QUOTE OF THE DAY – AT 7:46 P.M. ET:  From Rachel Abrams at the Weekly Standard on the "human rights" policy of the Obama administration:

It’s been a rough seventeen months for Americans whose calling is to fight for the rights of people who’ve been stripped of them by force—young men and women beaten to death in full view of the world by the agents of their oppressors for daring to demand that their votes be counted; others hacked to death with the complicity of the autocrats in power over them for having been born the wrong color or to the wrong tribe; girls subjected to the lash, or, worse, murdered by their own mothers, fathers, or brothers for appearing in public in the wrong company; believers imprisoned for professing faith in the wrong god or the wrong political system; non-believers sentenced to death for “wronging” a wrathful, vengeful religion. And it’s been a dreadful period for the victims themselves, left as they have been to ask themselves in silent desperation what has become of their champion.

At the despot-happy opening act of his presidency the current occupant of the Oval Office announced that these people weren’t going to be his business, and though his secretary of state might have seen to them—it being actually within her reach to become the voice of the world’s voiceless, with a whole Human Rights Bureau designated for that very job just down the hall—she never has managed to get really full-throated about it.

COMMENT:  Well stated.  Isn't it remarkable that the Democratic Party's left wing, which used to wear "human rights" as its mantra, isn't terribly interested any longer.  In fact, it treats democracy as simply another political system, or, as one liberal writer calls it, a lifestyle choice. 

Barack Obama has turned his back on human rights or the expansion of democracy.  It wasn't something we expected from the first African-American president.  His supporters call him a pragmatist, which he definitely is not.  A pragmatist emphasizes the practical, the doable, and this administration hasn't been very practical and hasn't shown much that's gotten done.  In all probability, Obama's human rights policy reflects the cold attitudes of his socialist upbringing and radical associations.  It's the theory that counts, never the people.  Thus, this crowd could spout racial justice for decades, and watch thousands of black people murdered each year, without batting an eyelash.

It would have been nice had the media warned us.

June 25, 2010