In recent times, America has had an interesting track record when it comes to human rights. On the one hand it seems that the United States has claimed the mantle of responsibility for taking world governments to task about respecting the rights of their people and the human dignity of the populations that they invade. On the other hand, when America has launched its own wars, the massacring of civilians, “enhanced interrogation techniques”, and indefinite detentions have been commonplace.
Such a mixed history has led nations who have been chastised by American politicians to respond with accusations of hypocrisy. While charging someone with hypocrisy appears to be a natural reflex for many of us, when the advice is good, it doesn’t matter that the messenger fails to live up to it and the US has successfully disincentivized rights violations across the globe despite its own lapses.
It should go without saying that the continuous proliferation of human rights has been a wonderful development in history. Calling it a “proliferation” is somewhat misleading – it suggests that human rights are being granted instead of being respected. It’s an important distinction because when a government institutes policies that restrict what it can do to its population, it is not creating rights, it is acknowledging what was already there and respecting it.
Late last week, NPR reported that the State Department is changing its guidelines on its yearly international human rights reports, notably to exclude much of the criticism levied against regimes who commit abuses.
These include things like corruption, the sexual exploitation of women and children, “involuntary or coercive medical or psychological practices,” and “violence or threats of violence targeting people with disabilities.” What little the guidelines allow to be mentioned appears to be only that which is legally mandatory, such as “extrajudicial killings.”
The editing memo sent to those who compile the reports reportedly states that the changes are meant to make the reports consistent with the goals of the administration. If the goals of the administration require a lack of cognizance about human rights, then the goals of the administration are in conflict with human rights. This is a brazen admission by the Trump White House that it places little importance on the rights that contribute to the fundamental welfare of humans.
Given that Trump’s second term has involved consistent attacks on our liberties, it’s clear that he sees rights, not as powerful considerations that restrict the available suite of actions, but as an impediment to his agenda – deportations, suppressing criticism, and building relationships with oppressive autocrats.
But that’s not how it works – rights are not chips that can be exchanged to facilitate some objective, they are the ultimate barrier to abuse and they supersede most other considerations. If it weren’t the case that rights take on this supreme importance, then it would be morally permissible for the state to, for example, sacrifice free speech for some marginal gain in economic output.
It could also sacrifice our right to bodily autonomy if it conferred enough utility. But notice that this is never an acceptable option: no amount of gain in some other domain can justify the government enslaving a subset of the population. In fact, there are entire ethical theories that have been discarded by some because they inadvertently entail the permissibility of such trades.
Because the Trump administration is positioning itself to make trades of this kind (as seen in his hasty deportations without due process and his attacks on free speech at universities), it is failing to respect this overriding aspect of human rights. In order to commingle with dictators and oppressors, Trump is willing to discard even the appearance of respecting the basic dignity of people – if rights are not irrelevant to some part of his agenda, then they are a minor impediment.
What is so puzzling about this is that there isn’t even a benefit that we are getting in return. How do we or anyone else benefit from America ignoring the rights violations of nations like Hungary and El Salvador? How does it help any of us that the State Department will no longer highlight the ways in which nations oppress their people?
It doesn’t help anyone except the Stalins of the world. Because the State Department reports inform many of our decisions about who to engage in good terms with, it’ll only empower dictators to entrench themselves and commit more atrocities. With this retreat from world-leading rights advocacy, isolating threats to the sovereignty of other nations, and destructive tariff program, Trump is single handedly bringing America’s world leadership closer to an end.
Rafael Perez is a columnist for the Southern California News Group.