’ at the border - the ones that Obama built. They love to complain about child separations for lawbreakers entering illegally but they never complain about child separations when US citizens are incarcerated & separated from their kids although the latter happen all the time. I am not aware of any ‘family’ prisons in America.
Democrats have truly gone around the bend. They have no rationality except votes & power. They understand how to pander for these quite well.
1
If Fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.
Lewis Sinclair
8
The ultimate aim of this “restatement “ of human rights is to allow conservative, White Christian males “to control every living thing.” Leonard Cohen was quite prescient in his song “The Future.” It will be murder. For all of us.
4
""They are not God-given rights.” That says it all. Roger Cohen needs to spend less time traveling and more time here.
The Trump Administration Declaration of Human Rights
Preamble: There are two kinds of human being. There are Americans, and there are all others. All human rights are derived from one’s identity as an American. All others have no such rights.
1. You have the right to decide what is true and what is false. You may use that decision to attack others. However, no one may use your decision to attack you.
2. You have the right to love those who are like you, and hate those who are not like you. A claim upon your love from someone not like you is in itself a direct violation of your basic human right, and should be severely punished.
3. You have the right to attack before you are attacked. If you attack someone who proves to be innocent you are cleared of your guilt by virtue of the fact that you feared their attack.
4. You have the right to use “God” to defend every project you undertake regardless of its moral or immoral dimensions. God himself is required to obey your just and rightful claim upon his support.
5.You have the right to insure the continued dominance of all supporters of Donald Trump by whatever means necessary. There are no wrong means, as long as absolute victory is achieved.
6. Donald Trump himself has the right to be president and all other human rights derive from this fundamental American right. Violation of this right is to be referred to as “treason”.
We hereby testify.....etc etc etc
1
My very wonderful father -- the owner of a candy store -- was arrested by Gestapo agents in Gleiwitz, Germany (today Gliwice, Poland) on Kristallnacht -- the Night of Broken Glass (November 9–10, 1938) -- and was sent to the Buchenwald Concentration Camp.
If he was still with us today, he would tell us that what is about to happen to undocumented migrants here in this country on Sunday is just the beginning.
7
International law, including the laws governing human rights emerges by way of consensus. The United States is now about to upend that consensus.
But the move away from the very framework that we helped pioneer has been in the works ever since our illegal war of aggression against Iraq.
Democrats and Republicans have offered excuses and rationalizations for our selective recognition of human rights if they called US policy into question and that trend has now taken its most egregious turn with the formation of this commission.
Trump and Pompeo not only intend to ignore international human rights law, but to redefine it, at least for what the US is willing to accept. Might is about to replace right.
The US has always used political pressure against countries and international bodies that sought to apply human rights law to the conduct of our own policies.
One of the worst examples is our refusal to sign the ICC treaty. And for obvious reason. If international law were fairly applied both former president Bush and VP Cheney would have been indicted for their crimes.
Instead, the ICC limits its attention to former African strongmen and an occasional case from war between Serbia and Bosnia.
We can only hope that the hypocrisy shown by this latest move will receive the international condemnation it deserves. And as with issues like foreign trade, the international human rights community may see that going it alone, without the US is the prudent option.
4
I'm not worried. When enough people realize that theocrats have infiltrated our political institutions, the whole plot will backfire on them. The result might end up being called Enlightenment 2.0.
I think that the phrase “In God We Trust” on our money needs to go for the simple reason that money, God and government are associated. Associations run deep regardless of our waking consciousness of them, and certainly when engraved on every item of our currency and means of exchange. The association of money, God and government is exactly the problem that threatens to overwhelm this country. I also don’t understand why Christians would accept the idea of their object of worship printed on or associated with money.
7
Since one of Bernie Sanders‘ core principles is that healthcare is a human right, I look forward to Pompeo’s commission explaining why it isn’t.
1
Should we build family prisons so that we don’t separate children from their parents who commit crimes?
2
Please note that being undocumented is a civil crime, most of which are punished by fines, not prison. Seeking asylum is not a crime at all. If we must hold people in detention until their cases can be reviewed, then, to answer your question, it would be preferable for families to be kept together in humane conditions that recognize their human rights to safety, health, and freedom from violence. We should not be outsourcing this role to private corporations whose only concern is maximizing profits. The prison-industrial complex in this country must be dismantled, not just for immigrants but for the rest of the prison population as well.
7
Regarding Trump’s ongoing “jokes” about serving more than two terms: he isn’t serious but he is setting the stage for a presidential run by one of his kids. You can be sure that a Trump presidential dynasty is in his sights.
This, along with aggressively addressing Climate Change, should be # 1& 2 Planks in the Democrats Platform in the upcoming elections. Make no mistake, this election will decide whether or not we remain a free country based on a Democratic model of government, with human rights or truly become a right wing Authoritarian Dictatorship in the Russian model. Vote as if your life depends on it. It does!
8
Trump’s new Commission on Unalienable Rights smells like a re-election ploy to me.This will be an encouragement to the Evangelicals to believe in Trump even though he has run roughshod over every tenet of Christianity.It will be a re-definition of morals and standards which will fit nicely into the Trump playbook of whatever works to keep him and his crooked cronies in power.This commission cannot erase the pictures of caged children at the border, of women recounting their stories of sexual abuse and it cannot erase the horror many of us experience as we see our Constitution under threat. The Unalienable Rights Commission is just another iteration of Trump University which was an abysmal failure.In the meantime doesn’t Pompeo have enough on his plate with tensions with Iran and North Korea!
5
Goes with the "unitary executive" theory of Executive sovereignty. Redefine torture (ask the FBI about its "disruption" ops). Redefine human rights. Do anything you want and dare another branch of government to catch and stop you. You can't be caught if what you do is plausibly deniable, covert, clandestine, or the tapes are destroyed. Result: shadow government/deep state without legitimacy ripe for exploitation by Russia, see also "insider threat", "coup d'etat".
3
I can tell you exactly which human right Trump, Pompeo, and their bogus "commission" want to eliminate: birthright citizenship. Get rid of THAT, and all other "rights" under the Constitution VANISH.
Trump's visceral hatred of Hispanics is well-documented, but there is a deeper, more insidious strategy at work here. Get rid of birthright citizenship, then you can get rid of "anchor babies" born in this country, and then you can easily get rid of those babies' parents--the "undesirable" Central American and Muslim refugees that Trump constantly rants about. Ship 'em back home!
Trump could also redefine the political landscape by taking away voting rights from people no longer considered to be "citizens." Hispanics are the fastest-growing political bloc in the U.S. Trump would LOVE to neuter their growing power.
Trump wants to do an end-run around the 14th Amendment. Take away birthright citizenship, and you can then re-define "citizenship" according to the post-Revolution standard: land ownership. You want to vote? Buy land. You can't afford to buy land? Tough luck.
As far as Trump and his cronies are concerned, the only people who have "human rights" are the wealthy, since they can afford to "buy" their rights. Remember that Trump sees EVERYTHING in terms of a business transaction. You want life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? Show me the money! After all, we live in a capitalistic society. The first rule of capitalism is "You get what you PAY for."
10
While I agree with the overall points being made by this article I would point out that withdrawing from the UN Human Rights Council is entirely logical and defensible.
That council is unquestionably one of the most hypocritical international bodies in existence. Of its 47 members at least 10 have absolutely no respect whatever for human rights and many more are of doubtful pedigree.
33
@handyandy
While the various UN commissions regarding Human Rights do indeed have strong political motives (many of which are contrary to US positions and interests) and have been hypocritical, and other US administrations have complained about them, refusing to participate is akin to saying "if you won't let me be team captain, I'll take my ball and go home". The US should be confident in the morality of their positions and be of strong enough character to "suffer the slings and arrows" directed in our direction to still participate in these commissions in an attempt to influence world position on these important matters. The Trump administration has shown that it does not care and therefore should not be believed in any pronouncement on what constitutes a "true" human right.
63
@handyandy. How would you characterize the Catholic Church? And yet I don’t see people fleeing it. Many stay to make the words and actions conform to their higher goals.
23
Remember when Trump said he was going to give his supporters an additional 10 percent middle class tax cut right before the 2018 election why don’t his supporters demand that and hold his feet to the fire to get it?
People in power wanting to define and redefine inalienable rights. How about not trampling them before getting into the minutia or what they are.
So the rights that were proclaimed as self-evident by The Founding Fathers in the Declaration of Independence no longer have, but must re-gain, their preeminent status.
Do We, The People, realize what that means?
9
@JiMcL-There only self evident when power takes them away.
1
Cohen writes "Modern human rights are grounded on the dignity inherent in every human being. They are not God-given rights." To be pedantic, I'm not sure what he means by "modern," but it may mean that very few, if any, white Northern hemisphere democracies today don't base human rights on religion. If so, this is almost certainly correct. Individuals within those societies might, and, as a historical matter, human rights are tied to the Judeo-Christian religion in the norther hemisphere. The difficult question is what rights are human rights such that the government should protect and promote them. It leads to a second difficult question, what happens when there are conflicts between those rights. Labelling opposing positions is a conclusion rather than an analysis as shown in "anti-abortion" vs. "pro-choice" debate. Having been pedantic, let me state the first thing is to throw as many of the haters and hate enablers out of office as possible, beginning with the top two.
3
From the Wall Street Commentary that Pompeo wrote, it starts off with “America’s Founders defined unalienable rights as including “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” They designed the Constitution to protect individual dignity and freedom. A moral foreign policy should be grounded in this conception of human rights.”
It seems to me that “life” could be easily interpreted to include the fetus which would negate woman’s right to an abortion. And if the commission follows that line of reasoning at a foreign policy level, it would provide support of that position at our local national level.
2
None of the Marines I served alongside joined up and fought so some self-righteous, mean-spirited, narrow-minded zealot could take rights AWAY from people. His words reek of the same attitude that oozes from the new and improved swamp the White House has created.
Work fast Pompeo, 2020 is almost here and your time as patron saint of bigots is just about over.
19
Every time I calm down, I read about some new abomination. It is as if every kook, cave dweller, misogynist, racist, and lunatic has crawled out and turned up running a White House approved purge or pogrom. Did someone open some Pandora's box full of every ancient and not so ancient screed against free thought and human dignity?
Every evil perpetrated in history has turned up in this administration.
26
the evangelicals can always be counted on to do the unchristian thing......
21
What kind of peabrain thinking is this? We are going to spend money on this? Seriously? Do you remember the teacher that gave you pointless busy work? While the goals (or non-goals whatever their stupid murkiness is) are repulsive the ability of these chessepuffs to ever deliver anything is close to zippo. I thought Jesus and the Bill of Rights pretty much settled this nonsense. Oh, sorry not the evangelical Jesus - his message gives more leverage to venture capitalists.
10
"As head of the commission, Pompeo appointed Mary Ann Glendon, a Harvard professor known as a zealous opponent of abortion and same-sex marriage."
In 1995, that same Mary Ann Glendon, a militant and radically conservative Catholic, was the Vatican representative to the international 1995 Beijing Conference on Women sponsored by the United Nations, where she contested the use of condoms for the prevention of HIV and AIDS.
On November 4, 2002, in reference to the Boston Globe's Pulitzer Prize nomination for its award-winning coverage of child sexual abuse by Catholic priests, Mary Ann Glendon told a conference of Catholics that "if fairness and accuracy have anything to do with it, awarding the Pulitzer Prize to the Boston Globe would be like giving the Nobel Peace Prize to Osama bin Laden."
We know what kind of human rights Pompeo is talking about:
Christian Shariah Law rights.....and presumably no right to live for gay men....and no human rights for children systematically raped by Catholic priests.
This is the most radical Presidential Administration in American history.
Vote in 2020.
110
The only "rights" that are important are for the following" grifters, con artists, white evangelical male "christens" dictators and of course trump and his cult.
5
This president is horrific. Even more horrific is the support he has from all the elected GOP officials and about 40% of our fellow citizens.
I can reluctantly accept that we elected by error, perhaps even in a fraudulent way.
But now we all know, no more errors, just many Americans supporting his record, his lack of respect for human beings, migrants but also Americans, like when he tells police to not protect people's head when arresting them, his lack of respect for women, his lying, his praise for those marching with a Nazi flag.
And still his base cheers him on.
6
While it is appropriate to confront the endless parade of Trump affronts, the loyal opposition may do itself harm by adopting hyperbolic rhetoric. In the long sweep of history, justice will always prevail. It's sad that a US president will do so much to impede the progress of humankind, but after Trump and his minions return to the shadows, light will inevitably prevail.
So why discredit the thesis with hyperbole, "disaster." Rhetoric matters. The natural response of Trump-supporters is to entrench even more, without considering the otherwise solid argument. Trumpism may even provide a historically positive effect: it has revealed that many of our fellow citizens are not onboard with concepts of social justice. It has opened a dialogue, an opportunity to make cogent, non-inflammatory arguments . . . to convince. We must redouble our efforts to bring them along too.
1
"... It is a perversion of terms to say that a charter gives rights. It operates by a contrary effect—that of taking rights away. Rights are inherently in all the inhabitants; but charters, by annulling those rights, in the majority, leave the right, by exclusion, in the hands of a few ... They ... consequently are instruments of injustice ... The fact, therefore, must be that the individuals, themselves, each, in his own personal and sovereign right, entered into a contract with each other to produce a government: and this is the only mode in which governments have a right to arise, and the only principle on which they have a right to exist.
—Thomas Paine (Rights of Man, I, London, 1795) echoing if not building on John Locke (Age of Enlightenment)
That the US gov't has no representatives on the various UN commissions and committees dealing with Human Rights says a great deal with this administrations concern with Human rights and disqualifies it from any effort to re-define them. Of the many actions taken by Trump this may in fact be the most frightening. Americans beware. Our job is to vote Trump out of office so that the job of healing America and our governmental institutions may begin. While each of us has our preferred candidate for president, if we do not want a 2nd Trump term we must unite around whoever is the Dem candidate and vote for him/her voicing a vote against Trump and all that he stands for.
11
Many of us tend to be tolerant of well meaning folk trying to reinvent the wheel. But it must surely be a joke when three of the most despicable humans in the US - Donald, Mitch, and now Mike - want to shed fresh light on human rights. The Christianity they profess is a travesty; their respect for Harvard “intellectuals” when it comes for help to foist their evil ideas on a gullible public can be called ‘pragmatic’. The Trump administration is at best a Ship of Fools heading for a monumental shipwreck.
