The International Convention On The Elimination Of All Forms Of Racial Discrimination
Straying from its thankful resistance to the ICESCR, the United States in 1994 ratified a treaty devoted to decimating freedom of association and freedom of speech: The International Convention On The Elimination Of All Forms Of Racial Discrimination (“ICERD”). The ICERD entered into force in 1969, and President Carter characteristically signed it and sent it to the U.S. Senate in 1978. For the next sixteen years the Senate resisted the impulse to rubber-stamp this cloying declaration of sentiments, but the Senate lost its nerve and cleared the path to ratification by the Clinton administration in 1994. As with the ICCPR, the United States issued a reservation stating that the treaty’s language cannot bind us without separate, implementing legislation. The United States also issued a reservation noting that the ICERD’s commands infringe on freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. Once again, though, these moderating measures provide little solace because federal courts and legions of “idealistic” municipalities remain poised to smuggle the treaty into our laws anyway, not to mention that the very nature of the ICERD is so odious that full rejection of it stands as the only justifiable response.
Article 2(1)(d) stands as a testament to this conclusion, declaring as it does that “[e]ach State Party shall prohibit and bring to an end, by all appropriate means, including legislation as required by circumstances, racial discrimination by any persons, group or organization[.]” This command reaches beyond governmental conduct and grabs private citizens by the scruff of the neck, admonishing them how they may speak and act, thus embodying pure social engineering: the manipulation of civil society according to the designs of the political class. No country calling itself “free” can legitimately undertake to force its citizens to adopt a specific attitude or to interact against their will. Spiritual development and brotherly love cannot and should not be coerced; free men may dislike or disassociate from each other for any reason until such time as they choose to associate, and on their own terms. Simply stated, freedom of association presupposes the freedom of non-association, and the ICERD’s outright disregard for this moral truth counts as the original sin from which sprout so many others:
Article 4 stabs at free speech by calling on governments to repress – with criminal penalties, no less – any individuals or organizations advocating disapproved viewpoints on the subject of race.
In the next breath, Article 5(c)(viii)-(ix) purports to protect “freedom of opinion and expression” and “freedom of peaceful assembly and association,” plunging the ICERD into contradiction and hypocrisy.
Article 6 arms any person who is aggrieved by the private racial choices of his countrymen with the power to extract reparations from them, effectively deputizing the private citizen in a governmental crusade to destroy liberty.
Not only is private speech about race to be curtailed, but Article 7 decrees that government speech about race is to be endorsed – provided that such speech advance the pre-approved slate of ideas and attitudes “in the fields of teaching, education, culture, and information . . . .” In other words, government will squelch disfavored speech and proceed to fill the void with the government’s own, supported by taxpayer dollars, and transforming the phrase “political correctness” from a humorous epithet to an enforced reality.
The remaining Articles establish a procedure whereby member nations must regularly report on their race-relations “progress,” such reports to be submitted to yet another bureaucracy, the Committee On The Elimination Of Racial Discrimination. In a highly disturbing such report submitted in 1999, the United States government boasted that existing federal law complied with the ICERD, but also lamented that “American society has not yet fully achieved the Convention’s goals,” thus necessitating further measures “to promote the important principles embodied in its text.” Not content to scorn the living, the report went on to disparage our ancestors and fretted that the federal government’s draconian measures immediately after the Civil War “did not succeed in changing attitudes,” concluding that the unlawful excesses of the Supreme Court and the U.S. Congress during the latter half of the twentieth century only partially delivered us from our ancestors’ sins. These insulting ramblings serve as an open admission that the federal government believes it possesses both the right and the duty to re-make American society, and the federal government now resorts to an outside, international bureaucracy to advance its illegitimate objective. And more recently, that international bureaucracy has dispatched a “special rapporteur” to our shores to investigate and help stamp out the forbidden forms of speech that we choose to engage in. Our ancestors, whatever their failings, had enough of a spine to have grabbed their muskets.
