Human Rights -- Part III

The International Covenant On Civil And Political Rights

In 1966 the U.N. General Assembly spliced the traditional, First Generation Rights from the UDHR and re-packaged them as an independent treaty that would achieve binding legal effect whenever a sufficient number of nations ratified it: The International Covenant On Civil Political Rights (“ICCPR”). That moment arrived in 1977, when the ICCPR entered into force, and the United States itself ratified the ICCPR in 1992.

This warrants extreme concern because the U.S. Supreme Court, in the tragic ruling of Missouri v. Holland, has held that international treaties may override the Tenth Amendment of our Constitution and expand the scope of federal power while diminishing the presumptive authority of the States – even though such treaties are not constitutional amendments. A true amendment would require supermajorities in the House of Representatives, the Senate, and the States; a treaty transfiguring the Constitution under the Holland decision, on the other hand, requires only a supermajority of the Senate. Precious little comfort is found in the fact that the United States declared that the ICCPR is “non-self-executing” and requires domestic legislation to take full effect, as the elites in our courts and our universities labor to make the ICCPR’s language directly enforceable against us. For example, one typical scholar has argued that the ICCPR’s non-self-executing status applies only to private lawsuits, not to the ICCPR in general, and therefore the full treaty should bind the United States despite the absence of enabling legislation. Another example of this revolt occurred in 2000, when the Supreme Court was hearing a challenge to the Violence Against Women Act on the basis that the Act exceeded the federal government’s powers over private citizens. A group of self-styled “international legal scholars and human rights experts” filed a brief citing Missouri v. Holland and urging the Supreme Court to apply the ICCPR to expand federal power beyond what the Constitution permits. As detailed in my previous book, the Court thankfully struck down the challenged portion of the Act because “[t]he regulation and punishment of intrastate violence that is not directed at . . . interstate commerce has always been the province of the States.” In more recent years, however, the Court has gone the other way and indeed made use of the ICCPR to re-write the Constitution, such as when Justice Anthony Kennedy cited the ICCPR to decree that States may no longer carry out the death penalty against persons who committed their capital crimes when under the age of eighteen.

Anyone familiar with American history will recognize that these initial steps, however popular their immediate impact may be, blaze a trail for future incursions into local (now national) sovereignty. A review of some ICCPR provisions demonstrates the cause for alarm:

Nowhere does the ICCPR mention the right to own property, even though that right is commemorated in Article 17 of the UDHR. So the ICCPR not only re-packages the UDHR, but it also abridges it by excluding a right that secures so many others. There can be no true freedom of speech, freedom of association, or freedom of religion if the material means for engaging in them are not likewise securely owned by private individuals, whether it be printing presses, computers, homes, books, or houses of worship. In short, the ICCPR’s omission of private property alone renders the ICCPR a farce.

Article 4 of the ICCPR likewise drains many of the mentioned rights of their meaning, as it authorizes governments to repeal or “derogate” those rights “[i]n time of public emergency which threatens the life of the nation . . . .” This vague, expansive exception truncates such rights as the freedom from arbitrary arrest and detention (Article 9); the right to be treated humanely and with dignity upon any arrest or detention (Article 10); the right to leave one’s country (Article 12); the presumption of innocence until proven guilty (Article 14); the right not to testify against oneself (Article 14); the right not to be prosecuted for the same offense more than once (Article 14); the right to preserve one’s privacy and home from arbitrary interference (Article 17); the basic right to hold opinions (Article 19); the right of peaceful assembly (Article 21); the right of association (Article 22); and the right to marry (Article 23). Our Constitution contains no such “exception clause” allowing the federal government to ignore its inherent limitations, so the ICCPR offers the federal government legalistic cover whenever it may indulge in unconstitutional repression.

Article 20 curtails our rights rather than protects them, specifically the right to free speech. “Any propaganda for war shall be prohibited by law. . . . Any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence shall be prohibited by law.” Once again, our Constitution does not allow the federal government to regulate speech, a prerogative left to the several States. Of course this has not stopped the federal government from unlawfully doing so on many occasions, and the ICCPR simply throws gasoline on that fire.

