A Grand Strategy for Human Rights
The United States should develop a quadrennial domestic human and civil rights strategy akin to the national security strategy produced by the Pentagon and the diplomacy and development strategy produced by the State Department. Doing so would fulfill the promise in our Constitution’s preamble calling on us, “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, [to] establish Justice….”
The preamble acknowledges that our nation was not and is not perfect. As Jill Lepore writes in These Truths, the U.S. is a “nation born in contradiction, liberty in a land of slavery, sovereignty in a land of conquest.” It is the aspiration to liberty that must drive us forward to redress wrongs both past and present.
The Director of the U.S. Domestic Policy Council should oversee production of a grand strategy with input from civil society and from all relevant agencies, especially the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division. The White House should develop budget priorities to ensure that the recommendations, short term and long term, are advanced.
Here are some of the rights that we need to clarify and strengthen.
Press Freedom. The fifth estate, our press corps, has been essential to holding the powerful to account, and its ability to report without fear or favor is a cornerstone of our democracy. Press freedom is being attacked. Politicians, mostly Republicans, are decrying journalism with which they disagree as “fake news,” and those reporters as “enemies of the people,” turning Americans away from fair and accurate information sources. At the same time, they are retweeting conspiracies churned out by ideological “news,” shock jocks, and extremist social media feeds that push fear and falsehood. Congress should revive and strengthen the Fairness Doctrine so that networks, cable and social media that publish opinions are required to offer equal time to the opposing view and encourage these outlets to peddle in facts rather than fear. Congress should finally regulate social media whose algorithms enrich the corporations not the truth.
Freedom of Assembly. America was born in protest and the First Amendment grants citizens the fundamental right to protest its government. It protects both speech that we like and that which we find offensive. It protects both Black Lives Matter who condemn the murders of black people by the police and marches by the KKK who advocate white supremacy. The right to peaceful assembly does not condone violence, rioting or insurrections. According to The New York Times, “G.O.P. lawmakers in 34 states have introduced 81 anti-protest bills during the 2021 legislative session” that would deny those convicted of unlawful assembly of state employment, unemployment benefits, student loans and housing assistance, chilling the desire to protest for fear of the consequences especially since lawmakers call those marching for racial justice “rioters” and Capitol insurrectionists law-abiding tourists. Congress should step in to ensure that the right to peaceful assembly is protected.
Religious Liberty. Our founders fled religious tyranny so that they could practice their faith free from state interference. Our First Amendment grants the free exercise of religion. It does not, however, permit government to condone discrimination in the name of religious freedom, or at least that was the long-standing originalist view until the Supreme Court turned the doctrine on its head. In Hobby Lobby, the Supreme Court ruled that a crafts and arts chain could exercise religion and thereby deny employees access to no-cost contraceptive care to which the employees were otherwise entitled under federal law. According to the Center for American Progress, “Some Catholic hospitals limit essential reproductive health services even in circumstances of miscarriage or other pregnancy complications, such as bleeding, infection, or excruciating pain.” In other cases, the hard-won rights for LGBT Americans may be gutted as critics invoke their religion to deny equality. Congress should amend the Religious Freedom Restoration Act so that religious freedom is not a cudgel against other protected liberties.
Voting Integrity. Elections should be free and fair to all, not gerrymandered and restricted. According to The Washington Post, in “43 states across the country, Republican lawmakers have proposed at least 250 laws that would limit mail, early in-person and Election Day voting with such constraints as stricter ID requirements, limited hours or narrower eligibility to vote absentee.” The Post reports that the laws amount “to the most sweeping contraction of ballot access in the United States since the end of Reconstruction.” Congress should pass the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act to ensure ballot access and a fair, common sense playing field in our elections.
Due Process and Equal Protection. The Fourteenth Amendment guarantees due process and equal protection under the law. The protests against police brutality, the over-incarceration for drug offenses, discrimination in housing, finance, and health care, and so much more underscore systemic inequality facing black and brown communities. As a nation committed to opportunity for all, though born out of slavery, we must eliminate the barriers to that opportunity today. We must be honest about our past, and just as other nations have undertaken truth and reconciliation processes for their own crimes against humanity, so should we. A shared understanding of our history will shine a light on the path to our future.
Civics Education. Establishing a shared understanding our of rights and liberties could reinvigorate a shared sense of national pride and purpose in our democracy. Sens. Cornyn and Coons have introduced the bipartisan Civics Restores Democracy Act, that would invest $1 billion in civics education so that our children and grandchildren will learn about how our democracy functions and what our Constitution says. It will build on the work of former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and restore funds that have dried up over the past decades.
These are just a few of the many, many civil and human rights that a national grand strategy could consider. There are many reasons to do so. Human rights are too often an afterthought in America until a national crisis erupts. As with the quadrennial national security and development and diplomacy strategies, developing a strategy to advance rights will assist both now and tomorrow. It will help build coalitions and strategies. It will identify paths forward and markers of progress. These rights are the connective tissue of democracy that will strengthen our Constitution and ensure that our nation evolves into that more perfect union.
A domestic human rights grand strategy also reinforces our national security. The U.S. cannot lead on human rights abroad if we do not respect them at home. Foreign autocrats have cracked down on press freedom in their countries, echoing Trump’s line “fake news” to silence press freedom in their own countries. Despite the Geneva Conventions and Convention Against Torture, 141 countries still torture according to Amnesty International. U.S. moral authority lags when it fails to hold accountable its own officials who engaged in or authorized torture post 9/11. According to Reuters, “China’s deputy U.N. Ambassador Dai Bing responded that [U.S. Ambassador to the U.N.] Thomas-Greenfield had ‘in an exceptional case admitted to her country’s ignoble human rights record, but that does not give her country the license to get on a high horse and tell other countries what to do.’” In other words, the U.S. must clean up its own house if it wants others to do the same.
Sen. John McCain said in his autobiography, “Human Rights advocacy isn’t naïve idealism. It’s the truest kind of realism.” Sen. Ted Kennedy said, “For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on. The cause endures. The hope still lives and the dream shall never die.” It’s time to convert that dream, that truest kind of realism, into whole-of-government strategy.