The last time we trusted a Harvard professor as a Nobel Prize winning genius the world had to endure the Vietnam War. With Pompeo we should not be surprised by a new Inquisition.
11
For everything Roger said in this article there is another side. For example, he said Trump likes and embraces Kim. That may be true currently, but the purpose of that is to achieve a much larger goal, denuclearization of Korea. This is the current tactic Trump is doing, it may or may not work, but that doesn't mean Trump is embracing dictators. Roger is simply misleading the people by his faulty analysis simply because his dislike of Trump.
2
I used to have a live and let live attitude toward evangelicals as long as they left me alone and didn't try to convince me to be "born again." I no longer feel that way. I now feel the evangelicals are the biggest threat there is not only to our human rights, but to life itself.
14
Let us call it what it is: Dehumanization of any and all who run afoul of who Trump and his administration consider to be fully human.
Trump has been, since the inception of his campaign, openly declaring others to be non-human through the use of epithets and nicknames the demean and dehumanize any and all who dare disagree with Trump and his devoted followers.
Here we are on the eve of what could well become America's "night of broken glass" when people adjudicated to be deported and all nearby are rounded up, imprisoned and deported. Little wonder that this administration want to come up with it's own definition of who is, and isn't, really human. Then, let the reign of terror begin as those described as non-human become legitimate targets for the rage felt by a minority of Americans.
5
I agree that Trump’s human rights position is terrible. Amen. So why will he be re-elected? Weird, no? But we’ll get what we deserve.
To be able to understand human rights, these people would actually have to be part of the human race. It is obvious they believe otherwise.
3
This is designed to be nothing more than another disingenuous and cynical political pander to the evangelical right.
8
Please vote out this dangerous administration. They will undermine all democratic norms.
7
"...but the body is predominantly conservative and religious."
The statement would have been more accurate to state instead "...but the body is predominantly conservative and hypocritical."
Further, when Pompeo states the commission will examine "which rights are entitled to gain respect," my question is--- to gain respect by who? If it is to gain respect by the same group who respects a president who has told more than 11,000 lies since taking office, paid off porn stars to remain silent, separated parents from their children, admired brutal dictators and tried to silence a free press, I'll pass.
I'd rather they despised me.
13
Human rights are the fulfillment of their primary needs
There was a reason why the framers inserted freedom of religion in the 1st Amendment. Its purpose was to prevent the federal and state governments to be controlled by the church.
For 4 decades the Christian right has been trying to change this by entering politics and forcing their interpretation on the country. Unfortunately, these groups do not follow all the teaching of the Bible, just the parts they want to believe.
In addition, because of their fear of becoming a minority, they have embraced the idea that WASPs only are true citizens of the United States, and this was some kind of divine purpose.
So, to those, who now control the GOP, and the White House, they don't want to go back to 1948, or 1789, or 1776, but to 17th and 18th centuries; to the days of Calvinists and Puritans (up north) and to the antebellum south. To the days of a very white, protestant US, with enslaved minorities and committing genocide against native inhabitants.
FYI, because Hispanics, south of the border are of Native American blood, to these so called Christian Americans, they are seen as just savages, just like their ancestors did.
So, it is plain hypocrisy to expect the current administration, and the policies of their party, to truly accept anyone who is not a WASP.
7
Another RePutinlican initiative to get right-wing single-issue voters to vote against their own economic interests in favor of further wealth transfer to the puppet masters.
7
I’ve been saying this all along about this presidency is that the question we have to ask ourselves at the end of the day is not are we better off economically—but are we as free as we were. A cabal if faith-based activists who have publicly stated they must have power by any means necessary are dominionists. The Republican Party seeks to have dominion over you. This means taking away your freedoms—which we are already seeing both subtly and overtly.
An attempt to define human rights means a challenge to the Declaration of Independence and the constitution, folks. Did you really sign up for this?
It’s not just norms they are breaking, people, it’s the very foundation of the laws that have guided and held this thing together for over two hundred years.
Trump must be gone by 2020 BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY, your freedoms and rights are at stake now, this is not a conspiracy, these are the facts.
9
ANY MEANS? I would rule out assassination, though, which would most likely make things worse. Trump’s supporters are armed and dangerous. Pence’s are less cowardly than Trump’s. Congress must impeach—and make it stick.
I am reminded of the scene in an episode of Man in the High Castle when Lady Liberty in New York Harbor was destroyed. But in the Trump/Pompeo version, she's mutilated.
3
This is scary stuff. I don’t see how Pompeo can look himself in the mirror since he acts like an apprentice SOS to Trump, Jared and Ivanka.
The fact that Trump is talking about not leaving office should disturb everyone in this country and the world. Heck October 2019 seems way to far away to endure Trump. At the rate we’re going Trump may have declared himself King by October 2020.
Every member of Congress should be standing up to Trump.
8
Clearly some people are more equal than others. Trump has been running the ‘President for Life’ idea up the flagpole for more than a year, now, and he’s watching who salutes. He will declare victory in 2020 no matter who wins, and again in 2024. Then Ivanka becomes Pres. Hmmm. Free speech will have gone the way of the dodo bird by then so who will be left to object?
2
We live in a democracy, not a theocracy. If Pompeo wants Christian theology to inform our understanding of human rights, my question is: which version? The version espoused by a baptist minister giving an invocation at a KKK rally? The Roy Moore version? The Jerry Falwell Jr. version? The GOP/Evangelical/White Nationalist Political Complex version? The aims of this commission are a pure pander play to Trump’s base. He would love to let his evangelicals discriminate against anyone, anytime, merely for any perceived contradiction to their professed beliefs, calling this a human right. However, Trump has no problem getting schmoozy with authoritarians, like MBS and Putin, when it suits his private goals. In Trump’s world, there is no hypocrisy, just pragmatism.
7
Another case of the rabbits guarding the lettuce...
4
What's next a commission to review the Bill of Rights to see which ones are worthy of respect?
How about a Trump commission to review all of our laws to determine which are worthy of respect? Wait, wait, the Trump regime has already done that and none of our laws are worthy of respect, by him or his family or cabinet that is.
As to Human Rights, we already have the answer of the Trump gang, he is showing off his answer by kidnapping children from their parents' arms, putting children in cages and human beings who have committed no crimes, adults into camps camps where they are so concentrated that they cannot even sit down.
Trump's answer is that there are no human rights. Your rights are proportional to how much money you have the whiteness of your skin and the political party you are registered for as well as your gender and they ruthless of your Christianity.
4
That we can read and understand that all this is true, and even contemplate a second Trump term , beggars belief. The number of decent people who revere the law and the Constitution should make it unthinkable. If all Democrats, and most Independents, and truly conservative and principled Republicans get behind an opponent to Trump, he will be soundly defeated. If ever there is a time for the people of the United States to truly unite with a common purpose it is now, it is this administration, it is this president. The ninth amendment indeed,
6
That Trump and Pompeo place themselves above the Founders, and those who followed in their footsteps such as Abraham Lincoln, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Martin Luther King, is unremarkable. The Trump attack on the rule of law and constitutional order is mere routine by now. It is striking, however, that with the establishment of this commission Pompeo places himself above whom his fundamentalist faith defines as the giver of human rights, his deity.
The only purpose of such a commission is to deny rights to disfavored groups. Those groups are as clear as the headlines; women, migrant children, people of color seeking to exercise the vote, legal immigrants, among others. Pompeo’s denial of his own faith measures the extremes to which this administration will go to achieve their dark agendas.
1
I wonder whether this administration might have a special, secret department dedicated to exploring ways to support Trump policies and to undermine anyone opposed to them.
By this I mean ANY ways , no matter how nefarious or illegal or outrageous. An example would be the idea of including the citizenship question in the upcoming census. or the idea of reducing the "tax" on the uninsured in the provisions of ACA to zero and then claiming it is no longer a tax.
This one, the formation of a "Commission on Unalienable Rights" is, as Roger Cohen points, hilarious but chillingly ominous given that it should be obvious to everybody by now that this administration's respect for or interest in human rights is zero.
2
Pompeo et al are setting the stage for making it official that the government owes nothing to anybody: no obligation to treat prisoners or victims of catastrophe humanely, no obligation to provide for education or health care, no protection against religiously-motivated persecutions or mistreatment (such as the mobs of vigilantes at abortion clinics or the seemingly ordinary people fomenting hatred and discrimination against gays, etc.) No, you're on your own; nobody has any obligation to help you, because these kinds of things didn't make the list. For all those commenting that we're on a slippery slope, I agree; but consider that the Pompeo mindset also thinks we're on a slippery slope, and they want to make it clear that the government owes you nothing, neither assistance nor protection. I also don't rule out this being a case of a religious but job like Pompeo just taking his own wacky steps to help set up the kind of world that he envisions personally.
1
Pompeo et al are setting the stage for making it official that the government owes nothing to anybody: no obligation to treat prisoners or victims of catastrophe humanely, no obligation to provide for education or health care, no protection against religiously-motivated persecutions or mistreatment (such as the mobs of vigilantes at abortion clinics or the seemingly ordinary people fomenting hatred and discrimination against gays, etc.) No, you're on your own; nobody has any obligation to help you, because these kinds of things didn't make the list. For all those commenting that we're on a slippery slope, I agree; but consider that the Pompeo mindset also thinks we're on a slippery slope, and they want to make it clear that the government owes you nothing, neither assistance nor protection. I also don't rule out this being a case of a religious but job like Pompeo just taking his own wacky steps to help set up the kind of world that he envisions personally.
1
Oh, boy. Now that we're not going to be granted human rights just because we are humans, I'm assuming that we'll have to fill out another of those multi-page, ungrammatical, opaque government forms to apply for whatever human rights we want. I'm hoping that I can be grandfathered in, because for sure I'm too old to go out and earn them. Or maybe I can just take a couple of small rights just to carry me through until whenever. Would that be OK, Mr. Pompeo?
6
Trump is the most dangerous President we have ever had. Yet 40% of America do not know it despite his standing in front of cameras on nearly a daily basis and hollering things that evince his belief system that is 180 degrees contrary to that of our founding fathers, our constitution, and how we have evolved over 243 years into (until his Presidency) the most respected and trusted nation on earth. Either they just don't appreciate his desire for despotism or they actually want it. They should spend an hour online to study up on the fascism of the first half of 20th century Europe and how it came to power. There is an important lesson there. As Santayana said, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." It is our choice. Are there enough people in enough states who do not want to repeat it?
The easiest way to make America great again is to not re-elect Trump.
25
Cannot wait to see the final document coming out of this commission--with an addendum listing all the exceptions to the list of human rights: 1) assassinations; 2) torture; 3) disposing of bodies--acceptable methods; 4) humane executions
3
Greed, resentment, hate and cruelty applied to the weakest redefined as virtue.
4
Trump, the champion of self-control and ethical behavior, supports this commission. But, what else are we to expect at this point?
1
The fact that we are forced by circumstances to think about the arrogant claim by Mike Pompeo of a need for him to convene a “Commission” to define human rights is an indication of how far our democracy has fallen in the short time since Donald Trump, by hook or by crook, became president.
If Donald Trump wins the 2020 election – and the stepping stones are being put in place to give him every possible advantage – we will see a “grassroots movement” announced shortly after Inauguration Day to repeal the 22nd Amendment limiting a president to two terms.
By the grand plan of Pompeo and Trump, Americans will then only be allowed to make choices from a limited menu which the Trump Republicans place before us. Dissent will fade away, as the Great Leader tells us what he and his acolytes have determined is the correct path. Criticism will not be tolerated.
If somehow Trump loses the 2020 election, we may see armed insurrection by right-wing patriots who dispute the result and insist that the election was rigged. That would mean blood in the streets.
Given the grim alternatives, it is still vital that Donald Trump lose in 2020.
18
Here is the easiest way to steal people's rights - define them away.
24
The person to head the "commission" is Mary Ann Glendon, a more ominous sign of where this new body is headed.
8
I haven't seen any photos of Pompeo's wife but at least Pence's wife doesn't seem to have to wear 4 inch heels and tight dresses all the time like most of the women working in the White House! I grew up in the era when women had to wear dresses or skirts everywhere no matter what the weather and, living part of the year across the street from a Mormon church I've watched women come to Sunday services in skirts and sometimes heels despite snow and cold while men showed up warm pants or even in overalls. Once, coming to a meeting at the Washington Athletic Club in Seattle in my new camel's hair pant suit, the Manager was called to decide if I would be admitted to the premises. If evangelicals try to bring back those days, watch out!
1
@Susan in Maine
I once was fired for refusing to wear a skirt -- in the 1960's. I am not fibbing. Fired for wearing slacks. Buy a woman. Today, in my 80's, I still don't wear skirts. Or shoes that make one look like a stork walking.
1
The Trump administration, and the Republican Party for that matter, would feel very comfortable in the Capitols of 1930's European fascism. They are really quite amazing. The fact that this is in perfect alignment with Putin's propaganda themes for the Western liberal democracies should not be missed. Trump and his cadre continue to be an asset for a hostile foreign intelligence and security apparatus.
12
Trump and McConnell's minions have usurped the courts; now they want to write the laws according to their most unChristian christianity. They are rewriting the golden rule ". . . and thy neighbor as thy self."
We must immediately impeach him (them.)
9
There are 2 distinct concepts each warranting separate discussions:
- Human Rights
-Rights of US Citizenships
Detention centers are exactly as the definition implies. It’s not a night at the Waldorf. The overcrowding and problems are the direct result of a system being overwhelmed.
The definition of human rights have evolved and expanded as our culture has changed.
30 yrs ago the term transgender was the punchline to a joke. We have progressed past those views.
The establishment of a commission on unalienable human rights is warranted to bring into focus the various views. I’m sure if the liberal left brought the concept to the table first, it would have been praised. Instead it’s being vilified by those who should embrace the concept and look to influence the outcome.
The Rights inferred by US Citizenship are set forth in our Bull of Rights which I truly doubt many have taken the time to read. These rights have been refined and expanded through legislation.
The liberal left intertwines the rights of citizenship with those of human rights to fit their own agenda.
