UN Rights Just Like Soviet Rights

by John F. McManus



	On December 16, 1966, the United Nations General Assembly adopted 

and promulgated two wide-ranging pacts: the International Covenant on 

Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, 

Social and Cultural Rights. Neither treaty had any effect on our nation 

during the Johnson, Nixon, and Ford Administrations because each of those 

Presidents refused to sign them.

	But President Jimmy Carter signed both and sent them to the 

Senate for Ratification. The Senate refused to endorse the measures. And 

for good reason! The treaties are fundamentally flawed in that each 

claims individual rights "except as provided by law." This amounts to a 

complete turnaround from the US Bill of Rights, which asserts Congress 

"shall make no law" about basic, God-given rights. The Senate maintained 

its refusal to endorse either covenant until April 1992, when as few as 

five senators ratified the pact dealing with civil and political rights.

	More recently, the Clinton Administration has announced it desire 

to have the US Senate ratify the United Nations Covenant on Economic, 

Social and Cultural Rights. If the Senate grants Mr. Clinton's wish, it 

will have given assent to the kind of government created by mass murder 

Josef Stalin.



Stalin's Way



	The 1939 Soviet constitution created under Stalin's bloody reign 

granted everyone free medical care, maternity leave with pay, the right 

to work, old age care, the right to rest and leisure, the right to form 

trade unions, and the right to education. It all sounds wonderful, but we 

know it wasn't; Stalin's USSR was as cruel a tyranny as ever existed.

	The Soviet system was based on the declaration that human beings 

are economic wards of the state. If the state is supreme, it can grant 

rights, withhold rights, and cancel out of existence any rights it claims 

to provide. And this is exactly what Stalin and his henchmen did.

	As anyone can readily see by examining it, the UN's Covenant on 

Economic, Social and Cultural Rights follows the Stalin model. Article 6 

recognizes "the right to work"; Article 7, the right to "rest, leisure"; 

Article 9, the right to "social security, including social insurance"; 

Article 13, the right "to education"; etc.

	Regarding education, the UN document grants parents liberty to 

choose for their children schools other than those established by the 

state, as long as they "conform to such minimum educational standards as 

may be laid down or approved by the State." If the views being 

promulgated don't coincide with these unnamed "minimum educational 

standards" of the state, the state retains the power to ban the school.



Conflicts With America's Way



	Article 4 of the UN covenant actually states that the rights it 

enumerates are "provided by the State." Any American who knows the 

history of this nation understands that, according to our Declaration of 

Independence, "Men...are endowed by their Creator with certain 

unalienable Rights."

	Where the American way correctly recognizes God as the source of 

rights, the UN document points to the state. And the Bill of Rights 

simply and clearly states that the government "shall make no law" about 

God-given rights because they transcend any power of government. The 

conflict between the two attitudes could not be more clear.

	Yet the President and other national leaders continue to steer 

our nation toward the "state is supreme" style of governance that was 

never intended by our Founding Fathers. And the American people, 

victimized by an increasingly deficient educational system and 

propagandized into believing that government is the guarantor of the good 

life, are allowing this tragic conversion to unfold.

	Every American worthy of the name ought to protest vigorously the 

Clinton plan to destroy the American system. Letters to the President and 

the two senators who represent each of us can stop the treachery. And when 

it does, the campaign to extricate our nation from all other UN treaties, 

covenants, and commissions can begin.



	(c) 1994 The John Birch Society Features

	

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