Secy. of State Pompeo: 'Property, Religious Freedom Foremost Human Rights'; Criticized By Activists
"Pompeo claims private property and religious freedom are 'foremost' human rights." US secretary of state seeks to refocus US human rights efforts as he launches report by government commission, The Guardian, 7/16/20. -Excerpts, Ed:
Mike Pompeo has sought to redefine the US approach to human rights by giving preference to private property and religious freedom as the foremost “unalienable rights” laid down by America’s Founding Fathers. Pompeo, launching a draft report by a Commission on Unalienable Rights he established a year ago, also claimed that a proliferation of human rights asserted by different US and international institutions had the effect of diluting those rights he viewed as the most important. “Many are worth defending in light of our founding; others aren’t,” Pompeo said at a launch ceremony yesterday in Philadelphia. He did not specify which rights he thought were superfluous, but the state department during his tenure has been aggressive in opposing references to reproductive and gender rights in UN and other multilateral documents.
The report's authors – a mix of academics and activists – said they could not agree on the application of human rights standards to issues like “abortion, affirmative action, and capital punishment, to name a few”. The state department presentation was quickly criticised by human rights activists for seeking to establish a hierarchy of human rights, in which some were more important than others, and for presenting human rights advocacy as distinctively American. The Trump administration’s own human rights record has come under scrutiny for its policy of separating immigrant children from their parents and holding them in cages and its response to nationwide protests driven by anger over police treatment of black Americans. Trump has also sought to intimidate journalists, frequently referring to the press “the enemy of the people”. Pompeo did not mention freedom of the press in his remarks, but he repeatedly attacked the NY Times, accusing it of purveying Marxist ideology. The secretary of state has been rebuked by human rights groups for his selectivity in applying norms..
Pompeo, who is widely believed to harbour ambitions to run as a religious conservative candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, infused the event with a heavily religious tone..“our founders recognized the existence of God-given unalienable rights, and designed a durable system to protect them,” said Pompeo. “As the report emphasises, foremost among these rights are property rights and religious liberty. No one can enjoy ‘the pursuit of happiness’ if you can’t own the fruits of your labor! And no society can retain its legitimacy – or a virtuous character – without religious freedom. Our founders knew faith was also essential to nurture the private virtue of our citizens.”
Pompeo acknowledged historical US failings, including slavery and the dispossession of Native Americans, but he argued that those wrongs had been remedied and was scornful of those who argued that they represented enduring flaws. “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,” he said in reference to a flurry of incidents involving the defacing and pulling down of monuments. The attacks have focused on leaders and symbols of the Confederacy but have sometimes targeted statues of other historical figures. Human rights groups were critical of the attempt to give preference to some rights at the expense of others, pointing out that America’s Founding Fathers emphasised property rights at a time when that included owning other human beings, through slavery and 18th-century legal interpretations of marriage...
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jul/16/pompeo-claims-private-property-and-religious-freedom-are-foremost-human-rights
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- The Declaration of Independence, written in 1776, announces a complete break with Britain and expresses the ideals on which the United States was founded: “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.” The National Archives, https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript
(Wiki) Human rights in the United States comprise a series of rights which are legally protected by the Constitution of the United States (particularly the Bill of Rights), state constitutions, treaty and customary international law, legislation enacted by Congress and state legislatures, and state referenda and citizen's initiatives.
The Federal Government has, through a ratified constitution, guaranteed unalienable rights to its citizens and (to some degree) non-citizens. These rights have evolved over time through constitutional amendments, legislation, and judicial precedent. Along with the rights themselves, the portion of the population granted these rights has expanded over time. Within the U.S., federal courts have jurisdiction over international human rights laws.
The U.S. is generally given high to fair marks on human rights. The Freedom in the World index (whose publisher Freedom House receives substantial funding from the US government, for example, lists the U.S. in the highest category..
Despite the fair to high rankings in reports on human rights, the United States also receives significant international criticism for its human rights record. Criticisms include:
- lower labor protections than most Western countries,
- imprisonment of debtors,
- criminalization of homelessness and poverty,
- invasion of its citizens' privacy through mass surveillance programs,
- police brutality, police impunity and corruption, incarceration of citizens for profit, mistreatment of prisoners, the highest number of juveniles in the prison system of any country, some of the longest prison sentences in the world,
- continued use of the death penalty despite its abolition in nearly all other western countries,
- abuse of both legal and illegal immigrants (including children), facilitating state terrorism,
- a health care system favoring profit via privatization over the wellbeing of citizens, the lack of a universal health care program unlike most other developed countries, one of the most expensive and worst-performing health care systems of any developed country,
- continued support for foreign dictators (even when genocide has been committed), forced disappearances, extraordinary renditions, extrajudicial detentions, the torture of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and black sites, and extrajudicial targeted killings (e.g. the Disposition Matrix)...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_the_United_States
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