2
"...if the liberal left brought the concept to the table first, it would have been praised." Praised by whom? Surely not by the Trump administration. A quick look at their record on human rights, legal rights, civil rights and more is not encouraging. Only the rich seem to expect a night at the Waldorf as a standard of living (for themselves) The rest of us, - including the masses of humans presenting themselves at our border - have a more realistic expectations.
2
Too much philosophizing about these chimps who for a day rule the circus and try to make the most of it; and again too much credit given to Trump's cretinous tweets (which actually he probably sends around just to provoke).
The Trump presidency will likely end at the end of next year and later on will be viewed as an aberration, to carefully avoid in the future. Unless of course, the extreme left will gain the upper hand with the Dems, in which case the Trump years will repeat themselves.
But either way, this incessant hand-wringing is becoming tiring. Make fun and ridicule this loathsome president, but don't get excited unnecessarily.
1
Why wouldn't the U.S. withdraw from the UN Human rights commission. Look who is on it. It's agenda is political and has nothing to do with human rights. It's only purpose is to e a punching bag towards Israel. Why does Roger Cohen decry leaving this biased organization that doesn't care about human rights. It makes me doubt the sincerity of RC concern for human rights.
2
Perhaps the most under reported story of 2019. Where is the liberal outrage? Where are the protest marches? Where is the drum circle?
This is why we can't rely on voters 18-26 .. they have no idea what is going on [in the world] around them unless it significantly impacts THEM!
2
Tell this young freshman squad in the house to get in line and the hard left to put down their guns. Trump wins and the GOP holds the Senate, Supreme Court Justice Bachmann , Pirro or Palin will be on the bench to hear the cases they have teed up to reverse the last 50 years of progress in human rights, civil rights, voting rights, reproductive rights, labor rights, etc. etc. etc. The religious right will fall all over themselves in support to have a female friend on the bench and the GOP will have a reliable Clarence Thomas like vote! We thought the idea of a President Trump was crazy too, didn't we?
4
I’d like to know from a trump loyalist where they see all this going. Any out there? Should any and all active resistance to trump and his agenda somehow miraculously fall away, what’s your vision for the USA, beyond broad generalities like “winning” or “booming economy?” Many Trump skeptics see a dystopia. My concern is that your vision of utopia is no different.
3
The billionaire class will be needing surfs to polish their possessions. Chomsky is spot on about our fearful leaders.
What good is wealth without someone to lord over?
3
In the original seven articles of the Constitution, the word “God” is not found. The word “religion” is not found. The only word like them that is found is “religious”. It is found in Article VI, at the end, where it says, “...no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.” A religious test is used to make sure you are of a specific religion (or even just any religion) before allowing you to do something.
First treaty the United States made under the Constitution (the Treaty of Tripoli) states plainly, “...the Government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion...”. The President signed it, and the Senate ratified it.
I just wish that our top government officials could (and would) actually read and understand our history.
9
@AS Pruyn
But, then, everyone is sworn into office with hand on the bible. I've yet to know of someone who refused to do that.
Evangelicals are intent on creating a religious oligarchy. Democrats will not save us if they continue to focus on pet issues that the majority of Democratic voters don't care about and are under attack by Evangelicals and conservatives in general. The key goal, the primary focus should be on unseating Trump and regaining control of the Senate. Otherwise, we are doomed to the backward, counterproductive goals of the religious right.
8
What has happened to this country?
I no longer recognize it.
6
I go with the original: "We hold these truths to be self-evident...."
3
@Jay Stephen
That Declaration assumes that there is a "creator" who made all "men" equal. I say it's long past time for a rewrite of such nonsense.
1
The administration's attempt to discuss or rework what Human Rights are would be just another reason to vote in 2020.
7
“How can there be human rights, rights we possess not as privileges we are granted or even earn, but simply by virtue of our humanity?” The fact that Mike Pompeo appears to believe that putting human rights on a sliding scale of earned rights vs inalienable rights is a reasonable excersise should frighten anyone reading that sentence. That this man also professes to be a Christian boggles the mind.
6
@R. Duguid
Those words inviting christian soldiers to march as to war frightened me from infancy. Then came the burning at stakes, and then the wiping out of infidels, and then....
2
@R. Duguid - Pompeo talks like a Dominionist, a "christian" who believes his god told him and those who think like him to take dominion over all the earth, starting with taking over every level of government and rewriting laws to force all of us to live by their warped version of christianity. They also tend to follow the prosperity gospel, which tells them that the rich are wealthy because they've found special favor with god, while the poor or sick suffer because they've so displeased god.
4
Pompeo is just reflecting what his boss is. He is painting Trump's portrait with his horrific remarks and, let us know where this country is going. Human rights are the rights of the people Trump likes and the ones with no voice to dissent from this administration. The ones with the most human rights are the Trumps. Human rights are not for everyone.
I might be wrong about my perception of Pompeo and he is applying for a much better-paid job with MbS at Trump's back and, plans to move to Riyadh. Time will tell.
I hope most Americans do not lose their capacity for amazement and repulsion at these abominations.
7
@Aurace Rengifo - Unfortunately, it's likely that Pompeo will run for the Senate seat in KS, and even more unfortunately, he's likely to win. If I were a praying person, I'd say "pray for us."
1
Wow. I had no idea this was happening. Thanks for the reporting.
I doubt Trump has any idea that this is going on. This move is typical of the unrestrained power grabbing of American Evangelicals who are too insecure to live side by side with people who don't share their religious faiths and practices. These people can't handle the questions that come up when being told that homosexuality is just a normal way of being human, for instance, or the Islam is just as important a religion as their own.
This kind of zealotry is anti-democratic and anti-american which is why extreme forms of evangelicism remained in the shadows for much of the nation's history. They have no ability to govern a nation because their beliefs preclude the idea of nation. It is frightening the power they now have and will continue to have over so much of our nation. It is unlikely they will go back into the shadows, so the real question will be how can they modify their thinking to allow the rest of us to be their equals.
4
@rick - When I read this, I think immediately of the article on whether Afghan women will lose their recently gained rights if the US and the Afghan government make peace with the Taliban.
1
We have rights.
They don't. Nor should they.
Simple. It is pure Pompeo.
7
It is a slippery slope, indeed, when you look to find ways to exclude certain groups from being worthy of having their rights respected. Once you are able to exclude people, say gays or transgenders, or religions you disagree with, what then? Is extermination acceptable? Mistreatment? Jailing them? Re- programming? The other quetion this raises is are we defining human rights so that those who don't currently respect human rights will, by the new definition, be heralded as now reaching the standard and those who condemn them for their actions as no longer worthy of being listened to? So Putin, Kim, and Erdogan become pillars of society by the stroke of a pen. Might as well get it over with and prepare Epstein's pardon now. Wrong is right, right is wrong. And there is only one book of rights....written 2000 years ago. Long before slavery, the holocaust, or Trump.
@Walking Man
That book was written 2000 or so years ago by a bunch of men. There were no rights for women mentioned anywhere. (And slavery had existed well before those guys wrote their little rules to live by; has ever since.)
2
"No plausible reason for this strange initiative has been given. Trump, having shown willful neglect toward human rights, now wants to redefine them."
This little project of Mike Pompeo has flown under the radar so I applaud Roger Cohen for devoting his column to it.
Isn't it wonderful what Pompeo is doing in a week when the "unalienable" or "inalienable" or the just plain "human rights'"of sexually violated young teens and immigrant men, women, and babies in cages in Texas, Florida, and Arizona have dominated the news?
It appears that Pompeo and Trump seek human protections for the very people who've always used them in the exercise of power: rich, powerfully connected, white, Christian men, and yes, "their" women.
People of color, members of the LGBTQ commnity, Muslims, selected ethnicities, and asylum seekers need not apply. Not in Trump's America where dictators are praised, and allies stomped on.
It's a perverted world view Mike Pompeo is creating, a "might make right and praise God" ethic mission reminiscent of the Cruades.
It would be funny if it weren't so sick.
10
Rights? Only billionaires have rights and they have the right to do anything. Wake up.
5
Strip away the pageantry and just beneath the surface one will find that religion has always been about controlling the hoi polloi. Although the elite seldom believe the message of religion (Trump and company) they desperately need it as a most valuable tool for the maintenance of power. Threats to religion are threats to their privilege. If God doesn't set up rulers, what would support royalty? Long term, however, they kill the credibility of their god by outrageous behavior, demonstrating that the whole thing was a sham. Christians, not Nietzsche, caused the death of god.
2
Underlying all of this, with the implicit and explicit destroying of the United States ideals, highest values, and best intentions as manifested through law, governance, and culture, is cruelty.
Cruelty and fear of harm and retribution are becoming more and more the way the administration governs.
Can the United States be considered a free country anymore with its citizens living under this approach? Pursuit of happiness is more than just economic. It has built into it the sense of happiness and fulfillment which can come under governance which allows citizens the freedom to be.
Americans just don't seem to have a sense of this deep down, inside, anymore. The traditional, rights, good standards, and values of this great country are being manipulated so as so as to be conceptualized as being radical and not allowed.
And the citizenry seem not to be aware of this or just don't care or feel helpless.
What have we come to?
8
Seemingly Americans had become bored with fairly competent leadership. They wanted to make the Presidency entertaining believing nothing could possibly go wrong. Now we know. Trump has become our first Roman Emperor. He ignores or frightens the rest of government and rules by decrees based on whims. Trump has his Pretorian Guard. He has his mob, those people like him, who are concern only with their own privilege. As long as he satisfies them, he keeps his power. Like the mob, his morality comes from fear. His only principles are making himself more important and secure in his position. Human rights are his right to remain in power. Are you not entertained?
13
Thank you for writing this. The announcement of this commission is the scariest thing in the news since Trump took over. Writers who say our rights are not hard and fast are wrong; many are codified or have been upheld by courts. Don't forget patients' rights including the right to protect our medical information, thanks to the late Edward Kennedy, who also gave us the 1970's investigations into the Tuskegee Syphilis medical experiments conducted by none other than the U.S. government, and led to another "bill of rights" for research on humans, modeled after the Nuremburg Code. What with humans suffering inhumanely in camps today in our own country with no rights of due process apparently, the thought of Nuremburg should bring a chill to us all.
8
Contrary to popular belief the USA has never had inalienable rights in its history. The entire nation is simply a compendium of shared myths the majority of the population believes at any one point in history.
The SCOTUS is the final arbitrator of what the myth should be at any one particular time. Sadly those who have the political power make and enforce the myths.
5
I agree with this editorial completely. I think, however, one point that “devalues” rights in this country is how loosely the term “right” is thrown around in political argument.
For example: I personally believe everyone in the USA should have full medical coverage! I believe, like millions of others, our society should do this. But I emphatically maintain the full medical coverage is NOT a “right!” It is something that an inclusive, benevolent society should provide for its people but it is not a right belonging to the individual.
I believe it would be very wise for this country to come up with a way to finance higher education, but no “student” is born with the “right” to higher education or society paying for it.
My point, when the term “right” is applied to anything and everything, it’s value is so “cheapened” that the concept of “rights” becomes nothing at all.
Let us not confuse man made policy with “unalienable rights” belonging to all humans!
7
If not a doctor to assist in birthing our people or treating your gun shot wound, would your “benevolent society” consider eating food as a right or a favor? Shelter? Reading?
1
@Joe B.
Not sure I understand your question entirely, but I’ll say this:
Eating food is definitely a right. Having someone grow the food for you, cook it and serve it to you is definitely NOT a right.
Lucky for us, neither Pompeo nor Trump could redefine human rights that are baked in the culture of 21st century.
They could create certain setbacks temporarily, they could ruin the reputation of the U.S. and with that create various excuses for all kinds of nefarious regimes around the world, but mostly it is an exercise in cruelty towards those they deem inferior - the weak, the poor, the needy!
U.S.A., as a country, is so much larger than the tiny personalities now leading it. There will be a lot of work ahead to correct the damage, but the country can do it. And it will!
12
Thanks Cohen, for casting light on this obnoxious development. Hopefully the democrats realize what is at stake in the coming elections, if we have the Confederates retaining Washington, or if the Union comes back. No distractions please.
2
Trump and the religious right have no business defining human rights. Trump has an affinity towards totalitarian leaders like Putin and Kim, uses their demagoguery and nationalism, ignores their violent abuses of human rights,
conducts a cynical foreign policy program with no regards for human rights, and has an anti immigrant program with forced separation of children, detention centers with inhumane conditions, and celebrated deportation raids on families.
The religious right are intolerable fundamentalists that are against women’s rights and reproductive choice, gay marriage and equality, transgender protections, and they want to impose their theocratic notion of the truth on the majority of Americans by controlling the Republican Party and the Judiciary system. Their only interest in human rights is political
as an attempt to impose their prejudices on what is already fundamentally well known. Human rights means the right of religious freedom - to believe or not believe in any faith.
It implies that there must be a separation of church and state and that religious fundamentalists have no right to impose their beliefs on those who do not share them. I do not want the religious right to try to alter this fundamental principle, but I know they will
attempt to do so in this commission.
9
Human rights have expanded way too much over the centuries. Now almost everything is being considered a human right. Look at the migrant crisis. I do not see this as a human rights issue. I see that this is a national security issue in which we have to do all we can to secure our border and prevent these people from entering the U.S.. We have the to decide who may enter this county and we have a right to prevent the we don't want from entering.
This is but one example of an area where some want to state that people have a human right to migrate to any safe country.
That has been the position of many in Europe and you see how that is working out
Pompeo is right. We need a good discussion on human rights and recognize that it has expanded very broadly, without everyone participating in the discussion. Not everyone agrees on what is a human right, and what is not!
For example I do not believe that FGM is something which justifies asylum, but is rather a cultural issue to be decided locally rather than international issue.
7
@Judith weller
They have become expanded because civilization tries to be more moral as time goes on. Esp. countries like the US which had completely expanded the notion of human rights with the declaration of independence.
And our laws and treaties are what makes seeking asylum legal, decided long ago.
And long ago our own supreme court stated that rights were for everyone, even non citizens.
Sure a minority doesn't agree with what human rights should be.The people who think gays, women, and minorities shouldn't have the same rights. But the majority and the law states that all deserve the same rights.
What we need really is to protect the rights of everyone, not just those some people like that give rights to them and ignores others.
