Carter's Trip and Human Rights

Jimmy Carter’s trip to Cuba last week, and the ensuing controversy it caused, got swept to the side once all the commotion about “warnings of 9/11” kicked into high gear. The general range of opinion on his trip was quite caustic, especially coming from the right. At one point I jokingly mentioned to a colleague that Carter wasn’t going to be let back into the country. However, the vitriole mostly receded following Carter's un-censored, live speech to the Cuban people on TV. This unprecedented event was widely hailed by virtually everyone across the political spectrum.

Of particular interest was Walter Russell Mead’s article in the Wall St. Journal, urging readers to “Give Carter His Due.” Writing approvingly of the visit, he noted:

For 40 years, Castro has tried to turn the question of democracy and human rights in Cuba into a test of wills between Cuba and the United States. The U.S. is trying to impose its own imperfect model on Cuba, Castro cries, when our politicians and human-rights groups call for political and economic freedom on the island.

The U.S. model is far from perfect, Mr. Carter acknowledged, but then went on to tell the Cuban people that this is not about U.S. standards and models. Cuba's government violates the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, he told the Cuban nation, as well as key documents on rights and democracy adopted by every other country in the Western Hemisphere. Mr. Carter went even further, pointing out that while the Cuban constitution guarantees free speech and political rights, Cuban law denies these rights to opponents of the regime.

Mead is right to scold Castro’s regime over its habits of suppression, as well as the limits it imposes on individual freedoms. And, of course, the disclaimer that “the US model is far from perfect” is accurate, although that’s somewhat of a phrase devoid of any real meaning. After all, who would claim any national model to be “perfect”?

Then, however, Mead invokes the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This I don’t understand. The underlying assumption here is that while the US is "far from perfect,” at least we uphold these rights. And, tsk, tsk…Cuba doesn’t.

Hmm. While it may be that the US abides by this 1948 convention better than Cuba, we surely don’t abide by it in its entirety. Just take a look at the articles. Everything’s seemingly a-ok until you hit the mid 20s, specifically articles 23-26 [my emphasis, following]:

Article 23: “Everyone has the right to work…the right to equal pay for equal work…[as well as] just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection.”

Article 24: “Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay.”

Article 25: “Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services”

Article 26: “Everyone has the right to education…[which] shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages.”

To claim that these four articles are adhered to in the United States requires some stretch of the imagination. Sure, some are adhered to better than others, and much of this might hinge on the interpretation of each article, but it’s still quite easy to take issue with the implementation of all four: “Renumeration” to ensure “an existence worthy of human dignity” is a joke, as ~35 million people in America live below the poverty line, even with welfare and governmental aid; social services are a joke as well, especially in health care, where millions of Americans lack coverage and thousands die because of it; the 40 hour work week is a figment of the imagination (I won’t comment on America’s paltry assignment of holidays), with most households working 80+ hours, and individuals working closer to 50; while K-12 education is “free,” this hardly suffices the average worker, as the vast majority of employment opportunities require above and beyond that, even for “fundamental” training.

Some might say I am nitpicking here, but it seems hypocritical to chide another nation by invoking the UN Declaration of Human Rights when we fail to fulfill the spirit of each article.

Further down in the article, Mead spits out this gem:

Mr. Carter's human-rights diplomacy, undertaken in conscious contrast to the realpolitik of the Nixon years, seemed mushy and even wimpish to hard-line critics on first glance. Yet every American administration since his has made human rights a central element of its diplomacy. The Reagan administration, originally critical of Mr. Carter's human-rights-based criticism of pro-U.S. dictators, ultimately supported the "people power" insurrection of Corazon Aquino against the Marcos regime, as well as sanctions against the South African apartheid government.

You’ve got to be kidding me. Human rights as an element of diplomacy in the Reagan administration? I guess in some Orwellian world waging an illegal war on Central American countries through terrorist measures and funding, both covertly and overtly, some of the worst human rights violators in the world (as Ed Herman has noted, there's a direct link, historically, between US aid and human rights violations) constitutes an administration that supports “human rights.” To be fair, this is not a phenomenon confined to the Reaganites, although their abuses are easily documented.