Pompeo Takes On the Politicization of Human Rights
He defends the spirit of 1776 and 1948 and has harsh words for the New York Times ‘1619 Project.’
By Walter Russell Mead
July 16, 2020 1:14 pm ET
The Twitter mobs aren’t going to like the Commission on Unalienable Rights’ report, which the State Department released Thursday. The commission, chaired by longtime Harvard legal scholar Mary Ann Glendon, contradicts virtually every element of the new political orthodoxy.
To say, as the commission does, that property rights are a necessary basis for any meaningful concept of human rights is to break so many taboos that one hardly knows where to start. To claim in addition that religious liberty is among the foremost of human rights, that America’s founding was the most significant event in the history of human rights, and that national sovereignty is human rights’ most important defender is, for many human-rights activists, the worst kind of blasphemous trumpery.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who convened the commission and asked his former professor to lead it, doubled down on the combative and incendiary nature of the report. “Our rights tradition is under assault,” he said Thursday. “The New York Times’s ‘1619 Project’ . . . wants you to believe that our country was founded for human bondage.”
The contention that U.S. history is simply a story of oppression is “Marxist ideology,” he told his audience in Philadelphia. “The Chinese Communist Party must be gleeful when they see The New York Times spout this ideology.”
“This is a dark vision of America’s birth,” Mr. Pompeo continued. “It’s a disturbed reading of history. It is a slander on our great people.”
Though both he and the commission report acknowledge the dark sides of U.S. history, Mr. Pompeo summarized their central contention about America’s role in the global fight for human rights in nine memorable words: “America is special. America is good. America does good.”
The Commission on Unalienable Rights advances three main ideas. First, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the United Nations in 1948, though it reflected a global consensus, was shaped to an extraordinary degree by the values of the U.S. founding, and by America’s long struggle to live up to those values.
Second, progress on human rights comes not from transnational bodies or “global governance,” but from the efforts of sovereign nation states to follow America’s example by attempting to conform their practices to the noble idea of liberty. Bolstering the sovereignty of nation-states is, he and the report argue, necessary to secure human rights.
Third, successful human-rights diplomacy requires a concentrated focus on the relatively small number of rights that are recognized by a genuinely global consensus. In 1948 the U.N. consulted with philosophers and others from many non-Western as well as Western cultures. In the final product, the Universal Declaration restricted itself to the rights that found support all around the world. That consensus in turn gives the declaration its legitimacy. To human-rights activists looking to expand the list of universal rights—for example to include same-sex marriage—these arguments sound hopelessly reactionary. A 60-page report that praises property rights but does not mention trans people can expect some harsh blowback.
In a phone interview Wednesday, Mr. Pompeo defended the commission’s approach. For him, a growing disconnect between some human-rights advocates and the principles and history of American engagement with human rights undermines domestic U.S. support for rights-based diplomacy—and reduces the efficacy of such diplomacy overseas. If American history is reducible to racism, and the principles of the Declaration of Independence are simply high-toned hypocrisy, why should other countries pay attention to U.S. human-rights advocacy?
The argument Mr. Pompeo and the commission want to make is two-edged. Against many contemporary activists, it upholds a limited concept of unalienable, God-given rights grounded in sovereign nation-states. This approach offers more opportunity for constructive diplomacy. Identifying issues where more respect for the rights enumerated in the Universal Declaration can enhance a country’s security and advance its development opens the door to rights advocacy that is less confrontational and more successful. The opportunities around the world are numerous. Requirements for transparent law courts can reassure foreign investors. Universal basic education can forge a better-qualified workforce.
Simultaneously, Mr. Pompeo and the commission want to argue that an approach to human rights based on the Universal Declaration is not some malign construction by anti-American globalists that must be resisted, but a natural expression and extension of U.S. values. Human-rights advocacy along these lines, the argument runs, is as American as apple pie—and something that even Jacksonian populists can embrace.
Given the passions of the moment, the Unalienable Rights Commission report is likely to spend the next few months as a political football. But it is a thoughtful and carefully reasoned document that may serve as an important landmark in future debates. Incendiary centrism has its uses.
