Which level of government do you think should have the responsibility for protecting the rights of the disabled — local, state, federal or the United Nations? The United States has been a global leader in protecting the disabled and advancing its interests. Over the past few decades, this has been accomplished through a combination of federal, state and local laws and regulations. But now the United Nations is trying to get involved.
The United Nations was originally established to prevent war among countries. Having repetitively failed in that mission, it has been interjecting itself into virtually every other aspect of human life, including demands for various forms of global taxes to be collected and distributed by U.N. bureaucrats. On May 18, President Obama sent the U.N. Convention on the Rights of Persons With Disabilities to the Senate for ratification. Such a treaty requires a two-thirds vote of the Senate. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee has just passed this convention, and it is now awaiting floor action by the entire Senate.
You may be thinking, “Yes, we should protect the rights of people with disabilities. So, even though the U.N. is ineffective, what could be the harm in voting for it?” This appears to have been the view of the majority of the members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. It also appears that few of them have actually read the convention. One who did is freshman Sen. Mike Lee, a constitutional scholar and rising star, who, along with Sens. Jim DeMint, James M. Inhofe, James E. Risch and Marco Rubio, all Republicans, has been raising warning signals. As with so many other U.N. conventions, the language is vague and in many ways infinitely elastic and thus may be used to overturn many U.S. constitutional protections.
Article 4(1)(e) demands that “every person, organization, or private enterprise” must eliminate discrimination on the basis of disability. Taken literally, which some lawyers are sure to do, every homeowner might be required to install wheelchair ramps or even elevators in their homes, regardless of the cost. This also means that the legal standard for the number of handicapped spaces required for parking at your local stores or houses of worship would be established by the U.N. Such issues should be decided at the local or state level, not by a committee of unelected international bureaucrats.
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