Obama’s UN Apology is a Blueprint for Socialism
Ben Johnson, Floyd Reports
Much has been said about the first-ever report on U.S. human rights to the UN Human Rights Council, which the Obama administration released to the public this week. Most commentators have focused on how our least patriotic president apologized for America’s shortcomings. But there is a more important facet to the report: it establishes a host of new socialist “rights” the administration hopes globalist bureaucrats will help enforce.
Ditching the Constitution: Obama’s shift away from our Constitution and God-given liberty is startling. The 26-page report uses the word “progress” 18 times. After mentioning “the original flaw” of the U.S. Constitution, he makes this pivot: “Our commitment to the rights protected in our Constitution is matched by a parallel commitment to foster a society characterized by shared prosperity.” In other words, our desire to maintain the barriers our Founding Fathers wisely established in our form of government is equal to our commitment to “spread the wealth around.”
Obama affirms that he accepts “all kinds of obligations – both positive and negative – that governments have with regard to their citizens.” The reference to “positive obligations” is significant to Obama’s view of the Constitution and its “flaw.” In a 2001 interview with Chicago’s public radio station WBEZ-FM, he complained:
[A]t least as it’s been interpreted…the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. It says what the states can’t do to you, says what the federal government can’t do to you, but it doesn’t say what the federal government or the state government must do on your behalf.
He groused the Supreme Court only offered “formal rights” — for instance, after desegregation, “I would now be able to sit at a lunch counter and order, and as long as I could pay for it, I’d be O.K.” A government pursuing “positive” obligations means the government has to provide everyone a certain amount of money, wealth, or status by redistributing other people’s money. Maggie Gallagher in her column today notes that the report treats ObamaCare as a basic human right. The rest of the report lists a host of other, unheard of “rights.”
Card check: a Fundamental Human Right. Obama goes on to say freedom of organization “protects workers and their right to organize.” But some labor organizers have spoken about “the challenges they face in organizing effectively” – like the fact that no one outside the federal government wants to join a union. “Currently there are several bills in Congress that seek to strengthen workers’ rights – assuring that workers can continue to associate freely.” This is a reference to card check, the system of forming unions that does away with a private ballot and leaves employees vulnerable to intimidation.
Voting six times, a UN Right. The document recounts the history of minority and women voting, claiming there is an ongoing problem (even though the most recent racial voting incident featured Black Panthers threatening to club whitey.) It continues, “The Department [of Justice] recently obtained consent decrees against some jurisdictions” to make sure minorities are not unfairly excluded. One of those decrees was against Port Chester, New York, “designed to cure vote dilution for Hispanic voters.” Port Chester’s had never elected an Hispanic politician, and its population was 46 percent Hispanic; however, in the words of the New York Times, “many are not citizens.” Although these non-citizens are not entitled to any representation, the DoJ forced a remedy: allowing Hispanic residents of Port Chester to vote six times. It did the trick; the village elected its first Hispanic — coincidentally, a Democrat.
Bilingual Ballots and Registering Democratic Voters. The report trumpets securing “meaningful access to the franchise for non-English speaking citizens” (and, undoubtedly, non-citizens, convicts, the mentally insane, and the deceased). Obama believes those who cannot read the English language should vote for the nation’s representatives — in higher numbers than they are now. The document reaffirms America’s commitment “to increase historically low [voter] registration rates of minorities and persons with disabilities.”
Gay Marriage and Gays in the Military. The “LGBT” community made up this report’s preferred victim group, saying its “experience of discrimination illustrates the continuing debate among citizens about how we can build a far more fair society.” Obama enthused that Congress passed the Hate Crimes law that pastors fear will silence their ability to preach traditional Christian values. He highlights the Supreme Court decision overturning state anti-sodomy laws in 2003, and his decision to extend some benefits to the same-sex partners of certain federal employees. Then he looks to the future:
President Obama is committed to repeal the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” statute…The President [sic.] has also supported passage of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act…Debate continues over equal rights to marriage for LGBT Americans at the federal and state levels
The reference to “equal rights” is important language in a “human rights” document aimed at curbing discrimination. The document states “At this point” Obama merely “supports repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act.” But its inclusion marks gay marriage as a “human right” in the eyes of the United Nations.