38
@Judith weller. Until you can put yourself in the place of those on the other side of each of these issues, you will never see them as human rights. That is what Mr Cohen means by a shortage of empathy. So long as migrations are seen as invasions of our space, without really understanding the plight of those fleeing, human rights will never come into the conversation. And in the case of FGM, so long as your body is unviolated and secure, it’s difficult to appreciate the plight of a young woman whose parents, extended families, villages and culture all threaten her physical and emotional health.
32
@Judith weller, as I recall, the ruling party in Germany in 1933 was solidly behind your position that refugees have no human rights to move to a safe country. That's apparently why we changed the international rules on refugees, and granted those rights after the tragedy of the second world war.
55
The only faith-based belief that ties Trump, Pompeo, Pence, McConnell and their ilk together is a deeply held faith, informed by experience, that they can use religious animus as a hammer to punish their enemies and as a rallying cry to keep their supporters/marks in line while they rob them blind.
It's an old play, but a good one having worked across centuries and continents and multiple religions, always supplying a seemingly endless number of people / cannon fodder who believe that human rights are the private property of their God and only their God.
22
It seems to me that most of the actions, language, and initiatives of Trump and his followers tend inexorably toward bigotry, cruelty, fascism and autocracy. In ways both subtle and draconian the fabric of our culture and society is ripped apart and refashioned in an ugly and Orwellian guise. Much of this bears a terrible resemblance to the very worst of the regimes of the 20th century, and I fear for the future of this country.
16
As an old southern white straight male veteran I should be happy about this but I'm not. I grew up in the deep south and experienced first hand how the people were influenced by religion and ignorance. Thankfully the"real" God was with me and I was not contaminated by their zealous hatred of others.
Myself and others also not infected came up with a word for it: Ignoramus. I'm not sure if is really a word or what the official definition is, but for us it meant "A person who is not only ignorant, but intensely refuses to become educated ". Trump would fit right in.
The tinniest bit of light in this dark, religiously inspired drive to have an all white world is that,if they succeed, then they will find that the powers that be will then find other rights, not granted to those they deem unworthy. And suddenly, the fact they are white will not protect them. Only then will they realize what fools they've been, but it will be too late.
12
Pompeo is the likely heir to Trump as the standard-bearer for this mendacity. Pompeo is to be feared and decisively repudiated. Trump is a clown by comparison.
7
I want to apologize upfront to everyone for what I am about to express. I’m American or as I’ve been labeled African American. The formation of this Commission on Unalienable Rights frightens me. This administration withdrew from the United Nations Human Rights Council because the Trump administration is actively violating human rights here in the USA. They’ve just ignored official complaints and there are unanswered queries. I don’t want to wake up one day to find that unalienable rights no longer apply me and other groups. This is a big deal.
18
Trump is changing the language from ‘inalienable’ human rights to ‘Maybe you have rights’. (They are up for discussion). The artistry of an autocracy within our liberal democracy is demeaning to what the US stands for. Trump ‘s major corruption of our political and spiritual foundations is appalling.
8
As Mr. Cohen notes, we can anticipate the Trump administration's definition of human rights by attitudes already expressed toward women, minorities of all kinds, and children at the border. But lets not stop there. Mr. Trump's sons hoist the severed parts of dead elephants over their heads in obscene displays of joy at their ability to slaughter sentient beings with high-powered rifles. Putting children in cages and slaughtering helpless animals are displays of power beloved by people whose inner impotence requires a constant supply of triumphs over the weak and vulnerable. And if the occasional dismembering of an honest journalist is required to send their dark messages of warning and retribution, so be it.
15
Human rights are defined by culture. Even with globalization, cultures still define human rights very differently. A cultures determinations of these rights is only wrong when they conflict with what your culture believes in..Pretending that there are universal human rights is quaint, but foolish...Enforcing one cultures human rights beliefs over anothers has led to many wars...Cultures change, sometimes quickly..To attempt to define or codify them by committee is a useless waste of time and money. An exercise in pomposity.
1
@Lindsey E. Reese
So, are all rights equally worthless, or can societies change for the better? For example, if a culture endorses slavery and child brides, does that make those things as OK in your eyes as helping old ladies across the street and allowing women to vote?
You appear to jump from the fact that moral claims are non-objective to advocating outright moral nihilism.
2
I don't think there is a country in the modern world where a dominant religion is a force for good. Christianity in the US, Islam in many Arab countries, orthodox Judaism in Israel, Hinduism in India, ... In particular, in our country many Evangelicals seems to wish disaster upon the world because it fits their vision of the Apocalypse.
17
How true; Trump's and his parrot Pompeo's arrogance in trying to re-define what it means to have human rights, and who may be worth having them, is ludicrous and hypocritical. And it goes beyond the famous phrase of previous U.S. secretaries of state, that 'the U.S. does not have friends, just interests'. Human rights are moral principles we abide by (or at least try to), dictate our behavior and allow each of us to express ourselves as best as possible...while respecting our neighbors'; well established by law, as you said. Corrupt, narcissist and 'cruello' Trump wouldn't understand any of this, as the only one he feels for is himself. And his cavorting with world despots, violating human rights as a matter of course, is just one more proof of his stupidity, if not malevolence. That Pompeo is willing to emulate his most vulgar boss is deplorable. And please, do not mix human justice, and compassion, with religious beliefs, contrary to the Golden Rule. We have, evolutionarily, developed in this mind of ours, and entirely dependent on the brain, a feature called 'conscience'...which can discern clearly 'right from wrong'. Just don't expect an understanding of what's at stake from the current brutus ignoramuses in power, trying to re-define well established principles of fairness...and twist them to their benefit.
4
I have no doubt that Mike Pompeo and Mike Pence earnestly believe that God is on their side. The obvious corollary is that their political opponents are also the opponents of the Deity.
This is one reason that they are so entirely unfit for their high offices.
12
This Administration wants to turn our Country into a theocracy. They have consistently legislated against human rights. Eleanor Roosevelt is rolling over in her grave. Vote them out.
14
Has anyone compiled the funny things Obama said during his presidency and the funny things Trump has said?
The Obama part would be hilarious, the humor of a decent man laughing at himself or at life. But Trump’s humor — like his vocabulary— seem to be stuck at the level of a sixth grader. It’s a mean-spirited humor.
How angry Trump and his gang seem to get when they’re told they’re just not funny. Tyrants never are.
9
I suspect Pompeo is merely a cat's paw for the real claw behind this all: Mike Pence. Pence is calling in Trump's debts to him for his unswerving, sycophantic support.
What this ominous, new "commission" launching boils down to is this: "all rights are equal, but some rights are more equal than others."
We're truly in Orwellian territory here, folks, and it's only going to get worse.
10
"Trump administration's war on reproductive rights and L.G.B.T. rights is pretty clear."
Sufficient reasons for voting Trump out, right there.
8
This smells like more background noise to keep the faithful on board. It's symbolic at best, just another way for Trump to--without accomplishing much--pretend that he is fulfilling promises, and making sure those voting factions he needs to keep his minority bloc cobbled together, continue to believe in him, despite his own clear disdain for the idea that all human beings should be born with inalienable rights.
For Pompeo to be organizing this is all that needs saying. There have been well-respected intellectuals and moral leaders who have waxed eloquently on human rights over the decades, centuries. It's typical arrogance for the most overtly racist, misogynist president in US history, and his henchman, to claim any mantle to assume the moral responsibilities that would go with taking on such a task with honesty and integrity.
I also feel like the above paragraph could describe most of the efforts of this administration, though--say one thing, do something different, redefine success on the fly, and move on to the next distraction. It's serial sociopathy.
2
Donald Trump, Mike Pompeo, Mike Pence and the other administrators of our 45th presidency are limiting human rights by re-defining them. The Constitution redefined the limiting of human rights in Amendment IX. Yes, Roger Cohen, Trump's attempt to redefine huiman rights is horrific. Why does this president need to establish a "Commission of Unalienable Rights"? Eleanor Roosevelt, our revered and brillliant First Lady from 1933 -1945 (FDR won 4 terms as President), chaired the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. Human rights haven't changed since America declared independence from England in 1775. No reason for Trump's enablers to review them now.
Why are religious rights and the current twinship of church and state under Mike Pompeo and Mike Pence , our evangelical conservative S.O.S. and Veep, human rights? Neglect of human rights in America and around the world, admired by this president, are leading the catastrophic downfall of our democracy. Just yesterday Donald Trump announced (again) on the South Lawn of the White Houise that "the press is the enemy of the people!". How long can we stand for an America with a power-mad fake president? Time in 2019 for a declaration of independence from Trumpian dystopia in our sorely divided United States. We're crying our beloved country!
6
Other than a few columns and editorials, the establishment of a "Commission on Unalienable Rights" has apparently been met by a collective shrug from most Americans. This is not surprising.
The Annenberg Public Policy Center in September 2017 found in a survey that:
+ More than half of Americans (53%) incorrectly think it is accurate to say that immigrants who are here illegally do not have any rights under the U.S. Constitution;
+ More than a third of those surveyed (37%) can’t name any of the rights guaranteed under the First Amendment; and
+ Only 15% knew that Freedom of Religion was one of their civil rights .... 15%!
Is it any wonder then that Pompeo's announcement of this Commission was met by general indifference?
9
Pompeo might be the scariest person in this administration. He speaks repeatedly and publicly of the Rapture and exhorts audiences to become Christian soldiers battling evil until the end of days. The idea that a high official not only subscribes to an evangelical Doomsday prophecy but speaks of it with giddy enthusiasm should terrify anyone capable of thinking for themselves.
12
Which human rights are not entitled to respect? This is the real question because Sec. Pompeo is offering a false choice in asking which ones are.
Or, is Pompeo really asking “Who is entitled to human rights?”
Redefining norms like this will lead to trouble.
This panel sounds typically like a Trumpian waste of time, and more so since it is “faith-based”, as if that gives the group a saintly seal. The most egregious crimes against humanity have been committed by the holier than thou bunch.
6
What happened to separation of church and state? Down is up, wrong is right, corporations are people, lies are truth, abuse is love... that’s how twisted the world has become under the current crop of autocrats worldwide, which includes so-called Evangelical ministers.
I am an atheist. I have been all of my life. Since childhood I have never understand why adults pretend to believe that myths are reality. And it is beyond comprehension how Evangelicals are able to justify the wealth, private jets, sexual assaults, pedophilia and excesses of their leaders — let alone their dogmatic devotion to oppression and human rights abuses as a function of their religious beliefs.
12
Trump's GOP Human Rights:
I have the right to hold other human beings with contempt however I wish.
I have the right to punish those I hold in contempt.
Those I hold in contempt have no rights.
8
Take heart, the evangelical community's overwhelming support of President Trump and his Administration, not only demonstrates their obscene hypocrisy; it foreshadows the ultimate decline and fall of the evangelical movement in the United States, and with it goes it's influence.
3
We need Eleanor Roosevelt to set Trump straight on a few things.She word know just what to say and how to say it. She would use her prodigious photographic memory to restate Trumps every word under any circumstance. She would know how to react to this bully and failed human being. She would know how to react to toddlers separated from parents at the border.
Trump would ridicule her as much as he could and she would know how to react to that too.
We don't have Eleanor, but we can conjure up her spirit and her drive for fairness and clear eyed direction in politics. I cannot imagine that anyone with an ounce of sense wants someone like Trump as president, or with the power of the presidency on his side. It is like handing the keys of the kingdom to the Devil himself. Trump is willingly or unwittingly, a real force for evil in this country. He is a divider, a liar, a smasher, a distorter, a smoke and mirrors expert, a conman, and so on, and on.
None of it good, healthy, or positive.
Please God the majority of people in America will begin to see him for what he is, a force for devastation and destruction. And soon. Before America distorts beyond help.
8
Human rights and the Trump administration is a classic oxymoron. Trump himself doesn't even know what human rights are let alone the role of the US government in protecting them. No, Trump will let a hypocritical religious fundamentalist like the incompetent Pompeo do his dirty work and find a way to please his racist, misogynist base. Trump is the face of the Republican Party that wants to undo every step of social progress this country has made in the last 200 years. No person with a sense of decency can continue to support the Republican P:arty- that is actively defiling our Constitution
5
Those two FBI agents that were worried about Trump? They were right. These people are crazy. And to make it worse, they’re mean and crazy. A bad combination.
12
As the pro-slavery advocates of the 1850s in the US realised, "religious rights" are very useful for furthering a despotic agenda. The Bible takes a very tolerant attitude to slavery, happily condoning it in both the Old and New testaments, as we see in Titus 2:19, Ephesians 6:5 and elsewhere in the sacred text from the autocratic Middle East of Roman times, which had not yet caught up with the superior moral development of the West that would, after the long dark age imposed by the Christian invasion, eventually lead to the end of slavery as a god-given right of the prosperous.
So much for the "prosperity gospel" beloved of the likes of Trump and bigots intent on traditional slavery, patriarchy, homophobia and other evils blessed by their unreal deity.
History repeatedly shows religion to be a potent source of evil: pogroms, witch hunts, heresy trials, blasphemy burnings, indulgences, holy war (known as jihad in the Islamic version of the Middle Eastern religions), censored ideas (Galileo and Copernicus, Darwin, and others), and so on.
Religious superstitions are the last place to look for healthy moral guidance of any sort, let alone an evolving awareness of human rights founded on reason and good morals.
10
I have no doubt that what is happening at the border with those attempting to enter the US from the south, is a gross abuse of human rights. What’s happening with the children in detention is a ‘crime against humanity’. There are legal consequences for this in the world outside the US. These legal consequences can involve those in the Trump administration and their enablers in the long term. Isn’t whats’ happening an attempt to get themselves off the hook legally? I’m old enough to remember the Bertrand Russell War Crimes Tribunal examining war crimes by the US in Vietnam and Indochina. If Pompeo can cosy up to the Saudi Prince who oversaw the slaughter of a journalist with the Washington Post where he was cut up to essentially mince meat he must fear the consequences to himself and his cronies in the Trump administration.
7
Mr. Pompeo graduated first in his class at West Point.
You have to wonder a bit about the cadet who graduated last.
5
Pure spectacle!! A tactic we should never get used too and let Trump and his lackeys normalize. And the media needs to in every instance highlight the motivation-distract from the issues implicating Trump in crimes against humanity, as well as his incompetence and unethical behavior.
