The State Department’s Commission on Unalienable Rights reveals
an animus against natural liberties that betrays an aspiration to
expand the reach of government even further.
The State Department’s Commission on Unalienable Rights has issued a report
on the rationale to pursue human rights as a primary goal for American
foreign policy. Rights have a bipartisan pedigree. In our modern
history, it was the Democrat Jimmy Carter who first defined human rights
as a U.S. foreign policy mission. But Republican Ronald Reagan and his
Secretary of State George Shultz made rights advocacy a constant
component of their hard-nosed negotiations with the Soviets.
Barack Obama took a different path.
Reacting against his predecessor George W. Bush’s policy of democracy
promotion, he and Secretary of State John Kerry proved largely oblivious
to rights concerns—most egregiously in the disregard for human rights
in their negotiations with Iran.
It is surely time to bring rights back to the forefront of foreign policy—that is the context of the commission’s report.
There is also a second context: the evident fragility of the rights agenda around the world.......To Read More.......
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