Take The Issue Of Human Rights
I was 2 months old and the UN was 3 years old when Foreign Affairs published a piece by the U.S. delegate to the United Nations General Assembly, Eleanor Roosevelt, The Promise of Human Right. FDR, arguably the greatest president in American history not named Lincoln, had died 3 years before she wrote this and the world was still reeling from the devastation caused by the extreme right having broken loose from whatever holds it down… as it is in the process of doing right now. At the time, there was a strong national consensus— outside of the most reactionary precincts of a shriveled and discredited GOP— for what Foreign Affairs termed “a new international institution that could help prevent countries from starting wars and foster global cooperation on the problems plaguing the world… [Eleanor Roosevelt’s] work there began as the international community struggled to make sense of the horrors of the Holocaust and the existential threat of the atomic bomb. She became a central player in the global human rights movement, chairing the UN commission tasked with drafting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In this 1948 essay, she describes the difficult, and often tedious, bureaucratic work of uniting the world behind a shared commitment to human security and dignity… The end result of this work— the Universal Declaration of Human Rights— was a milestone in global human rights, freedom, and equality. Adopted shortly after Roosevelt’s essay was published, it marked the first time that the world agreed on the rights and freedoms deserving of universal protection. It remains the most sweeping human rights statement ever to be endorsed on a global scale.”
You can read the full essay at the link above. I thought today might be a good day, July 3, to excerpt a few relevant paragraphs. “The real importance of the Human Rights Commission,” she began, “lies in the fact that throughout the world there are many people who do not enjoy the basic rights which have come to be accepted in many other parts of the world as inherent rights of all individuals, without which no one can live in dignity and freedom.”
Three Articles in the Declaration seem to me to be of vital importance. Article 15 provides that everyone has the right to a nationality; that is, all persons are entitled to the protection of some government, and those who are without it shall be protected by the United Nations. Article 16 says that individual freedom of thought and conscience, to hold and change beliefs, is an absolute and sacred right. Included in this Article is a declaration of the right to manifest these beliefs in the form of worship, observance, teaching and practice. Article 21 declares that everyone, without discrimination, has the right to take an effective part in the government of his country. This aims to give assurance that governments of states will bend and change according to the will of the people as shown in elections, which shall be periodic, free, fair and by secret ballot.
Some of the other important Articles are broad in scope. For instance, Article 23 says that every one has the right to work, and that the state has a duty to take steps within its power to ensure its residents an opportunity for useful work. Article 24 says that everyone has a right to receive pay commensurate with his ability and skill and may join trade unions to protect his interests.
Other Articles in the Declaration set forth rights such as the right to the preservation of health, which would give the state responsibility for health and safety measures; the right to social security, which makes it the duty of the state to provide measures for the security of the individual against the consequences of unemployment, disability, old age and other loss of livelihood beyond his control; the right to education, which should be free and compulsory, and the provision that higher education should be available to all without distinction as to race, sex, language, religion, social standing, financial means or political affiliation; the right to rest and leisure— that is, a limitation on hours of work and provisions for vacations with pay; the right to participate in the cultural life of the community, enjoy its arts and share in the benefits of science. Another Article asserts that education will be directed to the full physical, intellectual, moral and spiritual development of the human personality and to combatting hatred against other nations or racial or religious groups.
If the Declaration is accepted by the Assembly, it will mean that all the nations accepting it hope that the day will come when these rights are considered inherent rights belonging to every human being, but it will not mean that they have to change their laws immediately to make these rights possible.
On the other hand, as the Convention is ratified by one nation after another it will require that each ratifying nation change its laws where necessary, to make possible that every human being within its borders shall enjoy the rights set forth. The Convention, of course, covers primarily the civil liberties which many of the nations of the world have accepted as inherent rights of human beings, and it reaffirms a clause in the Charter of the United Nations which says that there shall be no discrimination among any human beings because of race, creed or color.
The most important articles of the Convention are subjects with which every American high school student is familiar. Article 5 makes it unlawful to deprive a person of life except as punishment for a crime provided by law. Article 6 outlaws physical mutilation. Article 7 forbids torture and cruel or inhuman punishment. Article 8 prohibits slavery and compulsory labor, with exceptions permitted as to the latter in the case of military service and emergency service in time of disaster such as flood or earthquake.
A provision which is new in an international constitutional sense, though not new in practice to Americans, is Article 11, which guarantees liberty of movement and a free choice of residence within a state, and a general freedom to every person in the world to leave any country, including his own. Article 20 makes all sections of the Convention applicable without distinction as to race, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, property status, or national or social origin; and Article 21 requires the states to forbid by law the advocacy of national, racial or religious hostility that constitutes incitement to violence. In general, every nation ratifying the Convention will have to make sure that within its jurisdiction these promised rights become realities, so it is the Convention which is of the greatest importance to the peoples throughout the world.