3
These inalienable (I'll use Jefferson's term) rights, endowed by our creator, will apply only to Americans. I guess because we have one creator and the rest of the world has their creator. Otherwise, well, the state has no right to quash the rights of those who are not already residents within the state. It's a pesky idea to think that those migrants in detention have, and should have protected by the government, the same inalienable rights as Americans. But Trump, his supporters, and his base are too stupid to understand this.
5
"I am not suggesting that Pompeo wants to go back there, but the “natural” rights of 1776 are not the human rights the United States helped codify in 1948."
Roger, why are you not suggesting this? This is exactly the game. 'Rights' based on religion are by definition exclusive of the rights of any group outside of that religion. So-called 'faith' is just another word for exclusion and oppression of anyone who does not profess the relevant 'faith'. Faith (to paraphrase a great songwriter- apologies to Kris) is just another word for nothing left to know.
4
"...a disaster in the making" is right! The materialistic world of Trump does not care what it does to humanity in the name of the agenda of his "self." He who boasts he can walk out onto the avenue and shoot someone. He who cuts funding to Central America then uses torture at our border on fleeing refugees. He who has some 20 sexual assault allegations. Combine this with the dualistic world evangelicals whose apocalyptic madness leaves this world behind, and it is yes - a recipe for disaster. Health care is a human right. The freedom of the press is a human right under our Constitution. Care for this planet should taking place to value human life and all of creation. this administration upholds none of these. Human rights? We need new leadership in this nation for human rights!
5
The Trump administration has educated me on the unlimited boundaries people will go to compromise themselves.
May the arc of history bend towards justice.
3
Following events, I find myself asking "What country is that?" More often it is the USA. Then I ask myself, "What country do I live in?" Trumpistan looks like America when I walk out the door. It sure doesn't feel like it.
3
Do I detect a desire to declaw the 14th Amendment (as applies to people, rather than businesses) and perhaps the 15th?
Rights to abortion, marriage, vote, integrated schools and hospitals. And a lot more.
7
The framers Trump hopes to emulate were unable to extend human rights to millions of slaves while at the same time allowing the slave states to increase the number of representatives in the House by declaring each slave worth 3/5 of a citizen. One can only wonder what these great patriots are planning to spring on us next.
6
We Americans have the right to watch WWE events and believe the best man/woman won. We have the right to watch every religious bigot on every gospel hour on TV and send in $0.90 cents of our last dollar (One can go to any poverty-stricken community in America and marvel at the number of churches in town). We can spend 30 minutes reading FaceBook posts and realize how Trump got elected. And we Democrats want to make a better life for that rabble.
3
Pompeo and Pence really want to establish a state religion where the laws back up the religious doctrine and if you don't obey off to jail you go. Trump doesn't care as long as all the evangelist vote for him.
10
Humans have the right to serve the aristocracy. And then die. Preferably as quietly as possible.
There's your human rights under Trump's GOP.
There are exceptions of course. For the right people. They have the right to do as they please. Always.
8
Neither Trump nor Pompeo give a hoot about human rights, what a joke. It would be funny if it weren't so deplorable.
5
Trump and his followers have lost all credibility on many issues predominantly amongst them human rights. Just watch the films of Pence's recent visit to the border camps to see what conditions the detainees are kept in and the V.P.'s callous reaction to them. They are concentration camp conditions and they are sickening to any decent person. The President is now pursuing a course that revolts, or should revolt, every citizen. This is not doing the USA any good whatsoever in the eyes of the world. What will it take for the American people to demand that this ends?
7
Why was this latest assault by Trump and his cronies on basic human rights not front page news in every paper and on every newscast on Monday (the date of this vile announcement as the caption of the title photo at the top of this editorial states)?
WHY???
I read the Times online every day (usually for an hour or more). I watch 3+ hours of MSNBC nightly news shows every week night (that's four nights since Monday). I often watch national TV newscasts too. And I rise each morning to NPR's "Morning Edition" and their "All Things Considered" newscast is my soundtrack every afternoon (home or car).
Nowhere did I see nor hear any mention of this Orwellian "Commission" being formed and its blatantly retrograde mission statement clearly articulated - until I read this editorial moments ago.
As you clearly state, Mr. Cohen, the intent of this Commission is crystal clear - to "muddy the waters" on where the U.S. will draw the line on future assessments of human rights.
For instance, Mr. Pompeo and his toadies might decide that the right to "humane" conditions in ICE detention facilities are limited to providing four walls and a roof - then declare that our deplorable concentration camps for asylum seekers are "fully compliant" with "human rights" as defined by these new, limited parameters.
Oh, you want water, food, toilets and medical care too? That'll cost you extra.
Again, why is this abomination not the biggest news story of the week (making Epstein a tawdry sideshow)?
5
I'll give it a stab. I'm guessing this new declaration of human rights will go something like this: "Everyone is created equal. But some are more equal than others. And no one equals Donald Trump."
5
Donald Trump began his campaign in 2015 by endlessly referencing any negative press critique of him as "Fake News." Four years later, this insidious practice continues unabated---only with more hostility and more hints of violence.
Earlier this year, another attack on truth-tellers included a remarkably dark moment when he instructed those attending one of his "Make Daddy Feel Good" rallies to disbelieve what they saw with their own eyes and what they heard with their own ears. Instead, he told them, "Listen to me. Believe me."
His supplicants have faithfully followed his orders.
"Alternative Facts" are now normalized and daily accepted as truth by those who inhabit the Trump silo and get their "news" from either Trump, members of his administration or the propagandist television, radio and whacked-out internet outlets/sites that push #TrumpTruth.
Trump has thus succeeded in doing what autocrats/dictators/authoritarians do to solidify power: For those in his silo, he has become the "ultimate arbiter of reality."
He is now using this power to delegitimize and redefine in his own terms all that pre-dated his presidency; i.e., U.S. history, previous presidents or govt. officials, the foundational institutions of our democracy, fundamental norms and traditions, the bases of the American Idea and our ever-evolving value-system.
Human Rights are now in Trump's crosshairs and the pattern is familiar: Delegitimize what was and redefine in Trumpian terms.
4
The Reagan Restoration not only ushered in the New Gilded Age and its celebration of greed, but also a drive to theocracy. With Pompeo, Pence, Barr, DeVos et. al. in office, we are sliding toward Iran. Ironic, isn't it?
8
Exactly right. Trump demonstrates “a boundless affection” for those autocrats who trash human rights, and then have the nerve to define human rights? Obviously all those gross violations of basic human rights his authoritarian pals espouse, will not be on his personal list of human rights.
The Trump R party has branded itself to such a degree, that they have nothing to say about this trashing of the basic humanity we cherish as Americans, and expressed in our Constitution. Their moral disgrace is now further compounded by their alliance with all the worse angels of the American political landscape.
1
Trump and associates are would be dictator,consequently they need to reshape human rights accordingly with their goals.
3
@Gadea: America is tumbling down the dictator rabbit hole with Trump and his loyal henchmen. We need help from the outside world before we turn completely into Gilead. Of course, they'll rename the country: Trumplandia.
The world needs to help us!
2
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." - Declaration of Independence, 1776
Seems pretty clear to me. But, as Orwell warned, some pigs consider themselves more equal than others. V-O-T-E.
6
The water in that proverbial tank keeps getting a degree warmer, while we're the proverbial frogs in it, still not comprehending that this could possibly be happening to us right here, right now and in the name of Christian values as redefined by those practicing hypocrisy, corruption and unbridled hatred toward those who choose to disagree. All, of course, 'patriotically' wrapped in a flag of red, white and blue. How many millions of lives around the world could have been saved had these warning signs been heeded a few short generations ago?
Vote as if your future, your freedoms and your life depend on it. Because they do. Vote while you still can. Vote.
9
'...Trump called himself "a true Stable Genius."' Well I'm finally impressed with something he said. I had no idea he was genius at mucking out the barn or, if he was, that he'd not only admit to it but would brag about it. If true it's most likely the only honest work he's ever done. As ever, I'm reminded of Animal Farm.
"Do not imagine, comrades, that leadership is a pleasure! On the contrary, it is a deep and heavy responsibility. No one believes more firmly than Comrade Napoleon that all animals are equal. He would be only too happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves. But sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we be?”
― George Orwell, Animal Farm
5
I can understand people “falling short” of the assumptions in the first few sentences of the Declaration of Independence, where it is clearly asserted that “All men are created equal” and “certain unalienable rights” which are inherent in our humanity, but a man trained in the military is now asserting ideas contrary to that founding document?
I find myself so dumb struck by Pompeo’s assertions as well as by his arrogance that he is going to search out which “rights” are inherent and which “rights” are no longer to be deemed righteous enough, as to be shared by all of us. All of us, equally, upon this planet.
He is apparently claiming the “right” to do this! (It’s like Trump claiming to be a one the law. Now Pompeo is claiming to be the “Arbiter of Rights. HIs right above the UN’s “Declaration of Human Rights” for example. And if you haven’t read it, please do so. And it’s a crying shame the Secretary of State hasn’t! Because his work has been done for him. And agreed upon by the international community.
I am horror struck! At this latest egregious and flagrant apostasy of our nation’s values and ideals. We may fall short. But to fall from that allegiance enshrined at the beginning of the Declaration of Independence. And the Bill of Rights as well.
It is time for a HUGE Greek Chorus chanting: Woe! Woe! Woe! How low have fallen!
6
Pompeo is an end times believer.
He wants to bring Armageddon to us, and soon.
What better way then to empower him as emissary of the true king, The Donald.
Be careful what you say, someone may be listening.
5
"I am not suggesting that Pompeo wants to go back there, but the “natural” rights of 1776 are not the human rights the United States helped codify in 1948."
Are you so sure, Mr. Cohen? He probably knows that he cannot go back there but does he really want to go back there?
To Putin's "president trump" a natural human right for men is to freely grope a woman. Are you sure that will not be something that will come out of the Pompeo panel?
2
How considerate of them. Now their base won’t have to be bothered with pesky guilt or shame.
6
There is too little known about the history of human rights violations in the 20th century, from the US to Germany and beyond. Ignorance also allows the definition of human rights to be redefined. Mass media can and should inform the public about our past, so that we can avoid repeating it. The United States has deported certain ethnic groups before, and it would be helpful to write an article about how this happened. Of course, the tragic relationship between humans rights violations and religion could be resolved, if only religious leaders would practice their faith! How many members of the clergy (especially Evangelicals and Catholics) will stand up to human rights violations in the United States? How many will welcome the poor and disenfranchised? Can we have any hope, when male dominated religion is so adverse to even the rights of native born women and children?
3
Most probably, after so many of our disciplined scientific studies have produced valid, reproducible finding after finding, that contradict the supernatural, superstitious basis of most religions, they become purely faith-based.
Religion becomes pure hope and faith in things unseen.
Don't try to give real physical substance to it.
If we acknowledge this physical world and it's realities as the only basis for real knowledge, what do we have?
Human rights.
This is the evolved international community we share,
and deny at our peril.
6
American society is pluralistic and multi-cultural, and a evangelical Christian framework for defining human rights entirely inappropriate. Christian groups, other than evangelicals, still represent the majority of Americans, and place emphasis on the inalienable rights invested by virtue of being human, as well as the social gospel with its emphasis on equality, humility, forgiveness and generosity of spirit.
6
Pompeo’s commission could (hopefully will) fall flat on its face. But it could also succeed in setting what could come next, a contemporary adaptation of the Nuremberg Laws, then on and on where all that the law permits is an evangelical agenda.
One might think that projection of what could be a far-fetched distortion of the Trump Administration’s purpose. One wonders
in an age when you see VP Pence inspecting a detention facility wearing black shirt and jacket.
This is a commission under control of people who seem to think that it is humane to treat certain other people as a sub-human class. In this age of depravity, that does not seem like a distortion of the Administration’s purpose.
What should we do?
14
Impeach.
2
In a normal administration, I would probably see a “Commission on Unalienable Rights” as a serious attempt to examine just what we mean by the term and develop a serious set of guidelines to help future jurists and lawmakers to avoid trampling them. But this is not a normal administration and it is impossible not to recognize this "Commission" for what it is; a cynical attempt by an authoritarian regime to try to shore up its standing with the theocratic wing of its base to avoid electoral defeat and its accompanying loss of immunity and impunity.
12
You write "Pompeo, an evangelical Christian whose beliefs infuse his policy...". I would ask the media to adopt a qualifying phrase that furthers the truth as in Pompeo, "who believes himself to be" an evangelical Christian... This addition might cause the reader to question the claim of Christianity. This should be applied to everyone who uses their religion to claim authority.
24
After the second 9/11 (the first was in1973, in Chile),only a couple of weeks later (as I recall) there was an article in the Newsweek about the possibility of using torture when interrogating suspects. Whether torture had been used even earlier, I don't know (but suspect), the article certainly was meant to "educate" the public into accepting torture as an acceptable method of aquiring information from adversaries. Now the discussion about, and plan to redefine the human rights probably has the same aim, to change the public's conception of it, to accept limiting the human rights. That would concern everybody, outside the ruling circle.
14
The Commission, dominated by regressive thinkers, will eventually write a ponderous report that almost no one will read. Nothing much will come of it. Pompeo as head of the State Department is the one who can and does do harm in the real world to the cause of human rights. That is one of many reasons why defeating Hair Twittler in 2020 is so important.
31
“Hair Twittler” is absolutely brilliant!
6
I am deeply skeptical of any commission established to determine human rights having Mike Pompeo’s imprimatur. Just look at his record. He was critical of the Obama administration’s requirement that all US interrogators adhere to anti-torture laws. Yet he takes the position that human life begins at conception and believes that abortion should only be permitted when necessary to save the life of the mother. He is vehemently opposed to same-sex marriage and while in Congress sponsored a bill allowing states to prevent same-sex couples from marrying. In my opinion he is not the ideal individual to spearhead an effort to define human rights.
25
How can there be human rights, rights we possess not as privileges we are granted or even earn, but simply by virtue of our humanity?
One who could ask that question possesses not one ounce of humanity, and is the picture perfect representative of this administration.
18
Mike the oracle would do well to read the Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights in the US Constitution. From those sources he might read case of the Board of Education of Topeka Kansas declaring separate but equal is inherently unequal. Remind himself the vote was 9-0. Or, read To Kill A Mockingbird or better yet attend the Sorkin play of the same title.
A little humility a good thing before rewriting the history of human rights before breakfast.