Straying from its thankful resistance to the ICESCR, the United States in 1994 ratified a treaty devoted to decimating freedom of association and freedom of speech: The International Convention On The Elimination Of All Forms Of Racial Discrimination (“ICERD”). The ICERD entered into force in 1969, and President Carter characteristically signed it and sent it to the U.S. Senate in 1978. For the next sixteen years the Senate resisted the impulse to rubber-stamp this cloying declaration of sentiments, but the Senate lost its nerve and cleared the path to ratification by the Clinton administration in 1994. As with the ICCPR, the United States issued a reservation stating that the treaty’s language cannot bind us without separate, implementing legislation. The United States also issued a reservation noting that the ICERD’s commands infringe on freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. Once again, though, these moderating measures provide little solace because federal courts and legions of “idealistic” municipalities remain poised to smuggle the treaty into our laws anyway, not to mention that the very nature of the ICERD is so odious that full rejection of it stands as the only justifiable response.
Article 2(1)(d) stands as a testament to this conclusion, declaring as it does that “[e]ach State Party shall prohibit and bring to an end, by all appropriate means, including legislation as required by circumstances, racial discrimination by any persons, group or organization[.]” This command reaches beyond governmental conduct and grabs private citizens by the scruff of the neck, admonishing them how they may speak and act, thus embodying pure social engineering: the manipulation of civil society according to the designs of the political class. No country calling itself “free” can legitimately undertake to force its citizens to adopt a specific attitude or to interact against their will. Spiritual development and brotherly love cannot and should not be coerced; free men may dislike or disassociate from each other for any reason until such time as they choose to associate, and on their own terms. Simply stated, freedom of association presupposes the freedom of non-association, and the ICERD’s outright disregard for this moral truth counts as the original sin from which sprout so many others:
Article 4 stabs at free speech by calling on governments to repress – with criminal penalties, no less – any individuals or organizations advocating disapproved viewpoints on the subject of race.
In the next breath, Article 5(c)(viii)-(ix) purports to protect “freedom of opinion and expression” and “freedom of peaceful assembly and association,” plunging the ICERD into contradiction and hypocrisy.
Article 6 arms any person who is aggrieved by the private racial choices of his countrymen with the power to extract reparations from them, effectively deputizing the private citizen in a governmental crusade to destroy liberty.
Not only is private speech about race to be curtailed, but Article 7 decrees that government speech about race is to be endorsed – provided that such speech advance the pre-approved slate of ideas and attitudes “in the fields of teaching, education, culture, and information . . . .” In other words, government will squelch disfavored speech and proceed to fill the void with the government’s own, supported by taxpayer dollars, and transforming the phrase “political correctness” from a humorous epithet to an enforced reality.
The remaining Articles establish a procedure whereby member nations must regularly report on their race-relations “progress,” such reports to be submitted to yet another bureaucracy, the Committee On The Elimination Of Racial Discrimination. In a highly disturbing such report submitted in 1999, the United States government boasted that existing federal law complied with the ICERD, but also lamented that “American society has not yet fully achieved the Convention’s goals,” thus necessitating further measures “to promote the important principles embodied in its text.” Not content to scorn the living, the report went on to disparage our ancestors and fretted that the federal government’s draconian measures immediately after the Civil War “did not succeed in changing attitudes,” concluding that the unlawful excesses of the Supreme Court and the U.S. Congress during the latter half of the twentieth century only partially delivered us from our ancestors’ sins. These insulting ramblings serve as an open admission that the federal government believes it possesses both the right and the duty to re-make American society, and the federal government now resorts to an outside, international bureaucracy to advance its illegitimate objective. And more recently, that international bureaucracy has dispatched a “special rapporteur” to our shores to investigate and help stamp out the forbidden forms of speech that we choose to engage in. Our ancestors, whatever their failings, had enough of a spine to have grabbed their muskets.
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