This particular treaty, together with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (CCPR, which we did ratify in 1992), are the instruments by which the United Nations 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights was supposed to be elevated from a collection of platitudes into actionable law. Of course, we should not be surprised that the conservatives in the Senate are hesitant to ratify this treaty: one of the Declaration's authors was former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, who made certain that her late husband Franklin's dream for a new and better tomorrow for the United States and the World, was included in that Declaration. When it is ratified, it will become, as all treaties are--together with our Constitution--the supreme law of the land.
All of the Declaration's points were referred to by President Franklin Roosevelt in his January 11, 1944 State of the Union Address to the nation as an outline for a social and economic Bill of Rights to join the political Bill of Rights championed by James Madison. "'Necessitous men are not free men;'" FDR said that evening, quoting the Lord Chancellor of England in 1762, "People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made."
President Roosevelt continued, "In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis for security and prosperity can be established for all--regardless of station, race or creed." (Please note, my direct quotation of FDR's January 11, 1944 address is taken from Cass R. Sunstein's superb book The Second Bill of Rights: FDR's Unfinished Revolution and Why We Need It More Than Ever; 2004. If you haven't read it, do so: it'll open your eyes.) As usual, FDR was ahead of his time, conceiving of the necessity of social and economic rights in order to ensure the retention of our political rights. This speech--speaking of the need for a new basis for security and prosperity regardless of station, race, or creed--was ten years before the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. The Board of Education (1954), and twenty before the Civil Rights Act of 1964. These were the Federal Government's two great initiatives that began to close the racial divide that had existed in America since colonial times.
President Roosevelt then listed a set of economic rights for all Americans and their families, which I have rewritten slightly and present here:
   * useful and remunerative employment, together with the potential to find an avocation and not simply a job;
   * wages that provide adequate food, clothing, opportunity for recreation, and decent shelter for themselves and their families;
   * adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;
   * protection from unfair competition and monopolistic practices at home and abroad, for every business in America, large and small;
   * the ability of farmers and ranchers to raise and sell the the bounty of their lands at a return which will give themselves and their families a decent living;
   *  protections from the fears attendant to old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;
   *  a good, quality education, sufficient for the needs of our modern society; an education that is ongoing if needed or desired.
Conservatives have been fighting against this clarion call ever since.
I believe that if President Roosevelt had survived the war, he would have--with his charisma as well as his prestige for leading us out of the Great Depression and through the Second World War--achieved his goal of a Second Bill of Rights, the declaration of minimum economic and social standards for every American. FDR had begun this process with the creation of Social Security, Unemployment Insurance, and the Wagner Act before the war, and showed his intention of expanding the process with the G.I. Bill of Rights, passed in 1944. These acts alone would lead to the greatest period of American prosperity in our history.
Unfortunately, FDR died in April 1945, and President Truman lacked both his predecessor's charisma and prestige. Truman's attempt to realize FDR's dream, and pass a national health care act failed. Unfortunately, thanks to the AMA, who believes that making a profit is a right under the Constitution, he failed. To add insult to injury, in 1945 the health insurance industry was granted an exemption to the antitrust laws, opening the door to many of today's excesses. The Republicans won control of Congress in 1947, and as one of their first acts, passed the Taft-Hartley Act, which weakened the protections labor had enjoyed under the Wagner Act, eventually permitting Ronald Reagan to begin the active destruction of organized labor. The conservative counter-revolution to FDR's vision for America, expressed in the New Deal and the rest of Second Bill of Rights, was under way.
We have, in the sixty-odd years since, seen many additional concerted attempts to destroy Franklin Roosevelt's vision for the future--that have slowly but surely been eating away at FDR's dream for the nation he so loved--but very little effort--particularly in the last thirty years--to try and realize his dream. Yet, the other Western Democracies--including those we fought against and then redeemed following the Second World War--have adopted Roosevelt's vision for the future as the best solution for the troubles facing their people: understanding his prescience in noting that you cannot long secure political rights for a nation's people, without securing their economic and social rights as well.
I suppose we should expect this: a prophet is never without honor save in his own country.