Article 25 decrees that voting for public officials is an inherent and universal right, one that cannot be placed under “unreasonable” restrictions or denied, except perhaps during an “emergency” as described in Article 4. This directly contradicts our Constitution. For example, Article II, Section 1 allows States to choose presidential electors however they wish, whether it’s by a coin toss or popular suffrage. Moreover, Section 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment allows States to revoke the franchise from criminals, which several States still do. There is no telling whether the ICCPR’s stewards on the Human Rights Committee (see below) would regard this as “reasonable” or not, but there is also no basis for letting them decide. Logic and experience demonstrate that voting is a privilege, not a right, and the ICCPR effectively overrides political experimentation with this privilege. A nation seeking to preserve modest, limited government has a very good rationale for imposing modest, limited suffrage. The ICCPR opens the floodgates to unrestrained mobocracy that allows citizens to plunder each other.

Article 26 drops all pretense of moderation and calls for the outlawing of any discrimination, by anyone against anyone else, and for any reason. This laughably authoritarian language sweeps so far that it could conceivably prohibit gender-specific bathrooms. Even if such silly applications were avoided, the fact remains that free people can choose to associate or not to associate for any reason they wish, even if for reasons widely viewed as objectionable. As with so many other Articles, this one hands the federal government a power it utterly lacks, since nothing in the Constitution authorizes federal interference into private choices of this nature. While the federal government has twisted the Constitution’s interstate commerce clause to achieve these forbidden objectives, Article 26 provides yet more legalistic cover for this brand of unlawful government activity.

Articles 28-41 offer the coup de grâce: a “Human Rights Committee” that investigates and chastises member nations who shirk their duty to configure their citizens’ rights to the ICCPR’s vision. Even though the Committee is a creation of the ICCPR – an independent treaty – it is wholly financed by the United Nations, which also oversees the election of the Committee members. The Committee often hears from disgruntled groups such as the Center for Reproductive Rights, which in 2006 complained to the Committee that the United States is bound by the ICCPR to do more to help women obtain contraception and/or to terminate unwanted pregnancies (as if the United States did not already excel at those endeavors). In response to these kinds of complaints, the Committee has issued a growing body of decisions that, while not directly enforceable, are treated by the legal community as authoritative “jurisprudence” on the duties of all nations towards their own citizens. According to the Committee, for example, abortion is a “human right” (for the mother, not for the human fetus obviously). The Committee urges the federal government to place a nationwide moratorium on the death penalty, which the federal government lacks the constitutional authority to do. Additionally, the Committee feels that a local government within a federal system may not outlaw homosexual conduct. On the flip side, however, the Committee feels that someone should not be permitted to doubt or deny the Holocaust openly, as freedom of expression apparently does not extend to unpopular or ridiculous opinions (i.e., the very ones in need of protection, and which are best addressed by more speech rather than less). Reasonable people may differ on how to handle all these challenges, but the Human Rights Committee and the ICCPR regime it represents leave no room for debate, smearing those who disagree as enemies of humanity. “Jurisprudence” of this sort will continue to mushroom as leftists the world over clamor to ratchet moral and decisional authority beyond the reach of their countrymen.

A Picture Worth A Million Words

The scene so perfectly captures the soul of modern people as they coolly step around a dying man to pursue their hearts' desire, and after a day of thanksgiving, no less. No treatise describing the new Dark Age descending upon us will ever find enough words to match this.

I Laughed

This article I just stumbled on about modern female pop stars is wrong, wrong, wrong . . . but oh so right. [Warning: strong language]

The Disruptive Nature Of Moral Excellence

I posted not long ago on a young football player who demonstrated so much skill that the rules were changed to prohibit him from scoring too much, a classic illustration of how excellence angers rather than inspires. That was a question of physical excellence, but it is moral excellence that will truly cause people to hate you.

A person of moral excellence is a walking, talking rebuke to all those who are immoral or lack morals (amoral). The mere fact of his existence inflames, since the contrast between him and everyone else is too stark to ignore and cannot be forgiven. A standard reaction is to mock, berate, or otherwise tear down the paragon of virtue in order to prove that nobody is better than anyone else, making the lowest common denominator feel good and even superior for being free of priggish pretensions.

