SPEECH

MICHAEL R. POMPEO, SECRETARY OF STATE

PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA

NATIONAL CONSTITUTION CENTER

JULY 16, 2020

AMBASSADOR GLENDON:I am Mary Ann Glendon. Im chair of the Commission on Unalienable Rights, and on behalf of my fellow commissioners, some of whom are here today, I want to welcome you to this presentation of ourreport.

I came in here earlier this morning, and when I saw the seating arrangement, it reminded me of Giacomettis Figures in a Public Square. Those seats looked so distant from one another and so lonely, and of course, that whole sculpture was meant to be an evocation of estrangement of modern man. But now that I see people in the seats, its really just the opposite, and I want to thank you so many of you for having come here today. I know that travel is difficult, and I know youre all here because you care about public life, unlike Giacomettis estranged figures.

So a year ago, when Secretary Pompeo established this commission, he gave us only two very terse instructions: One was to ground our work in the principles of the U.S. founding and in the principles of the international human rights project specifically the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; and the second was to keep our work at the level of policy Im sorry, of principle and not to get involved in policy, where the State Department is already very well supplied with policymakers. And at the time a year ago, many people wondered, well, whats the point of having a commission that doesnt concern itself with the burning issues of the day?

And one answer possibly an answer to that is something that former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said many years ago. He said when I was a professor, I could work on whatever subjects I wanted and take as much time as I wanted, and a policymaker is always under pressure, has to make decisions in haste sometimes, sometimes on very limited information. And the risk, he said, for the policymaker is that the urgent will sometimes drive out the important. That risk, of course, will never be fully eliminated, but Secretary Pompeo did take a step toward alleviating it when he asked for a study about going back to basics and looking at the principles behind the United States commitment to human rights internationally.

Still, some people asked why now, when so many other matters are pressing for attention. Why have such a study now? And Ill just suggest a few answers. You can think of more, perhaps, but certainly one is the information we got from Freedom Houses report this spring where they told us that political and civil rights worldwide have declined this year for the 14th consecutive year and that half the worlds population 4 billion people currently live under autocratic or quasi-authoritarian regimes.

And perhaps thats why some powerful countries are now openly challenging the basic premises of the great post-World War II human rights project, and by challenging the premises, they are undermining the already fragile international consensus behind the ideas that no nation should be immune from outside scrutiny of how it treats its own citizens and that every human being is entitled to certain fundamental rights simply by virtue of being human.

China, in particular, is aggressively promoting a very different concept in which national priorities of various sorts prevail over the basic rights of speech, assembly, religious freedom, and free elections.

Another set of threats to human freedom and dignity are emerging in technological advances artificial intelligence, biotechnology, data collection, sophisticated surveillance techniques.

I could go on. But what hasnt changed what hasnt changed is the fact that millions of women and men are suffering arbitrary imprisonment, torture, and those women and men are looking to the United States as a beacon of hope and encouragement.

For the commissioners over these past several months, its been humbling as well as moving to see American flags in the hands of so many of the Hong Kong protesters. And it was the fact for us that so many people in so many places count so much on the United States yes, even in the ways that our country falls short of its own ideals, it was that fact that led us to our principal conclusion, which was that as a nation that came into being by affirming certain unalienable rights that belong to everyone everywhere, the United States must now rise to the challenges with the same energy and spirit that it brought to the building of a new international order in the post-World War period.

I hope that those of you who would like to hear more about the report will join us at 4 oclock this afternoon for the public meeting, but now we must turn to todays program, where were very fortunate to have with us Timothy Cardinal Dolan, Archbishop of New York, who will present the invocation; after which we will hear the remarks of the Secretary of State, Michael Pompeo; which will be followed by a conversation between the Secretary and myself in which he may reveal whether the commissions report did or did not come close in any way to what he expected of it.

Please join me in welcoming Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo and Cardinal Timothy Dolan. (Applause.)

And please remain standing for the National Anthem, which will be performed by Army Sergeant First Class Charis Strange.

(The National Anthem was sung.)

CARDINAL DOLAN:Well done. Thanks, Sergeant. Here we go, Mary Ann.

Let us pray, and pray we must, we citizens who cherish this one nation under God, a duty flowing from our bold confession. In God we trust.