…As I look back at the work thus far of our Human Rights Commission I realize that its importance is twofold.
In the first place, we have put into words some inherent rights. Beyond that, we have found that the conditions of our contemporary world require the enumeration of certain protections which the individual must have if he is to acquire a sense of security and dignity in his own person. The effect of this is frankly educational. Indeed, I like to think that the Declaration will help forward very largely the education of the peoples of the world.
It seems to me most important that the Declaration be accepted by all member nations, not because they will immediately live up to all of its provisions, but because they ought to support the standards toward which the nations must henceforward aim. Since the objectives have been clearly stated, men of good will everywhere will strive to attain them with more energy and, I trust, with better hope of success.
As the Convention is adhered to by one country after another, it will actually bring into being rights which are tangible and can be invoked before the law of the ratifying countries. Everywhere many people will feel more secure. And as the Great Powers tie themselves down by their ratifications, the smaller nations which fear that the great may abuse their strength will acquire a sense of greater assurance.
The work of the Commission has been of outstanding value in setting before men's eyes the ideals which they must strive to reach. Men cannot live by bread alone.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was accepted by the UN General Assembly on December 10, 1948. At the time the UN had 58 members. 48 voted in favor and the rest abstained. There were no votes against it. The abstentions:
Belarus
Czechoslovakia
Poland
Saudi Arabia
Ukraine
South Africa
USSR
Yugoslavia
(Honduras and Yemen didn’t vote.)
The document— which really needs to be read by all MAGA politicians and voters— commits all nations to recognize all humans as being "born free and equal in dignity and rights" regardless of "nationality, place of residence, sex, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, language, or any other status. It isn’t a legally binding document but much of it has been incorporated into subsequent international treaties— national constitutions and legal codes— that are. It has influenced legal, political, and social developments on both the global and national levels, with its significance partly evidenced by its 530 translations, the most of any document in history.
In the U.S. there were, predictably, objections from the far right. Fascists and authoritarians have always hated these kinds of things. They couched their objections in professed concerns on the impact on U.S. sovereignty and domestic policy. Conservative scumbags like Senators Robert Taft (R-OH), John Bricker (R-OH) and Pat McCarran (R-NV)— who objected to anything that encouraged unions— and Rep. John Rankin (D-MS). Now why in the world would a fellow like Rankin, a Democrat, oppose this? Well, Rankin is best known for a few things he did in Congress— a bill to prohibit interracial marriage, his tenacious opposition to a bill prohibiting poll taxes (which Mississippi and other southern states routinely used since the turn of the century to disenfranchise most Blacks) and a bill to prohibit lynchings (which he said would encourage Blacks to “rape our white women”). Rankin was the lead sponsor of the GI Bill and he crafted it in such a way that its administration would be left to the state governments, which led to continued discrimination against Black veterans in Mississippi and the other southern states and their virtual exclusion from one of the most important programs to build social capital among Americans. Rankin made sure that in the South, Black veterans were excluded from loans, training and employment assistance. (He was also a virulent anti-Semite.) And he opposed the creation of the UN itself, insisting it would destroy the United States.
The Ron DeSantis of his day, here’s a speech of Congressman Rankin’s from 1943:
When those communistic Jews— of whom the decent Jews are ashamed— go around here and hug and kiss these Negroes, dance with them, intermarry with them, and try to force their way into white restaurants, white hotels and white picture shows, they are not deceiving any red-blooded American, and, above all, they are not deceiving the men in our armed forces— as to who is at the bottom of all this race trouble.
The better element of the Jews, and especially the old line American Jews throughout the South and West, are not only ashamed of, but they are alarmed at, the activities of these communistic Jews who are stirring this trouble up.
They have caused the deaths of many good Negroes who never would have got into trouble if they had been left alone, as well as the deaths of many good white people, including many innocent, unprotected white girls, who have been raped and murdered by vicious Negroes, who have been encouraged by those alien-minded Communists to commit such crimes.
Did I mention that Ron DeSantis is the John Rankin of 2023?
Rankin was the inspiration for the best-selling 1947 novel Gentleman’s Agreement about anti-Semitism and I’ll bet you already guessed he was as opposed to immigration as any MAGAt, except in those days it wasn’t Hispanics, it was Jews that were unwanted by the fascists in America. Congressman Rankin (1952, from the Congressional Record): “They whine about discrimination. Do you know who is being discriminated against? The white Christian people of America, the ones who created this nation... I am talking about the white Christian people of the North as well as the South... Communism is racial. A racial minority seized control in Russia and in all her satellite countries, such as Poland, Czechoslovakia, and many other countries I could name. They have been run out of practically every country in Europe in the years gone by, and if they keep stirring race trouble in this country and trying to force their communistic program on the Christian people of America, there is no telling what will happen to them here.”