Equality of Outcome. The discussion of “discrimination” focuses on the fact that minority groups have not attained as much as white Americans. This, Obama insists, must stem from bigotry. “We are not satisfied that whites are twice as likely as Native Americans to have a college degree. The United States continues to address such disparities by working to ensure that equal opportunity is not only guaranteed in law but experienced in fact by all Americans.” What he promises is not “equality of opportunity” but equality of outcome — that every ethnic group, and every person, has the “right” to an equal amount of wealth. Every American — smart or dumb, ambitious or lazy, gifted or talentless — will receive the same result as everyone else.
The name for that system is socialism, and Obama regards it as a basic human right.
Feminism. Obama points to his passage of the Fair Pay Act and support for the “Paycheck Fairness Act.” He also claims, “Our recent health care reform bill also lowers costs and offers greater choices for women.”
Affirmative Action. Obama pledges racial redistribution of wealth through reverse discrimination. He promises enhanced Affirmative Action programs “in the workplace when [minorities] are underrepresented.” But he does not confine this to employment. The section on American public education begins: “The United States is committed to providing equal educational opportunities to all children, regardless of their individual circumstances, race, national origin, ethnicity, gender [sic.] or disability.” Yet it makes clear that Obama foresees a world in which all education is administered according to race and sex. It “promotes educational equity for women” – who are vastly overrepresented on college campuses – “and students of color,” as well as seeking to “strengthen historically Black [sic.] colleges and universities.” And he vows federal, state, and local governments will move heaven and earth to “address the factors that contribute to the education ‘achievement gap’…particularly African American and Hispanic children.” Latinos in particular “find linguistic discrimination a barrier to full participation.” This means they have a right to taxpayer-funded bilingual education. Obama is very concerned about discrimination “in the areas of capital punishment, juvenile justice, racial profiling, and racial disparities in sentencing.”
Universal Preschool. The document states the Dept. of Education will “provide low-income students and students of color with increased access to early learning and education” — that is, taxpayer-funded daycare. In fact, this has already begun. The report notes that stimulus funds “are being used to promote high-quality early childhood education.”
The Right to Illegal Immigration. As I reported yesterday, the human rights report singles out Arizona’s immigration law as a violation of illegal aliens’ rights.
“Freedom from Want.” The report undergirds its commitment to socialism by citing FDR’s “Four Freedoms” speech. One of the new freedoms he sought was “freedom from want.” This “right” is listed under the section, “A commitment to foster a society where citizens are empowered to exercise their rights” — making clear Obama’s commitment to “positive obligations” and the federal government’s need to redistribute wealth.
So far, this is the standard, far-Left platform — although expressed more honestly than he ever manages in front of an American audience. The significance of ensconcing all these new “rights” in this UN document is that it creates international legal precedent. In the inaugural report before the UN Human Rights Council, the United States has declared it supports all these as the basic entitlements of every citizen. As the Human Rights Council process continues, a “troika” of three nations will review our report, other international reports, and the testimony of NGOs, then make a series of recommendations to implement these goals. Every four years, the council will grade our “progress.” And this world body reserves the right to “decide on the measures it would need to take in case of persistent non-cooperation.”
That means if future administrations object to the plan the UN draws up in cooperation with the most anti-American administration in history, they could conceivably be deemed guilty of “persistent non-cooperation.” If their lack of cooperation were sufficiently strong — and we were sufficiently weak — it could impose this agenda on the American people against their will. At a minimum, Obama has reduced our standing in the eyes of the world if we reject any piece of his far-Left agenda. This report guarantees we will endure decades of international propaganda that the United States is “not meeting its human rights commitments to the United Nations” — putting us on the same level as China, North Korea, or Iran.
The Obama administration has made its campaign platform the internationally recognized standard of conduct for future generations, all without winning a single vote for much of it.
The Lawsuit that Could Overturn ObamaCare
Floyd and Mary Beth Brown, Floyd Reports
When Missouri voters attempted to stop ObamaCare at the ballot box via the initiative process, the national news media took notice. In the August 3 vote, 7 in 10 voters in the “Show Me State” supported Proposition C, which overturns government mandates requiring health insurance. Proposition C actually bars penalties against people who pay their own health bills without insurance.