14
The human rights that were taken away by the left are finally being restored by the Republicans. The rights of the unborn are now seen as being important and having value. Religious people who reject baking gay wedding cakes are now allowed to follow their consciences.
If the liberals had their way, the rights of conservatives would be non existent. Finally someone is looking out for them. It was about time.
2
@KMW, Your comment is almost comical. Republicans have spent the last 40 years eroding the rights of labor, the right to health care, higher wages, true immigration reform and equal rights for women and minorities. In other words, they like politicizing fetuses, but couldn't care less about humans once they're born.
By the way, conservatives don't have rights distinct from other Americans. The constitution spells out the rights of all Americans. I suppose you believe there are "real" Americans who are separate from all those "coastal elites."
14
@KMW Would you be ok with a caterer refusing to make a cake for a christian wedding because they were another faith or no faith?
Too many christians I have talked to immediately claim that would not be ok because it would be discrimination. But a christian can refuse a gay couple because that is 'different'.
7
“Rights of conservatives” = right to impose unwanted pregnancies on women and right to demean people for loving someone of the same sex. You can keep your rights to yourself.
3
The report of Trump's Commission on Inalienable Rights will surely conclude all white men of European descent are equal before the law except Donald Trump, a white man of European descent who is above the law, arguments for which will found in copious footnotes referencing, among many other things, the Mueller Report finding of No Collusion! No Collusion! No Collusion! and a lot of people saying since there has to be an exception to every rule, why shouldn't that exception be Donald Trump?
23
Since corporations are considered persons under the law , what about their human rights ? I suspect that Pompeo and his Ministry of Earned Human Rights will address this issue favorably . For the corporations of course .
21
@john granwehr I doubt that a "person" as legally defined is the same as a "human" - how could it be? However, your question about the rights of a "person" and in particular corporations is worth discussing in the public forum, especially in the light of interpretations of basic human rights that can and should properly apply only to people, but have been used to increase the political power of corporations at the expense of people. In theory, a national conversation about human rights would be beneficial and help to clarify the general public's understanding.
1
Pompeo’s comments are a shocking and ignorant denial the Lockean tradition that undergirds essential aspects of all Western democracies. Inalienable rights - as noted in the first sentence of the Declaration of Independence - exist independent of government and cannot legitimately be abrogated by government. It is appalling that god-fearing Christians no longer acknowledge what the Founders did - people are “endowed by their creator” with inalienable rights, and no even Tweeter-in-Chief for Life Trump and his coterie of Caligulian minions legitimately may change the words, meaning and intent of the Declaration and the Constitution, at least without denying fundamental Christian values or fundamental tenets of the Enlightenment. Those who live a fact-free existence gleefully March us steadily back toward the Dark Ages, this time with nuclear weapons and the Internet.
569
@Alan...religious psychosis, as evidenced now for centuries, is exactly what several of the Founders endeavored to escape...and rightly so. That freedom of vs. freedom from thing. Knowing "god-fearing Christian's" manufactured "god" seems more interested in dystopian social engineering than higher spiritual axioms, it should be no surprise that they're unable to distinguish a progressive human right from an ancient draconian decree. And don't tell me "they're not all that way." Since it's inception, their cult has shamelessly sought to "convert" the entire planet to its way of "thinking."
Read or watch "The Handmaid's Tale" and in light of what's happening here, andnow---tell me how far-fetched it all is.
Man creates god. god destroys man.
58
@Alan We ascribe too much spirituality to the grab for power that is inherent at the fringes of virtually all religions (which began as cults until they attained enough numbers.)
Evangelicals are drunk with plurality and don't know where to put it next.
44
@Alan "Inalienable rights" were for wealthy white men.
16
It's astonishing to think that an administration whose strong suit so far has only been human wrongs thinks it has the ability to adjudicate human rights!
16
Well, that is exactly why they are so eager to redefine human rights. Trump administration doesn’t like law too much, and these ”undeserved” rights are a real nuisance for any autocrat.
4
"There is no need to reinvent the wheel, Mr. Secretary.
He's not trying to reinvent it, Roger. He's trying to smash it to pieces.
33
Just what we need, trump and pompeo deciding what is a human right. Will this national nightmare ever end.
28
This article and all of the commenters are talking trump and Pompeo, especially when referencing the failure to recognize the separation of church and state in this country. All of that is well and good, but please, please don't forget about the worst government offender of them all, mother's husband, Mike Pence. He's really religiously scary.
567
@Michael Very few people know this, in part because Mike Pence has been quiet for most of the last three years, but before his political career in Indiana Pence had a late-night talk radio program. I used to travel the sixty miles between West Lafayette and Indianapolis very frequently in the evening and late at night. I called Pence "Limbaugh Lite," not because he was any less hateful and vitriolic than Limbaugh, but because his show was local and Limbaugh was national. Pence is the most soul-destroying, depressing, uncompassionate zealot on the planet. And it is tempting to look upon him as, maybe, better than Trump. Frightening indeed.
241
@lhc I couldn't agree more. I think he is actually way scarier than Trump. No one is scarier than a religious zealot. They truly believe that anything they do is all right because they are serving a higher purpose. Pence has no qualms about anything that Trump does -- even though most of it violates his proclaimed beliefs -- b/c he believes that it is all part of God's plan to make him president.
Nick Kristof recently wrote that we are saved from many of Trump's worst policies by the incompetence of his Cabinet -- a position I have long maintained. Pence would do a much better job of bringing about the dystopia that he believes in. He would appoint more zealots and be much less distracted by shiny objects.
Lincoln said that we should not ask whether God is on our side, but whether we are on God's side. He would not find approval for that sentiment from our VP. Pence is the perfect embodiment of the American religious right -- unshakable in his belief (he would call it knowledge) that God is always on his side and pitiless in his approach to those who fail to see the same light as he.
103
@Michael
Imo, he is diabolical. And he understands how government works. He knows how to impose his will.
People who claim he would be "better" than Trump are wrong, wrong, wrong.
74
The foundations of human rights is respect for others. If this is of any concern of Trump and all of his supporters and enablers, it takes a back seat to being shamelessly self interested. You can be sure what ever conclusions this administration draws on human rights, it would reflect what's best for them and not humanity so much.
296
To have a religious person define human rights is to cast aside rights for the non-religious. God-given rights suggests that those who do not have the same vision of God should not be given the same rights. That is why the absolute separation of church and state will promote equal rights for all.
847
It is such an irony that the country established on the separation of church and state has such a religious influence on politics. Yet in many parts of Europe (the UK for example), with established churches, the influence of the church on the government is often vanishingly small.
98
The Declaration’s phrase “Endowed by their Creator” and “entitled by Nature’s Laws and Nature’s God” are the only solid bases for future preservation of such rights, no matter the past inconsistency in real application. Whereas exclusion from coverage on the basis of race, nationality, gender or geography resulted in powerful injustices, those above cited factors will pale into insignificance when future states begin applying pragmatic economic and “rationalistic” bases for exclusivity. Without a sense of sacredness, in the end, all will be permitted.
11
@shimr
Indeed. Problem is those religious fanatics disagree fervently. And they don't care what you or I think about separation of church and state. There is absolutely NOTHING that is absolute about the United States of America or a constitution ratified in 1788. EVERYTHING is always up for grabs.
27
I wouldn't expect any commission put in place by this administration to expand human rights. Their intent no doubt is to redefine rights to favor their agenda such as curtailing women's rights and the right to health care.
342
@Maggie in any country and at any time. Certainly the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness fall in that category. But does one have a right to health care, education, livable wage, citizenship or choice of habitation? No, those are privileges afforded by some societies that are not obtainable by most of the world and certainly do not provide justification for any government to insist that they be protected. We may fairly debate which of these privileges our government should secure for our society, but arguing they are human rights provides an incorrect and false equivalence of inalienable rights with privileges.
3
Thank you Mr Cohen for pointing this out. I was not aware of this initiative and I could not agree more that it is done with the worst of intentions.
Pompeo's question "why should humans have rights just for being human" seemed designed to lead to the next step where human rights are redefined as belonging only to citizens.
Many in his base will accept that with no qualms. But ultimately the goal of the 14-year president would be to leave no one with any rights that interfered with his exercise of power. Just a few days ago he was explaining how "unfair" criticism of his administration "isn't free speech" but "dangerous speech".
40
14 year old president is being generous. I’ve read that researchers peg his vocabulary as that of a 9 year old, or a person suffering from dementia. I am grateful for this column, too. This initiative is frightening.
27
I think Damien referred to Trump’s tweet where he ”joked” about staying in power for 14 years. Trump is such a comedian! (Grunt)
3
Agree, but comment referred to his intention to have a 14-year term
I suspect the real reason Pompeo wants to enumerate our rights is to deny or disparage those he leaves unenumerated. The first Congress added the Ninth Amendment to the Constitution precisely to protect against the attempt to limit rights only to those enumerated:
"The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."
407
Whatever Secy Pompeo's commission comes up with, you can bet that any rights they take off the list to be protected, they will still insist must be protected for them. It may become illegal for an average citizen to criticize government officials someday, but it will never be illegal for Donald Trump to do so. He will always insist on his right to say that Christopher Wray is wrong, that Nancy Pelosi is "Nervous Nancy" or that members of Congress he doesn't like don't belong there, though their constituents say that they do. And that is the way an autocracy runs. Those in power can do whatever they want, and those out of power must submit. Until, of course, someone comes along to topple the autocrat, which is why they are also so paranoid about criticism and admitting the slightest mistake or weakness.
21
“How can there be human rights, rights we possess not as privileges we are granted or even earn, but simply by virtue of our humanity?”
Trump appointed Pompeo.
Trump appointed his Cabinet.
We need to reexamine the 25th Amendment. It has not worked.
America and the world are in abject peril.
45
What Pompeo and his ilk need to be made to understand is that Freedom of Religion requires Freedom from Religion - and thus to be free from religious coercion is the supreme human right.
The history of humankind is replete with examples of an assertion of majority religious privilege becoming a license to discriminate against religious and spiritual minorities - minorities who over time often came to be seen as wiser and more deserving of respect and praise than those discriminating majorities.
If we examine the Christian narrative itself, is this not the case - that the early Christians were persecuted for their non-conforming beliefs by both the majority Jewish community of Palestine and the Romans (who could not understand Christians refusal to pay any heed to any other conception of a deity)?
21
Well, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It seems to me that pursuing contraception and abortion could in many instances constitute for women particularly but also for men life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Pompeo seems to want to erase those from human rights.
17
@Jane Roberts It is of note that the aspiration "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" in the Declaration of Independence was changed to "life, liberty and property" by the time the Constitution was enacted a decade later.
1
I have heard Mary Ann Glendon speak and she is wonderful. She has excellent qualifications and is the perfect choice to lead this newly formed commission on unalienable rights. She is bright, articulate and will be fair in her decision making. Finally we will have a reasonable voice for the people.
2
@KMW. Here's Glendon: “What same-sex marriage advocates have tried to present as a civil rights issue is really a bid for special preferences of the type our society gives to married couples for the very good reason that most of them are raising or have raised children.” She also said marriage rights for same-sex couples suggests “alternative family forms are just as good as a husband and wife raising kids together.” You say she's so bright and fair -- is her statement fair or utterly biased? I'm not in a same-sex marriage, but I'm in a childless marriage. Why should mom-and-dad-with-kids be considered a more valuable, "good" marriage and a more important "right" than my marriage?
28
Because it was expected that heterosexual married couples, pre-birth-control(which was invented to spare married women from having 12 babies until their uteruses just dropped out) would produce and raise children,
who would in turn grow up into citizens, who would pay into social security, and work in all manner of jobs that support society, and of course the women would also produce more children,
and that effort required material considerations, as it was a great benefit to society.
@KMW: You are extreme in your comments about abortion rights, so I'll just assume a great recommendation from you about Glendon means we need to be very, very concerned about this 'commission'. This commission is not to be trusted.
6
RIGHTS -FIVE
Clearly, most of the rights deemed fundamental enough to be expressly protected by the Constitution - arguably those deemed unalienable at the time - are liberty rights preventing governmental interference with certain activities, rather than claim rights which require the government and the taxpayers to provide certain benefits such as jobs, a living wage, health care, etc.
The charter of the new commission is to explore "reforms of human rights discourse where it has departed from our nation's founding principles of natural law and natural rights" - those said to have been upheld by Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr.
Regardless of the sources of "natural law and natural rights," those rights which were deemed unalienable - and therefore safeguarded to the extent possible by incorporating them in a constitution where they could not be overturned by the shifting whims of the public or legislators - were largely liberty rights.
This, of course, made sense at a time our country had just fought a war to insure individual liberty, there seemed to be boundless opportunities for those willing to work hard, and the idea that the government would pay doctors to care for the poor would have been unthinkable.
1
@LAWPROF JOHN BANZHAF
Maybe it is time to study history. Here in Canada the law serves justice. Sophistry serves only hubris and its insanity.
The constitution must serve the Social Contract and in 1776 Rousseau was still breathing.
6
RIGHTS - ONE
Although some are concerned that the newly created federal Commission on Unalienable Rights was established to "redefine 'human rights' along conservative lines," the new body may, to the contrary, help American citizens and politicians understand a fundamental difference between two different types of legal rights - those largely embodied in the constitutions of many other countries and in treaties (which do not bind the U.S.), and those enshrined in the U.S. Constitution.
Much of what are termed modern civil rights law, which some say are lefty and largely economic and social - such as the "rights to work, to health care and to education" - are largely claim rights, as opposed to the liberty rights, and the difference is a fundamental one well recognized by legal scholars.
A claim right is a right which imposes a legal duty on another - often the government - to provide something to the claimant, and a denial of the claim right generally creates a legal cause of action in the claimant.
All claim rights impose a corresponding legal duty. For example, social security is a claim right established by federal law which obligates the government to pay certain sums to eligible claimants.
Other examples are "rights to work, to health care and to education" where, if the government fails to insure that the claimant can find work, obtain health care, etc., it may be legally liable because it has a legal duty created by the claim right to fulfill those rights.
2
RIGHTS -THREE
In other words, governments cannot prevent or through official action impose an undue burden on a woman seeking an abortion. However, Roe did not create a claim right; one which would impose a legal duty on the government and taxpayers to provide or otherwise pay for an abortion whenever necessary.