So we readily praise the creator who has bestowed upon and ingrained into the very nature of his creatures certain inalienable rights, acknowledged by the founders, enshrined in our countrys normative documents, defended with the blood of grateful patriots. You you, dear Lord have bestowed these inalienable rights not kings, tyrants, or any government; rights flowing from the innate human dignity of the person and the sacredness of all human life. You have made self-evident in reason and nature celebrated in your own revelation.

And while we will never give up beseeching you, dear God, to mend our every flaw, we renew our gratitude for this homeland founded on these inalienable rights, asking your blessing upon this noble project initiated by Secretary Pompeo and Ambassador Glendon and your guidance as we renew our sense of duty to share our countrys wisdom on rights inherent to the very nature of the human person never, ever to be trampled.

To the sovereign of the nations, creator of all, bestower of rights, be honor and glory for ever and ever, amen.

AMBASSADOR GLENDON:Now its my great pleasure to introduce the person whose idea it was to have a study that would help to ground American diplomacy in the principles of our founding and in the principles of the international human rights project, and it is my great pleasure, Mr. Secretary, to present you with a copy of our report.

Ladies and gentlemen, the Secretary of the United States Michael R. Pompeo. (Applause.)

SECRETARY POMPEO:Good afternoon, everyone. It is wonderful to be here. Its beautiful. Its absolutely beautiful here.

Thank you, Mary Ann, for that lovely introduction. I am confident that when we first met and I was a 27-year-old former Army captain that Id be standing here today with you in this beautiful place talking about this important moment.

I was very moved by the rendition of the National Anthem. Lets give a round of applause again to Sergeant First Class Charis Strange. (Applause.) None of you should be surprised that I chose an Army person to come give the opening singing.

Cardinal Dolan, thank you. Bless you for being here today. We are blessed to have you here.

I want to express too my appreciation for the National Constitution Center for hosting us. It took some doing to organize. This isnt how this is normally laid out. Lets give the people who made this all happen from this institution a big round of applause as well. (Applause.)

Im happy too that so many of you took the time to come to Philadelphia a place intentionally chosen even if we do have to be socially distanced. And to those watching livestream atstate.gov, welcome.

A special welcome today too to the commission members who could make it here: Paolo Carozza and David Pan, and to Peter Berkowitz, the commissions executive secretary and the head of the State Departments Policy Planning Staff. We also have Duncan Walker and the rapporteur for the committee Cart Weiland here. I know that all of you and your colleagues put a lot of hard work into this report, and thank you so much for that.

I want to take just a second as well to acknowledge the commissioners who could not be here today: Kenneth Anderson, Russell Berman, Hamza Yusuf Hanson, Jacqueline Rivers, Katrina Lantos-Swett, Rabbi Meir Soloveichik, and Christopher Tollefsen. I value deeply the contributions that each of you made to this important report.

I want to thank too there were lots of public comments. We had a number of public meetings. There were many people who voiced a diverse set of opinions. I want to thank people who contributed, like Martha Minow, Cass Sunstein, and Orlando Patterson, who came to share with us their thinking about how we should write this report.

I know too that the commission is welcoming and providing a further opportunity for public input as we complete our work later this afternoon.

And a special thanks to you, Professor Glendon. You are amongst the most significant inspirations for this report that were unveiling here today.

Many of you will know this, but I spent a few years a few years under Mary Anns tutelage. I was a research assistant for her. She paid me 7 bucks an hour. I thought I was rich. (Laughter.) It was one of my greatest gifts in life.

Ive now read nearly everything youve written. I dont agree with all of it (laughter) but we had a fun time. We debated human rights. We agreed on the big things, the important things, the things that really matter about this remarkable nation.

We agreed that our founders traveled to this great land to enjoy the fruit of freedom, not to spread subjugation.

We agreed, as Professor Glendon, the former 1960s civil rights advocate, wrote in her great workRights Talk,that A rapidly expanding catalog of rightsnot only multiplies the occasion for risks of collision, but risks trivializing core American values.

We agreed that the Declaration of Independence itself is the most important statement of human rights ever written. It made human freedom and human equality our nations central ideas.

And as I said to the Claremont Institute now just over a year ago, we agreed that America draws strength and goodness from her founding ideals and that our foreign policy must be grounded by those ideals as well.

