I Prayed have prayed
Lord God, thank You for this new panel and its mission to discover the true source of our rights as humans. May they find You and may American foreign policy be informed by this truth.

Earlier this week, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo named a new panel to evaluate human rights, naming Mary Ann Glendon, a pro-life Harvard Law professor as chair. The mainstream media is questioning this move, worrying that gay rights and women’s rights are in jeopardy. You will be encouraged to read the Secretary’s own remarks about this panel:

In my address at the Claremont Institute back in May, called “A Foreign Policy from the Founding,” I made clear that the Trump administration has embarked on a foreign policy that takes seriously the founders’ ideas of individual liberty and constitutional government. Those principles have long played a prominent role in our country’s foreign policy, and rightly so. But as that great admirer of the American experiment Alex de Tocqueville noted, democracies have a tendency to lose sight of the big picture in the hurly-burly of everyday affairs. Every once in a while, we need to step back and reflect seriously on where we are, where we’ve been, and whether we’re headed in the right direction, and that’s why I’m pleased to announce today the formation of a Commission on Unalienable Rights.

Post a prayer for Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Thank God for his boldness, wisdom, and devotion to Jesus.

The commission is composed of human rights experts, philosophers, and activists, Republicans, Democrats, and Independents of varied background and beliefs, who will provide me with advice on human rights grounded in our nation’s founding principles and the principles of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. An American commitment to uphold human rights played a major role in transforming the moral landscape of the international relations after World War II, something all Americans can rightly be proud of. Under the leadership of Eleanor Roosevelt, the 1948 Universal Declaration on Human Rights ended forever the notion that nations could abuse their citizens without attracting notice or repercussions.

With the indispensable support of President Ronald Reagan, a human rights revolution toppled the totalitarian regimes of the former Soviet Union. Today the language of human rights has become the common vernacular for discussions of human freedom and dignity all around the world, and these are truly great achievements.

But we should never lose sight of the warnings of Vaclav Havel, a hero of the late-20th-century human rights movement, that words like “rights” can be used for good or evil; “they can be rays of light in a realm of darkness … [but] they can also be lethal arrows.” And as Rabbi Jonathan Sacks has observed, the evils of any time and place will be justified in whatever is the dominant discourse of that time and of that place. We must, therefore, be vigilant that human rights discourse not be corrupted or hijacked or used for dubious or malignant purposes.

It’s a sad commentary on our times that more than 70 years after the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, gross violations continue throughout the world, sometimes even in the name of human rights. International institutions designed and built to protect human rights have drifted from their original mission. As human rights claims have proliferated, some claims have come into tension with one another, provoking questions and clashes about which rights are entitled to gain respect. Nation-states and international institutions remain confused about their respective responsibilities concerning human rights.

With that as background and with all of this in mind, the time is right for an informed review of the role of human rights in American foreign policy. And I’m pleased to introduce to you today the chair of the commission, Professor Mary Ann Glendon, the Learned Hand Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. Mary Ann is a world-renowned author, beloved professor, an expert in the field of human rights, comparative law, and political theory. She’s the perfect person to chair this effort.

I’m also proud to announce today the other members of the commission. They include Russell Berman, Peter Berkowitz, Paolo Carozza, Hamza Yusuf Hanson, Jacqueline Rivers, Meir Soloveichik, Katrina Lantos Swett, Christopher Tollefsen, and David Tse-Chien Pan.

These individuals will provide the intellectual grist for what I hope will be one of the most profound reexaminations of the unalienable rights in the world since the 1948 Universal Declaration.

Our own Kiron Skinner will serve as the head of the executive secretary of the committee, and Cartright Weiland will serve as Rapporteur.

I hope that the commission will revisit the most basic of questions: What does it mean to say or claim that something is, in fact, a human right? How do we know or how do we determine whether that claim that this or that is a human right, is it true, and therefore, ought it to be honored? How can there be human rights, rights we possess not as privileges we are granted or even earn, but simply by virtue of our humanity belong to us? Is it, in fact, true, as our Declaration of Independence asserts, that as human beings, we – all of us, every member of our human family – are endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights?

