Some Nations See Individual Rights Differently

How very strange is the viewpoint of many of the world's other nations.  Syria has just been chosen by the nations of the United Nations to serve on a UNESCO committee that deals with human rights violations.  Despite killing 3,500 protestors to the ruling Syrian regime, Syria was just reappointed to serve on the UN Committee on Conventions and Recommendations.  This committee examines the violations of nations of human rights in education, science, and communications, among other areas.  The United States just recently froze its funding of UNESCO because it had admitted Palestine as a member.  Terrorist nations are thought by many U.N. countries to be best put in charge of monitoring human rights violations.  More rational observers will clearly recognize that means the U.N. views human rights as a farce.

The United States backed draft resolution in the United Nations condemning Iran of human rights violations passed by a vote of 86 - 32.  But of the ten largest recipients of our foreign aid, only Israel voted for the resolution, while the two largest aid dependents, Afghanistan and Pakistan, voted against the resolution.  Iraq did not vote at all, while Egypt, Jordan, South Africa, Kenya, Ethiopia, and Nigeria all abstained.  As is commonly the case, Russia and China voted against us.  India, which used to usually vote against us, but more recently has been more likely to see its interests as more consistent with ours, also voted against the resolution condemning Iran.  Our ever greater commercial ties with India and China have not caused either nation to become consistently rational in its foreign policies.  Such additional lines of communication as exist with the people of these countries has not led to their understanding that tyrannical governments are morally repugnant and make bad friends.  Once again, many nations of the world express their disdain for individual rights.

The defense of individual rights has to be maintained with vigor around the world and within the United States.  While Obama, Biden, Pelosi, and Reid have little regard for many of our individual rights, they are trending in the direction of the crueler and more ruthless nations of the world, but are not yet a match for them.  We need badly to choose American leaders who will work to establish the many essential individual rights that are now so widely ignored even in the United States.  When the United States lives up to its own standards of rights as proclaimed in its Declaration of Independence and as sustained by the Constitution, perhaps many of the people of the many rogue nations today will also be inspired to assert their own individual rights.  The best foreign aid we could offer would be a better example of devotion to individual rights for Americans.