While a claim right to abortion - i.e., a legal right to have an abortion backed up by the threat of a law suit - can of course be established by legislation or by contract (e.g., a medical insurance policy may so provide), this type of claim right is not the kind deemed so fundamental by those who founded the country that it was enshrined in the Bill of Rights or in the remainder of the Constitution.
Similarly, even those rights not expressly listed in the Constitution, but said by the courts to be included within the penumbra - e.g., the right to privacy - are liberty rights rather than claim rights.
For example, the right of privacy established by the Griswold case means that the government cannot prevent persons from using contraceptives, although it certainly does not mean that the government must provide contraceptives, even to people too poor to afford them.
1
RIGHTS - SIX
However, now that the economy and society has changed so much, and the federal government plays a much larger role in virtually every facet of our lives, some might argue that we should also recognize and protect a new set of rights - claim rights which are largely economic and/or social ones.
These are important issues which should be decided based upon facts and public policy, and not upon by whom or how so-called "natural rights" became established (e,g., by a "Creator" or from other religious views, ancient Greek philosophers, theorists such as Thomas Aquinas and John Locke, etc.)
And, in this debate, it is vital to remember the important distinction between claim rights (those in international treaties and in the constitutions of many other countries which create legal obligations to fulfill) and liberty rights (those deemed so fundamental as to be expressly included and protected by the U.S. Constitution, but which create no affirmative legal duties on the government).
The former obligate taxpayers to pay for things others may need or at least desire, whereas the latter assume that the relative freedom from governmental interference is the better course.
PUBLIC INTEREST LAW PROFESSOR JOHN BANZHAF
1
@LAWPROF JOHN BANZHAF
Sure.
It's ALL under threat.
''We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with inherent and inalienable Rights; that among these, are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness... " These words by Thomas Jefferson are the fundamental basis of America's identity as a political entity. Anybody suggesting basic human rights might have to be "earned" is simply unAmerican in the deepest sense there is.
34
RIGHTS -2
In sharp contrast are liberty rights which do not impose any duty on the government, but which guarantee to the beneficiary of the liberty right the freedom to engage in certain activities without governmental interference.
Since these liberty rights create no legal duty, the government cannot be sued for failing to insure that a person is in fact able to engage in those protected activities.
A good example is the Freedom of Religion protected by the First Amendment.
It, like most of the other constitutional rights, is a liberty right rather than a claim right because it guarantees only that the government will not punish or otherwise interfere with most religious practices.
But it does not establish a claim right since, if the practice of a specific religion requires a certain head covering, a prayer rug, some wine, or a physical religious book or symbol, the government is under no legal duty to provide it - with the narrow exception of people who are incarcerated.
In another example as to which there is frequent confusion, the Supreme Court decision in Roe v Wade and its progeny held that the Constitution protects a liberty right for women to have abortions under certain circumstances.
1
@LAWPROF JOHN BANZHAF
Thank you, Mr. Banzaf. However the point was that as Americans we assume there are certain inalienable human rights, like the right to a fair trial, and Pompeo questioned that when he asked how we can have any human rights at all without earning them.
11
@Mary Newton How do we "earn" human rights? Certainly not by proving our humanity. Might I suggest that we earn our rights by donating tons of money to the RNC? (I am being facetious.)
13
We can only hope that this commission falls apart as so many other commissions and committees have fallen apart in trump world. In the meantime, I count the days until this theocracy of evangelicals is booted out of office.
47
@Duechf
I also count the days until Biden completes his Obama bestowed knighthood quest to end cancer.
all "rights" are arbtrary and are decided by humans. Let's at least get that straight right off the bat. The notion of god- given rights is not to be taken as anything but a sick joke.
Human rights are now asserted by international governing bodies. This assertion has
the effect of defining contraints to acceptable actions between and within nations. Operating within the constraints of "human rights" confers legitimacy on the operations and operators. If the constraints are inconvenient for the expedience of authoritarians' operations , they would seek to change the definition of acceptable first in order to confer legitimacy on their behavior.
That is what Pompeo and Trump are up to. Their very obvious and transparent attempt will be to "define" human rights by the definitions they find convenient to their purposes. They will take the existing "right" of religious freedom, falsely claim persecution because the secular government interferes with the full exercise of their "religion", which happens to be the imposition of the standards of their religion on everyone else. The nature of Evangelicals is inherently not about religious freedom but religious intolerance. They will abuse others' understanding of tolerance to promote their own intolerant standards.
It will be a farce. It will be unbelievable. And still, if not completely rejected and repudiated, will be the road to Christian "sharia" law in the US. Very convenient for aspirational dictators.
84
@trebor-Does anyone get that shivery chilling feeling we're on the slippery slope to fascism similar to what took place in pre-WWII Germany, Italy, and Spain?
6
@trebor
Yeah, no, not 'arbtrary", for which I assume you mean "arbitrary". Human rights are NOT arbitrary. Ever.
1
I've always thought that "human rights" and "natural rights" are a weird quasi-religious concept. Put them on paper and enforce them -- then they exist. Then they also become "civil rights" and "legal rights." Everything else is just woo.
People have rights when they fight for and win them. There's nothing else.
10
@B.C. Such nihilistic ideas are the result of hyper-rationalism, logical positivism and foundationalist philosophy. Since the horrors of the Second World War (after all, what if your "fight" against genocide is not successful?), more enlightened thinkers have understood that merely to encounter another's face lays a prior claim on us to recognise their humanity and inherent dignity.
No, this is not a legal claim. Its way more important than that. It's the actual basis for our having law at all - or society, morality, or civilisation - in the first place. Recognising the value of other lives is the precondition for all genuinely human life. (This is why in non-modern societies ostracism was effectively a death sentence.)
16
@B.C. So Pompeo pitches Woo to you?
The definition of "Human Rights" in the Trump Administration is very simple. It is the right for religion to discriminate against gays, lesbiens, homosexuals, transgender and especially women. And President Trump is not the only one supporting the "right" of religion to discriminate against women. Our Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau, supported discrimination against women in the name of religion. In September 2016 he went in an Ottawa's mosque practicing discrimination against women. He praised this discrimination practice of that mosque in the name of multiculturalism calling it a "source of strength". so even "liberal" politicians could accept discrimination in the name of religion
11
@Wilbray Thiffault
Willbray, we have real problems.
I remember when Pierre Trudeau replaced Alan McNaughton in Mont Royal Riding. Neither one represented our demographic but it was the safest Liberal seat in Canada.
Here in Quebec Charles Taylor an ethical philosopher and Gerard Bouchard a noted historian chaired a commision on religious accommodation. Politics decided that doing everything in opposition to the commission's report was expedient.
If we survive the existential threat of insane leadership in the world's most dangerous nations maybe we can begin discussing mysticism.
1
@Wilbray Thiffault
Um, OK, I'll take Prime Minister Trudeau over "trump" any day of the week.
3
This is why it is imperative that we get rid of Trump in 2020. We cannot afford another 4 years of him. I wish the Democrats would stop the in fighting and get serious about the election. The voters will make the decision of center-left vs progressive. If we want center left the choice will be Biden or Amy as the nominee. If progressive, the nominee will be Bernie or Warren. All the in fighting does is benefit Trump.
52
I certainly hope this "faith based effort" to define human rights looks closely at the separation of small children from their families at our border, at the deprivation of food and basic human needs, the lifelong trauma this is inflicting on human beings who are fleeing violence, and the deaths that have taken place. I am old enough to remember the trials at Nurenberg for "crimes against humanity", and I predict that someday this administration will reap what it has sown in a court of world opinion.
85
@Jane, I sincerely doubt that a commission staffed with conservative e political and religious figures will show any interest in the human rights tragedy unfolding at the border.
The fact that Pompeo, and this administration refuse to recognize the separation of church and state should concern every American. These people want to establish a theocracy in everyone who does not share their evangelical Christian beliefs will be second class citizens and routinely face discrimination and persecution.
43
@sanderling1 Agree, and be especially concerned about 1% evangelical Betsy DeVos who stated, and I quote "The Founding Fathers went too far in separation of church & state". This ignorant statement is from the Secty of Education who is already demeaning women with her Title IX changes, supporting for profit colleges, and decriminalizing rape on campus;this is "Handmaid's Tale" come to life;she wants her theocracy which will be her version of sharia law. And the evangelicals have no problem with Moore, Epstein, or Trump; they overlook everything amoral to get their rule of a corrupted belief system.
6
The Commission's job should be trivially easy. For Republicans, the only inalienable rights are the entitlement of the wealthiest persons (corporate and human) to own all the wealth, along with the right of wealthy Republican donors to enjoy maximum return on investment.
Republicans do recognize a few other rights, including the right of a fetus to be protected (until it's born), the right of Evangelical Christians (and only Evangelical Christians) to impose their beliefs on everyone, and the right of white males to assert their supremacy over inferior races and women. But those rights are relevant only because they're useful "hot buttons" for convincing the necessary millions of otherwise-expendable people to consistently and enthusiastically vote against their own interests.
In any other context, the very idea of "rights" is a discredited Socialist concept. For the Greedy Oligarchs' Party, there are only privileges. And privileges are inherently a function of wealth.
61
@ted
I totally agree with your comment. The only problem is that is just not happening. One can only hope that wealth get more rewards!
Just no. Not when the US government is locking up men, women and children for asking to exercise their right of asylum. Not when a deliberate strategy of bureaucratic cruelty is separating families to deter people from exercising said rights. Not when our government implicitly sanctions the assassination of a US-based journalist. Not when LGBTQ rights and protections are being rolled back at federal agencies and with judicial appointments. Not when Title IX and reproductive rights are dismantled or under siege. Not when credible sexual assault claims are dismissed out of hand. Not when Muslims are targeted for discriminatory government treatment due to their religion. Not when freedom of the press and freedom of speech are threatened by Orwellian rhetoric. Just no.
The Trump administration has, to borrow the SCOTUS terminology, no standing.
48
Since Donald Trump has redefined: the law, the Constitution, the separation of powers, the meaning of obstruction, the rules of Presidential conduct, our international relationships, the use of executive orders, trade agreements, nuclear treaties, what "emoluments" means, etc, etc, etc - Why not redefine what "human rights" actually means using the same set of ethics? After all, his buddy in the Senate redefined what "advise and consent" meant before he even took office...
31
It strikes me that perhaps the most serious deficiency of the current administration is the apparently total lack of empathy for other human beings.
This is not ideal in the nominal chief executive of over 300 million human beings.
95
When I read about members of this administration, I can't help but ask...Who are these people? How can someone travel through life with so little compassion, so much pomposity. I cringe for the future of our children and our country if this administration is returned for another 4 years.
301
The ability of the Christian "evangelicals" to dominate conversations - without ever admitting that 100% of their statements are based ONLY on their religious "beliefs" - continues to baffle me.
As does the fact that the entire rest of the world lets them get away with it. Abortion, for example? It's "immoral"? Says who?
Only their own particular set of religious interpretations, that's who. Not science, for sure; nor other religions. The entire divisive debacle is based on one thing-
The total failure of non-evangelicals to SPEAK UP, and say - "You are trying to legislate YOUR religious beliefs into national law. THAT IS FORBIDDEN." (Constitutionally, you know?)
So? Hey, why not expand the scam? Look how successful it's been so far.
115
@Greenpa, hypocrisy only from these evangelicals. They espouse the opposite of the words of Jesus Christ.
6
Re The United States, through the State Department and other means, has been a consistent advocate for these rights.
I am sorry Roger, but you are wrong
The United States has been an advocate on human rights when is served its commercial purposes.
It has NOT, when it conflicts with its commercial interest. Like oil
From the NY Times
"Quiet Support for Saudis Entangles U.S. in Yemen"
"Mr. Obama soon gave his approval for the Pentagon to support the impending military campaign."
That was under a President far more inclined to respect human rights, and YET supported the most violent violation in recent history
Sorry, again, Roger, but your take on the US is wrong.
Mr. Obama soon gave his approval for the Pentagon to support the impending military campaign.
4
@John
What campaign was that?
3
@John Good luck with your alternate reality, but 'tis you that is wrong and not Roger. This is exactly what is happening now. If you refuse to see what's happening, you are complicit in the destruction of our inalienable rights and our Democracy. Do you never tire of dragging Pres. Obama into every critique of your president. No president in the history of our country has every attacked our fundamental rights, our allies, denied global science, bullied other leaders, war mongered for his ego, withdrew from International Agreements that work, and befriended the biggest amoral, murdering dictators on the planet, and tanks on July 4 is an ego booster & has nothing to do with the way America celebrates July 4. Look at the people in Hong Kong trying to maintain their democracy. That will be us all too soon. Don't wait to wakeup until Democracy is gone.
3
Unfortunately, the world has no shortage of ruthless dictators and other bad actors. The United States cannot remake the world as democratic, nor can we set the standards by which other nations rule.
However, we can and must enforce the liberties to which we are entitled and the premises on which our own government operates. These include freedoms of the press and religion; separations of powers and of church/state; and the right to vote. Let us not be intimidated or inured by the Trump administration. What we are witnessing is not what this nation should be. Next year, we must show Trump that we have the final say in how our country works and, until then, resist every step of the way.
28
The story goes like this: In Ancient Rome, the leaders provided Bread and Circuses, to mollify the population. “ Christians “ and other troublemakers were thrown into the Arena, to be slaughtered and devoured by hungry Lions, to the delight of the audience. Now, Trump is the Lion. And the Christians are cheering their own destruction, and volunteering to go next.
Pence is the ringmaster.
44
Pompeo probably wants to change our concept of rights into God given rights and "paper rights." God-given rights would include religious freedoms including the imposition of Conservative and Evangelical beliefs on those who don't share those beliefs. Separation of Church and State would be a casualty. Prayers in public schools and Bible study would be legitimized. Reproductive rights would be for religious authorities to decide. Certain human behaviors: extramarital sex, premarital sex, and gay and lesbian relationships would be criminalized.
Other rights, such as voting , which are not mentioned in the Bible would be lesser rights. Privacy rights, as embodied in the 4th Amendment, and were not mentioned in the Bible, and which have been eroded in Supreme Court decisions in the electronic and digital ages would be of secondary importance.
Free speech might not fare so well since there is a commandment not to take the Lord's name in vain.
This Commission is not a benign development any more than the Kobach led Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity.
Some people never learn.