Each of these is an important question, and the mission of the commission is to provide advice on them and others not as purely abstract academic matters, but in a manner deeply informed by the timeless truths embedded in the American founding with a view to guiding our nation’s foreign policy. Or to put it another way, the commission’s charge is to point the way toward that more perfect fidelity to our nation’s founding principles to which President Lincoln called us at Gettysburg and to which Dr. King called us while standing in front of the Lincoln Memorial on the mall in Washington, D.C., not so very far from where we are here today.

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Sandie
July 25, 2019

I concur with Julie’s analysis. The focus of the call appears to be to form Foreign policy. Sec.Pompeo’s statement indicates expectation of human solutions to human problems. The global manipulators have been at secular humanism since at least WWI. However,I thank our Father for Professor Glendon’s background and pray she will seek Him as she chairs this assignment. My imperative is to learn who authorized USAID to promote sexual perversion to nations seeking our assistance and pray for reversal of that policy.

Anita Gonzales
July 22, 2019

I pray that the WISDOM OF GOD will rise up out of each of them as they go forth!!!

Julie
July 15, 2019

This will only succeed if built on the foundation of Jesus Christ and His Truth. As the UN, designed for good, has been weaponized against the US (border crisis anyone?), so will this panel if built on subjective opinions and the tendency of man to be corrupted by power. If people with money come in such as a Soros or Gates or other front groups wanting to “help”, be aware. We, the US need to stay out of the world’s affairs. Many believe the Nazi infiltration of our country continued after WWII as in Operation Paperclip, thousands of scientists, unpunished by their crimes against humanity, came to the US to work @ pHARMa, bioweaponry, military and intelligence ops, mind-control, NASA and so on, so Russia wouldn’t get these criminals (and “great” advances in science”). Were they/ are they really working for us? This new panel needs much prayer to stay on the straight and narrow, and if the panel would carry into a new and different administration, watch out that this doesn’t turn unfavorably against US citizens. So human rights abuses continued after WWII by stealth in the name of goodness and progress: GMO food, fluoride in the drinking water producing lower IQ’s, geoengineering, toxic vaccines and adverse events, 4G, 5G, Big Tech-surveilling, mind-control, screen abuse, opioid crisis (to fund their black projects), trafficking, legislated murder of babies, and gender reassignment surgery, and blatant lies about the history of the US. The poor have always been taken advantage of and the media as the “fourth estate” has failed miserably in contributing to the health and well-being of the individual and civil society and the lack of our leaders to conduct themselves to serve we, the people in upholding our founding principles. This decline over the past 100 years, especially after the beginning of the Fed, has precipitated to the demise of a trustworthy media. We have been left vulnerable to this takeover because of blatant lies and thus unable to protect ourselves and fix the problems as they arise. “Have all the workers no knowledge who eat up My people as they eat bread, and do not call on the LORD? There they are in great fear, for God is with the generation of the righteous. You shame the counsel of the poor, but the LORD is his refuge. Oh, that the salvation of Israel would come out of Zion! When the LORD brings back the captivity of His people, let Jacob rejoice and Israel be glad. Psalm 14:4-7

Jean
July 13, 2019

We give praise and honor to God for orchestrating this panel on human rights!

May it be a continued instrument to not only bring awareness of incidents that depict the lack of unalienable human rights but solutions brought about by a unified group of caring individuals to bring change and equity to each situation!

I declare that peace, unity of purpose and honesty prevail as only our God can do, in Jesus Name amen!

Maria Walker
July 13, 2019

To God be the Glory!!!!!!
In what seems like a big confusing web of deception and confusion, God comes on the scene having the right people at the right time in the right place doing the right thing!!
Our God is so awesome and amazing!! Thank you Father!! Thank you Lord Jesus!!!!!

Rosemarie Holben
July 13, 2019

I am so happy we are going to have a consul of people who will stand up for our God given rights and will help all of us to understand what values our country was founded on. That these rights are different than our political views on these issues.

    Melissa
    July 13, 2019

    Amen – I declare courage, strength and honesty as this panel begins a holy endeavor to search out once again the inalienable rights given to us by God on which this nations was founded. Hallelujah. Encounter each panel member with TRUTH in Jesus’ name, Lord. Reveal who You are to them.

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