Witness the rage at Tim Tebow for being a man of faith who walks the walk rather than just talks. Witness any number of movies or television shows that portray the morally upright as naïve, repressed, disturbed, or even malevolent. Witness the modern love affair with sarcasm, which is insincerity most often aimed at a human target perceived as too big for his britches.

I recently heard a story about a young woman in high school whose friends mercilessly mocked her for staying a virgin until married. One day she sat them all down and asked that they cut it out, reminding them of the following: at any time I can choose to be like you, but you can never again choose to be like me. Amen, sister.

Human Rights -- Part II

I've been remiss in making my installments concerning human rights, an important subject I raised last month when discussing how the OWS movement and similar idealists should exercise caution in wielding language that the political class has usurped. If the goal is to challenge the political class, a rush to embrace "human rights" as officially defined is self-defeating.

The Universal Declaration Of Human Rights

With much bombast and ceremony did the U.N. General Assembly in 1948 grant unanimous approval to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (“UDHR”), the first international “human rights” instrument ever. Eleanor Roosevelt had led the commission charged with the Declaration’s drafting, which was no accident: her devotion to the New Deal agenda of her late husband, President Franklin Roosevelt, would ensure that the document bore his ideological footprint.

Amidst all the hoopla, however, problems were already surfacing because the various U.N. members could not fully agree on what constitutes a human right, and thus the UDHR lacked the momentum to become a treaty and carried no binding legal effect. On the one hand, the UDHR proclaimed noble ideals such as freedom of expression (Article 19) and private property (Article 17), which are often labeled as “First Generation Rights.” On the other hand, certain controversial Articles sketched out “rights” that do not inhere in the individual but rather call upon governments to coerce certain behaviors or to redistribute wealth and toil from one segment of the population to the other – commonly known as slavery, but euphemistically labeled as “Second Generation Rights.” Some examples of these Second Generation Rights are as follows:

UDHR Article 23 announces, among other things, that “[e]veryone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favorable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment”; “[e]veryone, without discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work”; and “[e]veryone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection.” Apart from the Article’s vagueness – an open invitation to governmental abuse – the only way to secure these kinds of “rights” is to force employers to provide them, which destroys the employers’ own right to conduct their affairs as they see fit. So the employment relationship that was once a voluntary, contractual arrangement now yields to a coerced association. These are not rights. At best, they are optional political programs; at worst, they are sheer wrongs.

UDHR Article 24 again invades the workplace by decreeing that “[e]veryone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay.” If I own a business and offer a job with long working hours and unpaid vacations, I may be insensitive, but the potential employee is free to accept or reject that offer. Both of us are engaged in the pursuit of happiness, and neither of us may force his wishes onto the other. I cannot force him to work for me, and he cannot force me to employ him. That is how free men associate, a concept so basic and yet so alien to the framers of this Article.

UDHR Article 25(1) gets even more ambitious and holds that “[e]veryone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.” Unfortunately, these material blessings emerge from the efforts of the people who strive to produce them. Given this undeniable fact of earthly existence, the only way that a government could possibly guarantee such blessings to anyone is to steal them from somebody else, thus divorcing the fruits of labor from the laborers. Reflecting on this for a moment reveals its truth: if I obtain material blessings by my own efforts or by voluntary interaction with others, I do not require the UDHR’s protection at all; if, however, I cannot obtain material blessings through toil, trade or charity, the UDHR steps in and obligates someone else to provide for me even if he may not wish to do so. If this counts as my “right,” then I effectively have enslaved the other person by asserting ownership over his labor. No one of sound mind or morals can seriously advocate this as a “right.”

