Last December, U.S. Senators John McCain and Ben Cardin sent a letter to President Trump on the anniversary of Human Rights Day, urging him to “recommit our country to upholding human rights as one of our founding principles.” The date should have been a celebration of America’s leadership in creating and championing the world’s modern human rights institutions. Instead, the letter underscored deep concern with the Trump Administration’s abject failure to speak out in support of fundamental human rights at home or abroad.
In writing to the President, these two moral leaders of the Senate argued forcefully that “protecting human rights at home and abroad is important not only to our national character, but also to our security interests.” Pointing to a range of human rights challenges facing individuals and nations the world over, including the stark reality that “LGBT individuals are deprived of basic human rights in dozens of countries,” the letter challenged President Trump “to reaffirm that no government can be legitimate if it abuses the people it is meant to serve – and that the rule of law is universal, without exception.”
We regret that President Trump did not speak out in defense of human rights then, and that to date he has continued to defend – even praise – leading human rights abusers ranging from President Putin in Russia to President Dutarte in the Philippines. And at the United Nations, instead of standing up to human rights dictators and fighting to improve the human rights mechanisms we helped create, the United States has pulled out of the Human Rights Council, thereby sidelining any voice or moral leadership we might otherwise hope to muster.
On this sad occasion of the passing of Senator McCain, President Trump has chosen to belittle the man and what he stood for, instead of joining fair-minded Americans of both parties in praising him for his heroic service to our country and steadfast defense of its founding ideals. How small-minded and sad. May the rest of us, as we mourn the passing of Senator McCain – and with him an animating force behind our country’s moral compass – recommit ourselves to upholding human rights as a tribute to Senator McCain and other compatriots who have fought, and still fight, to secure human rights at home and abroad.
Global Equality Today 