What is the forgotten agenda of America?
We speak of it every Fourth of July in speeches filled with platitudes decrying the wonder of our nation because, of all the countries on earth, we are the only one based on the ideals of liberty and freedom for all. We talk of it in the same tones as ministers describe the sacred tenets of their parishioners’ faith, as if it too were a form of religion, a national political religion that all can share regardless of faith or nationality, race or gender. Some of us even proclaim that we are at war in Iraq and Afghanistan, not because of our past and current actions in the Middle East, or our allegiance with Israel, the state so many Arabs love to hate, but because our enemies in the Arab world, the so-called “Islamofascists” hate us for our freedoms.
Yes, we love to talk about our unique status, and our glorious rights and liberties. But in truth, the ideal that all human beings are equal under the law, that all are entitled to the same rights and the same treatment, the same opportunities and the same protections, is in disarray. Indeed, for the last thirty years the agenda of human rights has been under attack in this country by those who wrap themselves in the flag, proclaim themselves patriots, and speak of the wonder of our freedoms even as they work to restrict them, to limit them, to deny them.
We have watched as rights for which our forebears had long fought were eradicated, or ignored by conservatives in both parties. These so-called conservatives have placed the rights of corporations ahead of the rights of individuals, the rights of the powerful and wealthy ahead of the rights of the poor and weak, the rights of one race ahead of the rights of all other races. We have sat and watched this happen until it reached its nadir under the presidency of George W. Bush.
A government who determined our right to privacy was irrelevant. A government that decides when we may exercise our right to a fair trial by a jury of our peers, and when we cannot. A government that ignores the Constitutional prohibition in the 8th amendment against cruel and unusual punishment when it tortures suspected terrorists, or when it detains indefinitely anyone whom it suspects of past association with terrorists. A government which has refused to enforce laws meant to protect the rights of women and minorities, has sought to limit the rights of women to control what happens to their bodies, and which asserts the power to prevent judicial review of its decisions.
A government that has rolled back protections for workers, and limited their right to organize into unions. A government that seeks to eliminate social security, and destroy the effectiveness of Medicare. A government that has rewritten the bankruptcy laws to impose the harshest burdens on individuals, while making it easier for corporations to discard their labor contracts and pension obligations. A government that has extended the rights of corporations to control which opinions can be broadcast into our homes, while limiting access to those airwaves by most Americans. It is a government that since 1980, and regardless of which party controlled the presidency, has slowly but steadily weakened the rights and liberties of the many for the benefit of the few.
In short, the forgotten agenda of America, the agenda to which our politicians now give only backhanded Orwellian references in their speeches, is the promotion and extension of human rights — for all people. How we can reclaim this agenda for future generations of Americans is the focus of this essay.
A brief summary of the origin of human rights
One thousand years ago in Europe, the only people with rights were Kings, or the rulers of the Church or those lesser feudal lords who held enough land and controlled enough warriors to force the kings to recognize their claims. Indeed, this pattern of an elite few, an aristocracy, who were the sole members of the human race with any freedom or rights, with all others subject to their whims and desires, might have continued forever had nothing fundamentally changed with regards to our knowledge of the world.
But slowly, as those who pursued science and reason discovered truths about the natural world that contradicted the “revealed truths” of religion or past authorities, and as those new truths led to technological advances that in turn led to economic advances which were not restricted to the aristocrats, new classes of people no longer willing to let their fate be decided by those who inherited power as part of their birthright, began to assert themselves. Strange ideas began to circulate among the populace, fueled by the writings of intellectuals, who saw no justification for absolute power to be wielded by a few individuals. The ideas advanced by these writers rejected the principle that kings ruled by a divine right, and that the hierarchical organization of society had been established by God, and thus, could not be challenged.
Instead, they formulated a new principle, which asserted that all men (for they were not yet willing to credit women as fully human) were created equally in the eyes of their God, and that each of them had been granted certain rights by their divine creator. Initially, these ideas first gained prominence in the sphere of religion, and led to the great schism between European Christians, a schism which led to wars and political unrest that lasted for nearly two centuries between those who claimed the right to interpret God’s word for themselves, and those who bowed to the supremacy of the Church’s hierarchy, the priests, bishops and at the top, the Pope in Rome, to interpret their faith for them.
Eventually, however, these ideas could not be restricted to the realm of religion, for men who obtained the power to determine their own faith, also desired the right to control other aspects of their lives. In particular, they desired a say in how they were governed, and political guarantees that would limit the power of their rulers while extending their own freedom to act in the world.
The intellectuals who provided the arguments for those who would challenge the establishment of their day became famous across the continent for their ideas: Hume, Kant, Rousseau, Locke, Voltaire, Montesquieu, Diderot, et alia. Their ideas challenged the authority of government, argued for limitations on its powers, and sought to elevate the individual and individual rights and liberties to the highest place in society. It was these ideas that Thomas Jefferson relied upon in writing the Declaration of Independence, the original founding document of nation, which so famously asserted the following:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
The expansion of human rights
From this small beginning, the ideas of the Enlightenment thinkers took hold outside the rarefied air of Paris salons, and formed the basis for a nation founded not upon racial or ethnic identities, but upon an ideal. Though the founders of this nation were flawed individuals who more often than not failed to live up to these grand ideals, the words outlived them to influence future generations. In the wake of the great civil war that nearly tore the United States apart, a new interpretation of those words was fashioned which provided for the elimination of slavery, the great moral evil of our history, and the official extension of rights and liberties to the newly freed slaves. Then, in the wake of the suffragette movement, another milestone in the definition of human rights was reached when women achieved the right to vote pursuant to the 19th amendment to the Constitution.
