Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Thursday said property rights and religious liberty are “foremost” among human rights, and that the United States must take inspiration from the Declaration of Independence as it pursues a foreign policy that realistically promotes fundamental freedoms.
Pompeo spoke in Philadelphia as he unveiled the draft report from a controversial panel he set up a year ago called the Commission on Unalienable Rights. Activists and scholars, many of whom have been critical of the commission’s very existence, were scrambling to digest the contents of the draft report, whose final version Pompeo hopes will influence U.S. and global human rights policy.
In a wide-ranging speech sure to give critics and supporters plenty of ammunition, Pompeo stressed the fundamental goodness of the U.S and its ability to overcome its flaws. He also trashed the New York Times, suggesting it promulgates “hatred of America,” and questioned the motives of people who have been tearing down statues of controversial U.S. historical figures.
“America is fundamentally good, and has much to offer the world, because our founders recognized the existence of God-given unalienable rights, and designed a durable system to protect them,” Pompeo said.
The speech as well as the commission’s draft report were in many ways typical of other Pompeo public pronouncements: They were filled with references to U.S. adversaries, such as Iran and China, and refer often to Christian thoughts and inspirations. The Thursday speech and draft report also invoke famous historical figures such as Martin Luther King Jr.
But the speech in particular also was notable for some of Pompeo’s targets.
He blasted the New York Times’s award-winning 1619 Project on slavery, saying that the paper wants “you to believe Marxist ideology that America is only the oppressors and the oppressed. The Chinese Communist Party must be gleeful when they see the New York Times spout their ideology.”
He went on to say that “some people have taken these false doctrines to heart.”
For instance, he said, “the rioters pulling down statues thus see nothing wrong with desecrating monuments to those who fought for unalienable rights – from our Founding to the present day.” Most of the statues that are being removed are Confederate figures who defended slavery and wanted to secede from the United States, though some of the monuments targeted, such as that of anti-slavery activist Hans Christian Heg, match Pompeo’s description.
Pompeo, a former Kansas GOP congressman, is known to be eyeing a potential future presidential run, and his critics immediately pointed out that the speech had plenty of fodder for the electoral base of the Republican Party, including the media-bashing.
The initial responses to the speech and draft report landed around expected lines, with conservative organizations praising it and liberal-leaning groups – as well some prominent international human rights groups – questioning its value.
The draft report “makes clear that we are not bystanders; we will not be silent in the face of tyranny; we are and will remain the leaders of the free world,” said John Hagee, the founder and Chairman of Christians United for Israel.
Amnesty International USA, meanwhile, called it a “dangerous political stunt that could spark a race to the bottom by human rights-abusing governments around the world.”
While championing America as a beacon of hope and liberty, Pompeo nonetheless warned that the U.S. has to be “realistic” in promoting such values abroad.
“Our first duty is to secure American freedoms,” he said. “Our dedication to unalienable rights doesn’t mean we have the capacity to tackle all human rights violations, everywhere, at all times.”
Pompeo said the commission’s work was critical because the U.S. and the world need a rethink of human rights policy. One reason for that, he said, is that activists have created new categories of rights, and that the world could lose perspective on what are truly core, fundamental rights.
“Americans have not only unalienable rights, but also positive rights granted by governments, courts, and multilateral bodies. Many are worth defending in light of our founding; others aren’t,” he said, repeating an argument he’s made several times in defending the commission’s creation.
Pompeo didn’t spend much time in his speech detailing what rights matter more than others, aside from placing property rights and religious freedom at the top of the heap.
“No one can enjoy ‘the pursuit of happiness’ if you can’t own the fruits of your labor!” he said, according to prepared remarks shared in advance. “And no society can retain its legitimacy – or a virtuous character – without religious freedom.”
But this idea of establishing a hierarchy of human rights is one reason many activists have been critical of the commission and its work.
In its draft report, the commission says that while the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights does not explicitly pit some rights against others, it’s “desirable” that countries and legal systems at times prioritize some rights.
“For instance, the high value the United States has accorded to freedom of speech has led Washington to take exception to international norms mandating the prohibition of hate speech,” the draft states. “Such differences of judgment about the relative weight to assign to rights are unavoidable and appropriate.”
Pompeo’s critics argue that by declaring some rights are more important than others, the secretary is setting a dangerous precedent, one that can be exploited by countries with atrocious human rights records, such as China and Iran.
That’s especially the case, the activists say, if a government says economic or religious freedom is more important than protecting other individual rights, a vision that could harm LGBTQ people and women in particular. In theory, a country might decide that a gay person has the right to live, but not to marry.
Authoritarian governments have long argued, too, that economic rights are more fundamental than those of freedom of speech and assembly.
Pompeo, a conservative Christian, has expressed sentiments such as that key rights “came from our Lord”; that language also echoes the way America’s founding fathers framed the idea of universal rights in documents like the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. So his emphasis on religious liberty during Thursday’s speech did not surprise activists.
But Pompeo also pointed to a concern found in many corners, including among some of his critics: that global institutions set up to promote human rights, such as the U.N. Human Rights Council, are failing in their missions.
The council, for instance, includes a number of countries in its membership with terrible human rights records.
The draft report was in many ways more measured. Although it does appear to pay special attention to religious freedom and property rights, it nonetheless acknowledges the value of international human rights cooperation.
The commission also concludes that it is “urgent to vigorously champion human rights in foreign policy.” That alone is a somewhat controversial statement given that the Trump administration is selective about when it raises human rights issues, doing so almost exclusively to bash U.S. adversaries while saying little when U.S. partner governments engage in rights violations.
Although Pompeo has said the commission is not designed to make U.S. policy, he’s also said he hopes that the document that it produces will be one that the State Department will turn to “for decades to come.”
The commission was composed primarily of academics, several of them right-leaning and with specialties in religion. The chairperson, Mary Ann Glendon, is a Harvard scholar and former ambassador with a history of speaking out against same-sex marriage. The State Department’s human rights bureau, home to numerous career experts, was largely left out of the commission’s work.
The public has two weeks to comment on the draft report, after which a final version will be released.
Source: politico.com
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