68
@JMT
Some people never learn?? Oh my. Indeed. Like learn what? To give up on their point of view and desire to harm people? Well, yes. They have NO DESIRE to unlearn that. They are deadly serious. They would ardently and earnestly say that it is you and I that "never learn".
3
I look forward to the commission on Honesty and Truth - both are clearly in need of redefinition.
45
This is all dissembling, a pretext for Pompeo's commission to revisit the right to privacy, as adjudicated by the Supreme Court.
After determining the right to privacy has no basis, they will deconstruct the rights that flow from that.
While making sure that Russian does not interfere with the 2020 election, and inveighing against the human rights abuses of China, North Korea and Saudi Arabia, it is breathtaking to see that Pompeo has the time and temerity to take on settled law.
Does a significant minority of Americas really feel oppression from our set of rights as constituted now? Likewise, I feel the Chinese and Saudi people feel violated from their lack of basic human rights.
How can this Secretary of State sleep at night?
92
@Wordsworth from Wadsworth His a Koch operative. He has all the power and money he needs to destroy what he never understood, never appreciated, and never recognized, which is the face of God in every human being, not just the white and the wealthy.
4
Trump have always acted as if he were the president of the confederate states of Mississippi and Alabama.
And those confederate states have always despised Abraham Lincoln for leaning more on the declaration of independence (as this nation's moral guiding light) than the un-amended U.S. constitution that allowed them to hold human beings as property.
The confederacy is well aware that Trump is not sold on the idea that "all men are created equal." And they know he is a stable genius, so maybe he can do something for them.
56
First, please use the more accurate (and less charged pejorative)refugee, rather than migrant.
In the evolution of moral consciousness from Kant to Rawls, the fundamental truth of the golden rule, do unto others as you would have them do unto you; and the civil rights mantra that if we all have our human rights no one needs civil rights, still is true.
38
Nonsense. The word "migrant" is neither pejorative nor charged.
"There is no need to reinvent the wheel, Mr. Secretary...Modern human rights are grounded on the dignity inherent in every human being."
Oh, spare me.
As a professor of moral philosophy, I've spent a fair bit of my career studying the concept of rights. I sincerely regret to report that the 1948-style "human rights" you're so smug about are actually a philosophically bankrupt sham, and a fairy tale. They're make-believe, not grounded in anything.
You claim they're grounded in "dignity inherent"? Yeah, OK. If you can demonstrate the nature and inherent presence of this supposed human "dignity," by all means publish it in your next column, because an endowed professorship awaits you. Professional philosophers have been trying for decades, even centuries, and no one has managed it yet.
It's far from clear that any concept of human rights, founded on nature or God or whatever else, is workable at all -- but nebulous, unexplained notions of "dignity" are obviously not going to cut it, so if we want to show that rights are real, we need a better answer.
No doubt Pompeo and friends have tendentious religious motives for founding this Commission, but the questions they pose are deadly serious, and desperately in need of answers. Whatever their own prejudices, I applaud them for encouraging public discussion of this deeply important philosophical issue.
14
@rumplebuttskin If human beings are going to treat each other in a way that makes a decent society possible, then we must have some justification for limiting the power of both government and citizens. Otherwise, your freedom to teach your philosophy course and to challenge the rationale behind human rights would disappear.
In this secular age, we may no longer rely on divine sanction to protect ourselves from tyranny, but you also seem unable to develop a less religiously-oriented myth. An emphasis on human dignity may not cut it for you, but it certainly beats your thinly-veiled cynicism. And, I might add, your notion that the Trump administration might foster an intelligent public discussion of this vital issue betrays an astonishing naivete.
119
@rumplebuttskin
Dear Professor,
It is not possible to use the study of philosophy to analytically prove something that isn't analytically provable. That's why after centuries of hard work, no one in your field has managed to come up with a satisfying proof of what rights are.
What we do have is the evolution of society. This evolution entails the generation of social mores that people value and even cherish. Mr. Cohen refers to these mores as human rights because they form the foundation of liberal democracies. That's what 1948 was all about.
These mores are human constructs. We created them the betterment of the social order. They are practicalities. They are societal structure. They have nothing to do with philosophy which ponders things like what does to mean to say something has meaning.
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@rumplebuttskin
Professional philosophers may fail to define human dignity - but I think they would recognize its absence.
Consider that not all concepts can be solidified, nor even constrained, but they still affect society, effect change, reflect the aspirations, the self-defined morality, of individuals.
John Locke had an idea, Thomas Jefferson invoked it in the Declaration of Independence, it has power that far outweighs your disdain.
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Mr. Cohen observes:
"In May, The Federal Register said the commission would provide “fresh thinking about human rights discourse where such discourse has departed from our nation’s founding principles of natural law and natural rights.” These “natural rights” at the time, of course, included chattel slavery and the dehumanization of black people, as well as the disenfranchisement of women."
Judging by the behavior of this administration, they might have been comfortable with life back then. Biblical times weren't much better. Which, by the way, is why Jesus was such a revolutionary in his time. But the Evangelical community seems to have forgotten his true message. Just as an aside, Mr. Trump seems to like the prosperity preachers among them.
A former Poet Laureate of the United States, Richard Wilbur, wrote these words for a Christmas hymn:
Yet he shall be forsaken,
And yielded up to die;
The sky shall groan and darken,
And every stone shall cry.
And every stone shall cry
For stony hearts of men:
God’s blood upon the spearhead,
God’s love refused again.
May we survive these dark times.
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"In the same Twitter rant Trump called himself “a true Stable Genius.” "
As always, the liberal intelligentsia insists on misinterpreting Trump. When he refers to himself as a Stable Genius, he is of course referring to his beloved summer palace in the Augean Stables, where he is the undisputed ruler of his domain, often retiring there to refresh his spirits and drink in an atmosphere congenial to his nature. The capitalization should have made this quite clear -- it obviously indicates a place name, not a state of mind.
A problem in this automotive age is of course that horses have become increasingly rare. Simply put, a good stable is now hard to find, especially in urban areas where their utility has largely disappeared. Ever the traditionalist, it is no wonder Trump is so fond of them. Reports abound that he has commanded some of his favorite stable droppings to be gold-plated for posterity. A special room on the spacious and elegant Trump University campus has been reserved for their permanent display.
As for human rights, they are whatever people want to them be and are willing to defend. A proclamation by Hillary Clinton may not suffice for eternity. Each generation will have to fight to preserve the rights it cherishes. The pendulum of history swings both ways. As always, nothing should be taken for granted.
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I think today's concept of human rights can probably be traced back to the period of the enlightenment and of course Trump's base rejects the enlightenment values and wants to follow values of an earlier period such as the Middle Ages or before that. Some would just rely on the Bible for values. What liberals consider progress in gaining human rights Trump's supporters see as a convenient replacement for religious values. The human rights commission is probably designed to be one more thing to tear the country apart. The idea that we can all live together has been jettisoned for an all out struggle of winner take all. Undocumented immigrants must go because they are potential Democratic voters if they become citizens. Who is next to go is anybody's guess. White power marches on trampling human rights or whatever else gets in its way.
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Not so slowly Trump, his Administration and the Republican led Senate are breaking off big pieces of our democracy and shattering them. What defense do have left to help us pick up the pieces and try to put them back together again?
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@EKB
Humpty Trumpty sat on his wall
Humpty Trumpty, no Rights for all
All the good women and all the good men
Could not put US back together again.
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@doug McDonald. Here’s a thought Doug, how about letting women decide for themselves what is the right choice?
Not sure where you’re headed with the Dems regarding the fruits of their labor. Last time I checked, they supported $15 an hour minimum wage. Finally, my ancestors immigrated to America in 1848 and I’m living proof of their sacrifice. Not sure of your history but my vote is to support future immigrants that faced the same challenges.
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@PatMurphy77: If there is one thing that America's 'great experiment' taught us it is that those who come here are determined and hardworking people who took themselves out of familiar surroundings and went to a strange land, much of the time with little in their pockets. They brought courage and grit. We need that to continue.
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The Republican Party, through Trump and his people, have as their goal the same as their goal since Reagan: to undermine the first ten words of the First Amendment, and use religious (i.e., completely arbitrary and whatever some religious leader says they are) values to make law. That will help the Republican Party rule; religion is a very effective way to control low-information voters.
Of course, that would be the end of American values, but the Republicans don't care about that; they just want money and power.
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@astrochimp
And your point is?
Is there something immoral about wealth and power?
No, it is what all people search for. They cannot have so-called moral righteousness prior to having fulfilled the lower tiers of
the hierarchy of needs and not before.
I'm a native-born American citizen in my mid-60's. And what I find most striking about this editorial is that we now actually have to say that others do not have the right to put our lives at risk because of their "religious beliefs". Many "religious citizens" have become just that extreme. They believe that they have a right to use their religion as a blunt force instrument to harm other people.
These "religious" folks believe that they have a right to force women who have been raped to bear their rapist's baby. Or that they must continue with a pregnancy that may in all likelihood kill them.
And these people in the "religious right" believe that they bear absolutely no responsibility for the harm they are causing to tens of thousands of other Americans. That they are entitled to force their religious beliefs on the rest of us.
I grew up in an America where it was axiomatic that one could exercise his or her religious freedoms, so long as they did not harm others. Republicans and Democrats believed this. It was not a partisan issue. It was not a religious issue. But it is now. This is the natural outgrowth of the toxicity the Evangelical Right has had in this nation. Their excesses have enabled the most bigoted people to mistreat their fellow citizens, as an "exercise of their religion".
The Evangelical Right is the biggest threat that this country faces. And the rest of us finally need to start fighting back.
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@Kyle Reese
I’ve been saying say, loudly, since Reagan. I watched my Parents being taken in by these “ moral majority “ con artists, both local and National. They were getting phone calls, at least Daily, to “ donate “, more, more, more. We’re talking tens of thousands of Dollars, until they finally woke up. It’s no coincidence that the religious and the
“ uneducated “ are the GOP Base. It’s about proven gullibility. Sad.
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@Phyliss Dalmatian
I also observed that shift in my family, Reagan coupled with the first of made for TV "Mega Church" of Billy Graham. Friends and relatives religiously watched Billy Graham on TV and wrote monthly checks for $10, and proudly displayed "thank you" cards from him exalting their support for Jesus! Sad.
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@Kyle Reese
I think it's more like tens of millions.
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In the USA we still retain the right to vote. I implore everyone to use it in 2020.
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@Stephen Cunha
Well, not everyone's vote counts due to gerrymandering and voter suppression, but we can keep most of us with rights if we vote regularly.
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@Stephen Cunha
Yes, but the the questions of whether or not your vote will actually count (hanging chad), whether or not the election was rigged ("Thanks Vladimir!), whether or not the winner will actually win (Bush and Trump both lost), and whether or not your input even matters any more (see recent NYT article about how much value Representatives actually give their constituents views hint: none) - are all completely valid at this juncture.
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@Stephen Cunha
Who is ' we'?
The right to vote is determined by state law. There is no right to vote in the Constitution except with regards to black African Americans and women.
And as a result of the Supreme Court of the United States opinion in Shelby County v. Holder gutting the Voting Rights Act efforts to deter and diminish and suppress the rights of black and brown Americans are legion in Trump red states.
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This is seriously disturbing. Decades of progress in many areas of basic human rights are at stake here, as the government of the wealthiest, most powerful and hence most influential government on the planet convenes a council to determine “which rights are entitled to gain respect.” - an Orwellian phrase if ever there was one. The council will be dominated by narrow-minded, conservative pseudo-religious men (how many red flags does THAT prospect raise??), and the man in charge doesn't even BELIEVE in the concept of rights that everyone is entitled to "simply by virtue of our humanity” - which is the defacto definition of "human rights"... rights that EVERY human being is entitled to, simply because we are all human, and therefore all deserving of "human" rights such as freedom from discrimination based upon the fundamentals of our existence as people - which most people have long ago agreed upon: rights such as freedom from discrimination on the basis of belief-system, sexual orientation, gender, ethnic affiliation (not "race", which is a completely out-dated, unscientific and worse-than-useless concept...), genetic makeup and socio-economic status), freedom from inhumane treatment and torture.... This is an administration that seems determined to lead the world bravely back to the 14th century.
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To be fair, they're only trying to take the country back to the 1930s.
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I imagine freedom of expression will be deemed a human right as long as includes hate speech and fact-free conspiracy theories perpetrated in the darker corners of the web (or the current White House press office). The mainstream media and investigative journalists will, no doubt, be seen as enemies of this newly-worded human right.
Perhaps faith will be seen as a human right in such a way that designates scientific findings that conflict with beliefs founded on faith as enemies of this newly-worded human right.
The possibilities to redefine human rights are, regrettably, endless. George Orwell's 1984 needs to be read again. Before it is banned as an affront to the newly designated human rights.
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@Hilary Tamar I think it was in 1984 the observation was made that it is standard practice for those wanting to take over a society to first establish themselves as the righteous and most religious moral leaders; well the Republicans have been fiddling that tune since Reagan, many are brainwashed by itnow, its a long time since the 1980s.
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@Hilary Tamar
By "faith", of course you mean "religion". "Faith" is bigger than religious faith and is also different from religion.
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@Hilary Tamar-Trump's just held Rose Garden alt-right propaganda rally publicized as a "social media summit" was really an exercise in contempt. The one social media network invited to participate is a fringe site; home to several neo-Nazi extremist groups. Mainstream press reps were forced to stand behind a cordoned rope in the back. Some alt-right attendees felt free to yell invective at the press and Sebastian Gorka, former WH deputy assistant nearly started a fist-fight. https://news.yahoo.com/sebastian-gorka-at-the-center-of-rose-garden-fracas-following-trump-event-002635804.html;_ylt=AwrgDummPyhdnE0AXa9XNyoA;_ylu=X3oDMTByNzdqbzZjBGNvbG8DZ3ExBHBvcwMzBHZ0aWQDBHNlYwNzYw--
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It is all about the all mighty buck with Trump and the new Trumpublican Party. I suspect that we'll be entitled to all the rights and only the righhts that money can buy. Inalienable rights prove to be pesky impediments to whatever it is that they consider to be progress.
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@Boris and Natasha I think someone said earlier, the republicans want to turn back time to before the Voting Rights Act, the Civil Rights Act, and the Kochs want to turn back time to feudal estates when wealth was the only conveyor of rights.
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@Boris and Natasha
Obviously. One megadollar -- one vote.
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