And again, the definition of human rights in America expanded during the presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, whose New Deal extended rights to the realm of economic rights as well as political rights. The right of unions to organize, the right of workers to demand fair wages for their labor, the right to be safe in the workplace, the right to work, and to be protected in one’s old age from the vicissitudes of poor health and poverty which was often the result of retirement from work . This new idea, that human rights encompassed more than merely political or legal protections is perhaps summed up best in Roosevelt’s famous “four freedoms” speech to Congress on January 6, 1941:
[T]his is no time for any of us to stop thinking about the social and economic problems which are the root cause of the social revolution which is today a supreme factor in the world. For there is nothing mysterious about the foundations of a healthy and strong democracy.
The basic things expected by our people of their political and economic systems are simple. They are:
Equality of opportunity for youth and for others.
Jobs for those who can work.
Security for those who need it.
The ending of special privilege for the few.
The preservation of civil liberties for all.
The enjoyment — The enjoyment of the fruits of scientific progress in a wider and constantly rising standard of living.
These are the simple, the basic things that must never be lost sight of in the turmoil and unbelievable complexity of our modern world. The inner and abiding strength of our economic and political systems is dependent upon the degree to which they fulfill these expectations.
Many subjects connected with our social economy call for immediate improvement. As examples:
We should bring more citizens under the coverage of old-age pensions and unemployment insurance.
We should widen the opportunities for adequate medical care.
We should plan a better system by which persons deserving or needing gainful employment may obtain it. […]
In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.
The first is freedom of speech and expression — everywhere in the world.
The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way everywhere in the world.
The third is freedom from want, which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants — everywhere in the world.
The fourth is freedom from fear, which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor — anywhere in the world.
Can you imagine any American politician giving such a speech today? Certainly no Republican politician, and few if any Democrats either. I’ve certainly not heard anything remotely like this coming from the putative leaders in the race for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Yet less than 70 years ago this was the program of our President and his party. Freedom from want. Freedom from fear. And these words were spoken on the eve of our country’s involvement in the most devastating war of the 20th Century, a war in which we fought against the brutal totalitarian societies of Nazi Germany and Japan. How far our expectations have shrunk since then even as the threats we face have likewise grown smaller.
1948 – 1968: The high water mark for human rights in America
Following the defeat of the axis powers Nazi Germany, Italy and Japan in WWII, America and its allies founded the United Nations, an organization dedicated to preserving peaceful relations among its member states. And in 1948, the UN General Assembly passed the most significant statement on human rights since the American Declaration of Independence and France’s Declaration of the Rights of Man, both written at the end of the 18th century. In the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, for the first time a group of nations dedicated themselves and their governments to the advancement of human rights around the globe. While many of the rights stated in the Universal Declaration go over ground which is familiar to us, it makes clear that all people, everywhere are earth, should receive the rights and protections that only a few nations had previously provided to their citizens. Furthermore, as Article 2 of the Declaration makes explicit, these rights apply regardless of one’s status:
Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.
The Universal Declaration also included a number of social and economic rights which previously had not been commonly associated with the concept of human rights. Since it is merely aspirational in nature, it is not clear to what extent the Universal Declaration influenced events in the United States and elsewhere in the world, but many of its articles have been incorporated in the laws of the US and the Western European democracies. Certainly, its mere existence had to have been a beacon of hope for the those who joined the most important movement to advance the cause of human rights in America since the end of the Civil War: The civil rights movement of the 1950’s and 60’s and its principal leader, Martin Luther King.
In retrospect, that the civil rights movement should have begun in the 1950’s is not surprising. African Americans had participated fully in the wars of liberation that defeated Nazi Germany and Japan eradicated their tyrannical and murderous regimes. The propaganda of fighting for freedom and democracy must have seemed particularly ironic considering the blatant prejudice and official discrimination they faced when they returned home. Prevented from voting, denied certain jobs, discriminated against in where they could eat or sleep or work or live, or even where they could sit in a theater or on a bus, must have made the wartime propaganda they heard seem like a cruel mockery.
Through a carefully planned dual strategy of litigation in the courts and protests, marches and boycotts that lasted nearly 2 decades, the civil rights movement achieved great changes in America, and finally secured an end to official segregation and discrimination in housing, education and public accommodations that had been in existence since the end of Reconstruction. The civil rights movement also, by its example, helped spawn other movements for Gay rights, women’s liberation and Latino rights that continue to this day.
Yet, in a very real way, all of its achievements were limited, and in many respects have become frozen in place. Although great good has come from the programs and laws put in place during the 1960’s and through the early 1970’s, in real terms progress to eradicate prejudice and advance the cause of civil rights for minorities ground to a halt at the end of the 1960’s, Since then, the civil rights movement, and all of the other movements which have sought to advance human rights have been fighting a rear guard action against a radical conservative backlash that has steadily gained momentum and power since that time, finally culminating in the Republican Party’s control of both Congress and the White House during the Presidency of George W. Bush.
If I had to pinpoint a date which was the high watermark for human rights in America, I would choose the year 1968. In 1968, Martin Luther King, the single most prominent and recognizable leader of the civil rights movement was assassinated. A few months later, Robert F. Kennedy, brother to the slain President, and the most vocal and popular Democratic presidential candidate speaking out for human rights was also gunned down shortly after winning the California primary. In many ways, their deaths marked the end of an era of social advancement and expansion of human rights in America.
What our history might have been had they lived no one can say, but without a central figure to rally around, the civil rights movement lost momentum, and failed to take advantage of the progress it had made. In a like manner, no Democratic politician since RFK has been as popular or as outspoken regarding the rights of ordinary Americans. The time for progress had come to an end. The time of those who would work to roll back those gains had begun.
(America’s Forgotten Agenda, Part 2 will describe the conservative movement’s backlash against the gains made on behalf of human rights, and what we need to do to regain the initiative)