But we know this: We cant do good at home or abroad if we dont precisely know what we believe and why we believe it.

And thats why I asked Professor Glendon to form a commission composed of some of the most distinguished scholars and activists. I asked them not to discover new principles, but to furnish advice on human rights grounded in our nations founding principles and the principles of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Because without this grounding without this grounding our efforts to protect and promote human rights is unmoored and, therefore, destined to fail.

And so the Commission on Unalienable Rights was born.

These rights, these unalienable rights, are essential. They are a foundation upon which this country was built. They are central to who we are and to what we care about as Americans.

Now, I think Cardinal Dolan referred to this, but Americas founders didnt invent the unalienable rights, but stated very clearly in the Declaration of Independence that they are held as self-evident that human beings were created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights among [those] are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.

So too did these bright men know that each human being has inherent worth, just by virtue of his or her own humanity a deeply Biblical idea. As Alexander Hamilton wrote, The sacred rights of mankindare written, as with a sun beamby the hand of the divinity itself; and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power.

Now, that may seem commonplace to some of you, but this was a momentous idea. Until 1776, human beings pretty much everywhere were ruled by might and brutality.

The founders changed the course of history when they established a nation built on the premise that government exists not to diminish or cancel the individuals rights at the whims of those in power, but to secure them.

Ill never forget Ill never forget being spellbound by the founders ideas for the first time. As a cadet, too many years ago now, at West Point, I was issued uniforms, a rifle, and the Federalist Papers. I still have that copy. Some have seen it on my desk. Its a bit more tattered now. But Ive continued to go back to that and harken back to those central ideas that these men brought to this great nation. And its important its important for every American, for every American diplomat, to recognize how our founders understood unalienable rights.

As youll see when you get a chance to read this report, the report emphasizes foremost among these rights are property rights and religious liberty. No one can enjoy the pursuit of happiness if you cannot own the fruits of your own labor, and no society no society can retain its legitimacy or a virtuous character without religious freedom.

Our founders knew. Our founders knew that faith was also essential to nurture the private virtue of our citizens. The report speaks to that.

In his now famous letter from 1790, a letter to the Jews of Newport, George Washington proudly noted that the United States gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.

Our founders also knew the fallen nature of mankind. Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist 10: Men are ambitious, vindictive, rapacious.

So in their wisdom, they established a system that acknowledged our human failings, checked our worst instincts, and ensured that government wouldnt trample on these unalienable rights.

Limited government structured into our documents protects these rights. As the report states, majorities are inclined to impair individual freedom, and public officials are prone to putting their private preferences and partisan ambitions ahead of the public interest.

The genius the genius of our founders was evident to one man in particular. In 1838, a 29-year-old 28-year-old lawyer gave a speech to the local young mans lyceum in Springfield, Illinois.

Abraham Lincoln said, quote, We find ourselves under the government of a system of political institutions, conducing more essentially to the ends of civil and religious liberty, than any of which the history of former times tells us.

This is still true. This is still true of America today. America is fundamentally good and has much to offer the world, because our founders recognized the existence of God-given, unalienable rights and designed a durable system to protect them.

But I must say, these days, even saying that America is fundamentally good has become controversial.

The commission was never intended to time the release of this report to the current societal upheavals that are currently roiling our nation. Nevertheless, the report touches on this moment, and so will I, because todays unrest directly ties to our ability to put our founding principles at the core of what we do as Americans and as diplomats all across the world.

Now, its true that at our nations founding our country fell far short of securing the rights of all. The evil institution of slavery was our nations gravest departure from these founding principles. We expelled Native Americans from their ancestral lands. And our foreign policy, too, has not always comported with the idea of sovereignty embedded in the core of our founding.

But crucially crucially the nations founding principles gave us a standard by which we could see the gravity of our failings and a political framework that gave us the tools to ultimately abolish slavery and enshrine into law equality without regard to race.

You dont always hear these ground truths today. Nor do you hear about the greatest strides our nation has made to realize the promise of our founding and a more perfect union.

From Seneca Falls, to Brown vs. Board of Education, to the peaceful marches led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Americans have always laid claims to their promised inheritance of unalienable rights.

And yet today, the very core of what it means to be an American, indeed the American way of life itself, is under attack. Instead of seeking to improve America, too many leading voices promulgate hatred of our founding principles.