Our natural rights, some of which Jefferson stated were self-evident in the Declaration of Independence, are--taken as a whole--anything but self-evident. They primarily exist in the province of the Ideals of our minds: to be hotly debated in classrooms of ethics and philosophy, over coffee at a cafà ©, or beer at a local pub. They are an amorphous mass of "yeas" and "nays," with very little consistency from one century to the next, let alone one human to the next.
Some of these rights, which humanity once held sacred--especially those revolving around the dictum of "an eye for an eye"--have fallen away as a snake sheds the skin that is now too small for it The right to seek vengeance is one of these: it has been replaced by the right seek justice. The right by force of arms to take back property stolen from you has been replaced by a system of courts and law enforcement to perform that action in your stead.
Even the more mundane, Constitutionally guaranteed rights have their limits. The right to free speech does not permit you to slander or libel someone, much less incite a riot. The right to bear arms does not extend to your having a nuclear tipped cruise missile in your garage.
Contrariwise, the rights that we have enjoyed in the past are not the limit to the rights we are entitled to now, or in the future. As humanity grows in its moral sense and humanity, we have begun to realize that we have denied groups of humans their rights in the past for no other reason than "That's the way it always has been." The abolition of slavery, and the granting of the right to vote to first former slaves, and then women, are perfect examples of this fact.
Franklin Roosevelt's Second Bill of Rights is now as necessary for this nation's future, as James Madison's First Bill of Rights was for our nation two-hundred and twenty years ago. This nation has seen the avarice and greed of the corporations once again bring our Republic to the precipice of disaster, just as they did in 1929. Once again there are millions of American's who are unemployed or underemployed, without health insurance, whose homes threatened with foreclosure. We don't have bread lines and soup kitchens this time around, but one out of four of our children are receiving Food Stamps or other public assistance. This is a recipe for political disaster.
The time has come to see President Roosevelt's Second Bill of Rights turned into reality by The American Congress. Let's have health care reform NOW! Let's see a minimum wage that represents the real costs of living NOW! Let's see the Federal Government fulfill its duties under the Sherman Antitrust Act and begin protecting the smaller businesses against unfair business practices NOW! Let us see the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights ratified by the Senate NOW! Let us see the tax laws changed back to the way they were before Reagan, when we give tax credits for keeping jobs inside of our nation, not shipping them overseas. Let us reverse the cycle we have seen for the last 28 years, where America's wealth has flowed up from the poor to the rich, with effectively no return to the least wealthy 90% of the American people. This one fact has expanded the income gap between rich and poor Americans every year, with a resultant decline in our middle class.
All of the Declaration's points were referred to by President Franklin Roosevelt in his January 11, 1944 State of the Union Address to the nation as an outline for a social and economic Bill of Rights to join the political Bill of Rights championed by James Madison. "'Necessitous men are not free men;'" FDR said that evening, quoting the Lord Chancellor of England in 1762, "People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made."
President Roosevelt continued, "In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis for security and prosperity can be established for all--regardless of station, race or creed." (Please note, my direct quotation of FDR's January 11, 1944 address is taken from Cass R. Sunstein's superb book The Second Bill of Rights: FDR's Unfinished Revolution and Why We Need It More Than Ever; 2004. If you haven't read it, do so: it'll open your eyes.) As usual, FDR was ahead of his time, conceiving of the necessity of social and economic rights in order to ensure the retention of our political rights. This speech--speaking of the need for a new basis for security and prosperity regardless of station, race, or creed--was ten years before the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. The Board of Education (1954), and twenty before the Civil Rights Act of 1964. These were the Federal Government's two great initiatives that began to close the racial divide that had existed in America since colonial times.
President Roosevelt then listed a set of economic rights for all Americans and their families, which I have rewritten slightly and present here:
   * useful and remunerative employment, together with the potential to find an avocation and not simply a job;
   * wages that provide adequate food, clothing, opportunity for recreation, and decent shelter for themselves and their families;
   * adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;
   * protection from unfair competition and monopolistic practices at home and abroad, for every business in America, large and small;
   * the ability of farmers and ranchers to raise and sell the the bounty of their lands at a return which will give themselves and their families a decent living;
   *  protections from the fears attendant to old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;
   *  a good, quality education, sufficient for the needs of our modern society; an education that is ongoing if needed or desired.
Conservatives have been fighting against this clarion call ever since.