Reaching into the schoolhouse, UDHR Article 26(1) proclaims: “Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. . . .” Yet nothing is free – somebody must pay to provide this compulsory education. Many societies historically have left it to a child’s parents to provide for their own child’s education, while other societies have decided to shift those costs onto the community as a whole. Article 26 goes far beyond any such policy debate by outlawing the first option and mandating the second, since “free” in modern-speak means that someone other than the customer pays. So in the Article’s twisted logic, a parent has no duty to pay for his own child’s education, but everyone else who is not the child’s parent does. How this imposition can possibly represent a “right” is unimaginable.

Article 26(2) digs deeper, past the schoolhouse and into the human mind: “Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace.” Here the undoing of any sane conception of rights becomes complete, as even opinions are to be strangled in the crib if deemed improper. Apparently we may not entertain any doubts or criticisms of “human rights” and “fundamental freedoms” as the U.N. defines them, but rather we must embrace them and support the U.N.’s manifold activities. And while Article 26(3) mentions in passing that “[p]arents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children,” this offers little solace because the drafters surely did not seek to nullify the Article’s main goals. Any parent who has ever dared to challenge the scope or content of the compulsory education of his children can attest that a parent’s “prior right” counts for little.

Article 29(3) lays bare the UDHR’s unworkable nature by indulging in one final and supreme contradiction: “These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.” So the UDHR admits that the entire panoply of rights – from free expression to “free” education – is a farce. If these truly were rights, we could exercise them however we saw fit, even to denounce the U.N. and its works.

In spite of this “Second Generation” lunacy, the U.S. Supreme Court has favorably referenced the UDHR on a number of occasions over the years, going so far as to state in 2004 that it carries “moral authority” despite lacking the legally binding force of a treaty. While that is unsettling enough, the promoters of the UDHR craftily split it in half and re-packaged it as two separate treaties so as to overcome piecemeal the objections that had relegated the UDHR to the “moral” universe.

I Was Wrong

A few years ago I made a prediction that the worsening economy would generate a return to social conservatism, particularly in the sense of rejecting shallow forms of entertainment that numb people's minds to reality. Reality, I thought, would intrude and force people to take stock of their lives.

While this may have happened for a few out there, it certainly has not taken place on a grand scale. From what I can tell, the opposite has occurred as people cling to their entertainment more furiously than ever. The recent riots at Penn State over the dismissal of a football coach are merely one example, but a powerful one of how people prefer to risk their lives rather than their illusions. Hollywood continues churning out profitable sewage, and people continue spending obscene amounts of money on sports events, concerts, travel, and the like.

It's a form of self-medication or psychological survival I had underestimated. Perhaps this generation is too addicted to feeling good ever to mature; the hard work of salvage may have to fall to those who inherit this mess and have no recollection of the "good life."

So Long, Smokin' Joe

One of my personal heroes, former heavyweight champion Joe Frazier, passed away recently. I consider him a hero not because of his skill, which was considerable, but rather because of his character.

Soft-spoken, generous, yet purposeful and focused with deadly intensity on his craft, Joe Frazier was a gentleman athlete of a kind all but extinct. He came up from poverty as the son of a sharecropper in a time and place extremely unfair for blacks, but he carried no chip on his shoulder and managed to win universal admiration as a man -- not a black man or a white man, but just a man.

His generosity extended even to his nemesis and polar opposite, Muhammad Ali, whom Frazier gave money and moral support when the chips were down. Ali was vain, brash, crude, and generally merciless when trashing Frazier in public. Ali enjoyed an upper middle-class childhood yet portrayed himself as somehow more "authentic" than Frazier, accusing him of being an Uncle Tom for his reticent pose. Frazier bore most of it stoically, losing his cool only once or twice (which provoked far more outrage than Ali's ceaseless obnoxiousness).

Frazier had become champion when Ali was stripped of the title for refusing to serve in Vietnam. As a gentleman, Frazier gave Ali a shot to prove himself the "real" champion, something Ali never tired of proclaiming. But Frazier had other plans. He knelt in prayer before that fight and asked for strength because he knew in his heart that Ali was not righteous. In the fifteenth round, Frazier unleashed his ferocious left hook and knocked Ali on his ass, a scene that I never tire of watching.

The world has precious few real men left. With Frazier's departure it has even fewer. So long, Smokin' Joe.