GOP declares "War on the Disabled", Santorum to lead the charge

[Badger]

An optional protocol in a UN treaty of this kind does nothing whatsoever to threaten national sovereignty, ours or anyone else's.  What they do is set up a UN committee that is in charge of receiving scheduled reports from member states as well as receiving complaints.  The committee investigates the complaints, and if they have standing and are judged valid, inform the member states about them, allows the member states to respond to the complaints, and then gives the committee the option of making appropriate recommendations to the member states if reports are not file or if complaints have standing and are judged valid.  Any member state even has the option of rejecting the recommendations.  I read through the entire text of the "Enable" Optional protocol this morning, and there is nothing in it that would trump or contravene the laws of the United States.  Nothing.  If you don't believe me, read it yourselves.

http://www.un.org/disabilities/documents/convention/convoptprot-e.pdf

These guys in the Senate and who used to be there are funny.  They would probably all claim that they believe in certain standards for the equitable treatment of disabled people.  If pressed, they'd probably concede that such standards constitute basic human rights.  The laws now existing in their country already meet the standards of an international body that is asking them to support those values and statutes on an international stage.  But, when the international body asks for their support in advocating and achieving these standards around the world, they want to decline because they don't want anyone to "force" them to believe and do the things they already do--even though we're in fact not being forced to do anything.

Whatever.  If these guys in the Senate and who used to belong to it want this ratification blocked, then they can block it.  But don't tell me it's out of genuine concern for national sovereignty, because that claim is baseless.    

And I wouldn't trust a number of posters above to operate a lemonade stand...so there. 

I think the concern is more about a US court using the treaty to enforce a particular policy, rather than it being directly enforced by an international body.

From the article:


"The treaty requires virtually nothing of the United States. It essentially directs the other signatories to update their laws so that they more closely match the Americans with Disabilities Act. Even Lee thought it necessary to preface his opposition with the qualifier that “our concerns with this convention have nothing to do with any lack of concern for the rights of persons with disabilities.”

Their concerns, rather, came from the dark world of U.N. conspiracy theories. The opponents argue that the treaty, like most everything the United Nations does, undermines American sovereignty — in this case via a plot to keep Americans from home-schooling their children and making other decisions about their well-being.

The treaty does no such thing; if it had such sinister aims, it surely wouldn’t have the support of disabilities and veterans groups, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Republican senators such as John McCain (Ariz.) and John Barrasso (Wyo.), and conservative legal minds such as Boyden Gray and Dick Thornburgh.

But the opposition is significant, because it shows the ravages of the Senate’s own disability: If members can’t even agree to move forward on an innocuous treaty to protect the disabled, how are they to agree on something as charged as the “fiscal cliff”?"


The treaty requires the rest of the world to catch up with US and the GHWB signed ADA. Opposition is largely limited to the "balck helicopters are coming" brigade, and their somewhat more sane, but no less nativist and know-nothing, "I wouldn't trust the UN to run a lemonade stand (so I oppose anything they sponser becasue it MUST be bad)" wing of the party.

Disgraceful.

[Badger]

Yeah, I'm thinking that opinion article is just maybe not the most objective source.

Yeah, and I'm thinking it's more reliable than knee-jerk anti-UN types, but if you have anything specific (which seems to be utterly lacking in the con side here), then please share.

Or, if you really want to play the 'determine the merits of a proposal based on its supporters and opponents' game, consider that mainstream conservatives like McCain, Barasso, Thornburgh, et al support it, and opposition is spearheaded by Santorum and DeMint.

[Badger]

Yeah, I'm thinking that opinion article is just maybe not the most objective source.

Yeah, and I'm thinking it's more reliable than knee-jerk anti-UN types, but if you have anything specific (which seems to be utterly lacking in the con side here), then please share.

Or, if you really want to play the 'determine the merits of a proposal based on its supporters and opponents' game, consider that mainstream conservatives like McCain, Barasso, Thornburgh, et al support it, and opposition is spearheaded by Santorum and DeMint.

I'm playing no such game. Dana Milbank is an opinion columnist.  The only quotes he has of Santorum and other opponents mention the use of this by American courts to change or restrict US policy but do not mention any conspiracy theories. 

Oh please. If the treaty actually had a lick of ability to affect the American Judiciary or negatively direct US foriegn policy, do you really think such wooly-headed One Worlders like Barrasso and McCain would back it?

Playing devil's advocate is all fine and good, but come on already.

[Badger]

Yeah, and I'm thinking it's more reliable than knee-jerk anti-UN types, but if you have anything specific (which seems to be utterly lacking in the con side here), then please share.

So then if it's a knee-jerk reaction from anti-UN people, it's not a war on the disabled... it's a war on the UN.  Which was my point before.

It's a knee jerk anti-UN reaction--which in and of itself appears downright know-nothing here--that threatens to derail something that might improve the lives of the disabled, albeit even marginally.

I realize this treaty, like most UN initiatives, aren't likely to accompish much concrete. But if it accomplishes ANYTHING it doesn't warrant such nativist opposition.

I always marvel at how anti-UN types claim (with some justification--albeit inevitably exagerated) that the UN is a paper tiger that can't tie it's shoelaces without instructions, but at the same time is somehow this ominus threat to undermining American soverignty!

[Badger]

You tell me - http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/12/05/santorum-un-disabilities-treaty-would-ve-had-bureaucrats-unseat-parents.html

Doesn't sound like ignorance to me.

It is. It really is.

Santorum obviously doesn't hate his daughter or disabled persons, but he's apparantly in thrall to the "black helicopters are coming" anti-UN midset (which I'm sure he'll write about extensively at his new gig with WND) to throw a largely toothless effort to raise international standards regarding the rights of the disabled.

But this shouldn't be about Santorum. Yes, he led the charge, but the disgrace is equally shared among about 80% of Republican senators.