On August 2, U.S. District Judge Henry E. Hudson ruled against a U.S. Justice Department request to throw out a lawsuit brought by Virginia against ObamaCare. Virginia is arguing in the lawsuit that the U.S. Congress had unconstitutionally exceeded its powers by forcing individuals to buy insurance.
Hudson wrote, “While this case raises a host of complex constitutional issues, all seem to distill to the single question of whether or not Congress has the power to regulate — and tax — a citizen’s decision not to participate in interstate commerce…”
Hudson continues by saying there is, “some authority arguably supporting the theory underlying each side’s position.” Hudson’s decision sets up the opportunity to have appellate and eventually the Supreme Court decide these issues.
But our personal favorite of the many lawsuits challenging ObamaCare is from Arizona. Yes, the land of immigration enforcement could also be the site of a major constitutional battle about ObamaCare. The citizens of Arizona are restless with their Washington, D.C. overseers.
The Goldwater Institute, a public policy outfit named for Arizona’s most famous son, is taking a different swing at the question.
Representing a local business owner, Nick Coons of Tempe, Ariz., the Goldwater Institute has built an intriguing legal strategy which will shake up the debate: “Mr. Coons pays for all of his medical care out of his own pocket and he wants to continue making his own health care decisions. Under the federal health care bill, Mr. Coons will face significant fines from the IRS if he doesn’t buy a health insurance plan that has been approved by the government by 2014.”
In announcing the lawsuit Coons complained, “The government is making me spend money on something that I don’t want. Is a stranger who works for the government in some other part of the country really going to know what I need? I am the best qualified to make these decisions for myself.”
The Goldwater Institute’s lawyer is well-known constitutional litigator Clint Bolick. Bolick argues, “The new federal law also violates Mr. Coons’ medical privacy by forcing him to disclose his medical records to an insurance company, and those records could be accessed by the federal government and others without his permission.”
We have always been disturbed by the arrogance of government officials that seem to believe they have a right to know the most intimate details of your discussions with your doctor. ObamaCare will violate the sanctity and privacy of the relationship you have with your physician.
The framers of the U.S. Constitution would be shocked by the manipulation we have recently experienced at the hands of Congress, Obama, and out-of-control federal judges. Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli sums it all up when he said of ObamaCare’s attempts to regulate the behavior of doing nothing: “Even the king and the parliament acknowledged they didn’t have this power back before the Declaration of Independence.”
The Weather Underground Organizer planted the acorn that grew into Barack Obama
By Suzanne Eovaldi, Coach is Right
Bill Ayers and our media gave us Barack Obama.
The “destruction of the United States imperialism” was the objective of a revolutionary youth movement defined by Marxist Leninist ideology according to the once Top Secret FBI files on Bill Ayers’ Weather Underground Organization (WUO). The now unclassified FBI document CG100-409D3 dated Chicago, Illinois August 20, 1976, says “among Marxist Leninists the struggle for ideological clarity is a never ending process” and that Weatherman statements “are no different from other like minded revolutionary scientific socialists.”
Startling is the FBI statement describing the “WUO’s unchanging belief in armed struggle and the necessity of the international communist movement to guide their struggle to create revolution in the United States.” FBI investigators also concluded that Mao Tse-tung’s thoughts and those of Cuban revolutionaries influenced the WUO.
Another key point in this analysis is “the understanding that the primary contradiction facing the world is that between US imperialism and the oppressed peoples of the world, especially the Third World peoples.” Obama’s radical left policies Is any of this starting to sound familiar? Here we see the beginnings of the Liberation and Black Liberation Theologies obvious in Barack Obama’s policies.
Video: Senator Sessions Calls Out Kagan Supports
It Is Us
By Ted Nugent, Washington Times
Barack Hussein Obama did not sneak into power. An army of clueless, disconnected, ignorant Americans invited him to bring his Marxist, glaringly anti-American jihad into our lives. This president’s overtly destructive, clear-and-present-danger agenda is surpassed in transparency only by his ultra-leftist public voting record and overall lifetime conduct of consorting with the enemy as a child and student of Marxism, socialist and racist community organizer, congregant of the blatant America-hating black-theology- and social-justice-spewing Rev. Jeremiah Wright and close personal friend of convicted communist terrorists like Bill Ayers, and by his unflinching appointment of an array of communist czars, including Van Jones, Cass Sunstein, Anita Dunne, et al. So let me get this straight: You claim your intentions were noble because you simply wanted to get your child a puppy but somehow didn’t notice that it was foaming at the mouth, and now you’re shocked that your child has rabies? I think not. That is not a mistake. It is negligence — dangerous, life threatening and, I am convinced, downright criminal negligence.