I believe that if President Roosevelt had survived the war, he would have--with his charisma as well as his prestige for leading us out of the Great Depression and through the Second World War--achieved his goal of a Second Bill of Rights, the declaration of minimum economic and social standards for every American. FDR had begun this process with the creation of Social Security, Unemployment Insurance, and the Wagner Act before the war, and showed his intention of expanding the process with the G.I. Bill of Rights, passed in 1944. These acts alone would lead to the greatest period of American prosperity in our history.
Unfortunately, FDR died in April 1945, and President Truman lacked both his predecessor's charisma and prestige. Truman's attempt to realize FDR's dream, and pass a national health care act failed. Unfortunately, thanks to the AMA, who believes that making a profit is a right under the Constitution, he failed. To add insult to injury, in 1945 the health insurance industry was granted an exemption to the antitrust laws, opening the door to many of today's excesses. The Republicans won control of Congress in 1947, and as one of their first acts, passed the Taft-Hartley Act, which weakened the protections labor had enjoyed under the Wagner Act, eventually permitting Ronald Reagan to begin the active destruction of organized labor. The conservative counter-revolution to FDR's vision for America, expressed in the New Deal and the rest of Second Bill of Rights, was under way.
We have, in the sixty-odd years since, seen many additional concerted attempts to destroy Franklin Roosevelt's vision for the future--that have slowly but surely been eating away at FDR's dream for the nation he so loved--but very little effort--particularly in the last thirty years--to try and realize his dream. Yet, the other Western Democracies--including those we fought against and then redeemed following the Second World War--have adopted Roosevelt's vision for the future as the best solution for the troubles facing their people: understanding his prescience in noting that you cannot long secure political rights for a nation's people, without securing their economic and social rights as well.
I suppose we should expect this: a prophet is never without honor save in his own country.
Our natural rights, some of which Jefferson stated were self-evident in the Declaration of Independence, are--taken as a whole--anything but self-evident. They primarily exist in the province of the Ideals of our minds: to be hotly debated in classrooms of ethics and philosophy, over coffee at a cafà ©, or beer at a local pub. They are an amorphous mass of "yeas" and "nays," with very little consistency from one century to the next, let alone one human to the next.
Some of these rights, which humanity once held sacred--especially those revolving around the dictum of "an eye for an eye"--have fallen away as a snake sheds the skin that is now too small for it The right to seek vengeance is one of these: it has been replaced by the right seek justice. The right by force of arms to take back property stolen from you has been replaced by a system of courts and law enforcement to perform that action in your stead.
Even the more mundane, Constitutionally guaranteed rights have their limits. The right to free speech does not permit you to slander or libel someone, much less incite a riot. The right to bear arms does not extend to your having a nuclear tipped cruise missile in your garage.
Contrariwise, the rights that we have enjoyed in the past are not the limit to the rights we are entitled to now, or in the future. As humanity grows in its moral sense and humanity, we have begun to realize that we have denied groups of humans their rights in the past for no other reason than "That's the way it always has been." The abolition of slavery, and the granting of the right to vote to first former slaves, and then women, are perfect examples of this fact.
Franklin Roosevelt's Second Bill of Rights is now as necessary for this nation's future, as James Madison's First Bill of Rights was for our nation two-hundred and twenty years ago. This nation has seen the avarice and greed of the corporations once again bring our Republic to the precipice of disaster, just as they did in 1929. Once again there are millions of American's who are unemployed or underemployed, without health insurance, whose homes threatened with foreclosure. We don't have bread lines and soup kitchens this time around, but one out of four of our children are receiving Food Stamps or other public assistance. This is a recipe for political disaster.
The time has come to see President Roosevelt's Second Bill of Rights turned into reality by The American Congress. Let's have health care reform NOW! Let's see a minimum wage that represents the real costs of living NOW! Let's see the Federal Government fulfill its duties under the Sherman Antitrust Act and begin protecting the smaller businesses against unfair business practices NOW! Let us see the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights ratified by the Senate NOW! Let us see the tax laws changed back to the way they were before Reagan, when we give tax credits for keeping jobs inside of our nation, not shipping them overseas. Let us reverse the cycle we have seen for the last 28 years, where America's wealth has flowed up from the poor to the rich, with effectively no return to the least wealthy 90% of the American people. This one fact has expanded the income gap between rich and poor Americans every year, with a resultant decline in our middle class.
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