President Trump spoke about this at Mount Rushmore on the Fourth of July. And our rights tradition is under assault.

TheNew York Timess 1619 Project so named for the year that the first slaves were transported to America wants you to believe that our country was founded for human bondage.

They want you to believe that Americas institutions continue to reflect the countrys acceptance of slavery at our founding.

They want you to believe that Marxist ideology that America is only the oppressors and the oppressed. The Chinese Communist Party must be gleeful when they see theNew York Timesspout this ideology.

Some people have taken these false doctrines to heart. The rioters pulling down statues thus see nothing wrong with desecrating monuments to those who fought for our unalienable rights from our founding to the present day.

This is a dark vision of Americas birth. I reject it. Its a disturbed reading of history. It is a slander on our great people. Nothing could be further from the truth of our founding and the rights about which this report speaks.

The commission reminds us its got a quote from Frederick Douglas, himself a freed slave, who saw the Constitution as a glorious, liberty document. That it is.

America is special. America is good. America does good all around the world.

In recent weeks, Ive had the chance to walk around Arlington Cemetery a few times, as I was thinking about today. And Ive been reminded of the hundreds of thousands of young men America sacrificed during the Civil War. We forget them at our peril.

And that grand struggle for rights wasnt the only one in American history. There are many remarkable Americans still engaged in the drive to fulfill the Declarations promises.

One of them is here with us today, David Hardy. David was the founding CEO of Boys Latin School a charter right here in Philadelphia. Hes still very involved in the charter school community.

At Boys Latin, and other schools like it, aspiring young men, nearly all of them from some of the most difficult parts of Philadelphia, have a better chance to pursue their happiness. Eighty-nine percent of the students there matriculate to college.

He David has devoted the great part of his adult life to equal opportunities for a good education, often called the civil rights movement of our time.

Mr. Hardy, please stand. And lets give him a round of applause. (Applause.) David, thank you again for being with us here today.

Our nation, too, has the responsibility to inculcate our founding values and reward their adoption. C.S. Lewis said it best when he lamented that we make men without chests and expect from them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.

We must do better. America must build on its founding ideals and its leader must fearlessly defend them.

It is clear and this report makes it even more so it is clear that unalienable rights are central to who we are as Americans. But heres where I come in as Secretary of State. They have to underpin our foreign policy.

The Declaration itself is a foreign policy matter. It was written to explain why our nation broke away from British tyranny.

If we truly believe if we truly believe that rights are unalienable, inviolate, enduring, indeed, universal, just as the founders did, then defending them ought to be the bedrock of our every diplomatic endeavor.

Indeed, our own commitment to unalienable rights at home has proved a beacon of hope for men and women abroad pursuing their own liberties.

The examples are countless. Ill just give a couple.

Natan Sharansky when he heard of President Reagans Evil Empire speech while imprisoned, he said it was a ray of hope in the darkness of his punishment cell.

Last year Professor Glendon referred to this Hong Kong waved the American flag as they protested a communist crackdown. There is no symbol of freedom more recognizable all around the world.

Today, Im proud to have with us Wei Jingsheng, who is considered the father of todays Chinese democracy movement. On December 5th, 1978, the young electrician from Beijing Zoo shook the world by bravely posting an eloquent essay on Beijings short-lived Democracy Wall.

Mr. Wei boldly insisted that the CCPs Four Modernizations in industry, agriculture, defense, and science werent enough to truly make China a modern a modern and civilized nation.

Hearkening back to the May Fourth Movement, generations earlier, he said China needed a fifth modernization: democracy.

The Chinese Communist Party repeatedly threw Mr. Wei in jail for his advocacy.

In 1997, he emigrated. He emigrated to America, where he has continued his courageous call for the Chinese Communist Party to honor the unalienable rights that God has given to every Chinese citizen from Tibet to Tiananmen and from Hong Kong to Hubei.

Mr. Wei, please stand and be recognized. (Applause.) Its a blessing to have you with us here today. Thank you, again.

Now, if you believe our founding principles should inform foreign policy, and especially the promotion of unalienable rights, we have to lay down a framework a framework for how to think about this around the world.

Now, we have to be realistic, because our first duty is, of course, to secure American freedoms. Thats what I raised my right hand to do, when I was sworn in as Americas Secretary of State.

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