And the price for such negligence is catastrophic, don’t you know.
But it gets worse. For, you see, the blame doesn’t fall just on the obvious stupidity of our friends and families who voted for this corrupt, death-wish government in whose stranglehold we find ourselves.
25 Reasons to Impeach Obama
By Fred Dardick, Impeach Obama Contributor
Last week Rep. Michelle Bachmann was asked what Republicans had in mind should they retake the House of Representatives this November, she replied “I think that all we should do is issue subpoenas and have one hearing after another and expose all the nonsense that is going on.”
Considering the sheer volume of illegal and impeachable offences committed by Obama and his cohorts over the past couple of years, the House will be very busy indeed.
Putting aside Obama’s inept leadership, weakening of our national defenses and transparent attempt to socialize our great nation, there are a number of more practical crimes that once investigated could lead to Obama’s impeachment and perhaps even his well deserved imprisonment.
25 Obama Crimes the House Should Investigate in 2011 Read more
Business Knows more than Obama about creating jobs
By Larry Kudlow
With a bad-blood, confidence-destroying battle royale going on between Team Obama and business, you would think a highly publicized White House jobs summit would have produced some kind of positive announcement that gives a nod to the business point of view.
After all, as part of his so-called “business charm offensive,” the president is arguing that “it’s the private sector that has always been the source of our job creation, our economic growth, and our prosperity; and it’s our businesses and workers who will take the reins of this recovery and lead us forward.”
He also says “the free market depends on a government that sets clear rules that ensure fair and honest competition,” and that “too much regulation or too much spending can stifle innovation, can hamper confidence and growth, and hurt business and families.”
But uncertainty over the regulatory-and-tax rules of the road is exactly what has buffaloed business and stifled the animal spirits that are so necessary for investment and job creation.
The clash between business and the administration has become the high-drama news story of the summer. Business leaders have slammed the White House over policies they regard as hostile to jobs, including taxes, trade, and all manner of new regulations. And amidst a sub-par and virtually jobless recovery, their grievances have resonated with the electorate.
A clear majority now thinks the president is “too liberal” to govern effectively. In one poll, an astonishing 55 percent say Obama’s a socialist. It seems the more the CEOs blast Obama for being anti-business, the more the president’s poll numbers drop.
Cartoon of the Day: Short Term
Filibuster Kagan Now
By Floyd Brown
Finally, some Senate Republicans are talking as if a filibuster of Barack Obama’s radical nominee to the Supreme Court, Elena Kagan, is “possible.” And after monitoring this week’s testimony we conclude they are justified if they proceed.
Kagan is outside the mainstream of American judicial thought and she is inexperienced as a judge. The stakes are simply too high and the damage that could be caused — for years to come — should she be confirmed, are simply too great.
Consider this: Elena Kagan is a radical. Barack Obama and his allies in the left-wing media have made every attempt to paint Kagan as a “moderate,” but this truth is evident if you listen to her answers. She has a life-long history of extreme and radical left-wing political activism and her personal history clearly indicates that she will not hesitate to pursue Obama’s far-left wing agenda from the bench.
The Washington Times perhaps stated it best. In an editorial, the Times writes that Kagan “is too political, too leftist, too inexperienced and too disrespectful towards existing law to be confirmed for the U.S. Supreme Court.” Admittedly, we don’t know much about Barack Obama’s stealth nominee to the Supreme Court. She has little courtroom experience and almost no paper trail, but, as the Times put it, “What we now know about her should disturb fair-minded Americans.”
The tides in the U.S. Senate are shifting. Read more
SHOCKING: Kagan’s Princeton Thesis Cited German Socialist Who Endorsed Nazis
Human Events
Elena Kagan’s senior thesis at Princeton University, recounting the history of socialist politics in New York City, cited the theories of an influential German Marxist who notoriously switched allegiances to Nazism after Adolf Hitler attained power.
Werner Sombart was widely recognized as an academic proponent of Marxism and was once praised by Karl Marx’s colleague Friedrich Engels as the only German professor who understood Marx’s Das Kapital. Read more
