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Every United Nations treaty, if ratified, would cut a piece out of American sovereignty. That's because every UN treaty sets up a commission of busybody bureaucrats to monitor and enforce compliance. When Senator Jesse Helms was chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, we could depend on him to keep mischievous UN treaties buried in the bottom drawer. Senator Helms isn't there any more, so it's up to American citizens to protect U.S. sovereignty if we don't want to be controlled by the UN. The current Congress has dusted off and is trying to ratify an old discredited UN treaty that was signed by President Jimmy Carter in 1980, and repeatedly promoted by Bill and Hillary Clinton, but wisely never ratified. It's called the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). The notion is downright ridiculous that American women (the most fortunate class of people who ever lived) should submit to a treaty that dictates uniform rules for 185 other nations, all of which treat women worse than the United States (even though they have ratified CEDAW). Article 1 of CEDAW purports to abolish discrimination against women "in the political, economic, social, cultural, civil or any other field." Article 2 reiterates that the treaty would "eliminate discrimination against women by any person, organization or enterprise," including "laws, regulations, customs and practices." Our "customs" should be none of our government's business, much less the business of the United Nations. Article 3 would require us to pass new federal laws not only in political but also in "social, economic and cultural fields." Article 5 would require us "to modify the social and cultural patterns of conduct of men and women" and to "ensure" that we are following United Nations dictates about "family education." Article 10 would make it a federal responsibility to ensure "the elimination of any stereotyped concept of the roles of men and women at all levels and in all forms of education . . . by the revision of textbooks and . . . teaching methods." We certainly don't want the UN to revise our textbooks! Remember, the feminists consider it a stereotype that children should be raised by a mother and father married to each other. Article 11 would chain us to the feminist goal that wages should be paid on subjective notions of "equal value" (i.e., the discredited notion of "comparable worth") rather than on the free market or on U.S. legal standards of equal pay for equal work. It would also require us to "establish" another long-time feminist goal, a federal "network of child-care facilities." The monitoring committee in charge of "progress," which is created by Article 17, consists of "23 experts," on which the United States might some day have one vote out of 23. The current committee includes representatives from Algeria, Cuba and Bangladesh and a vice chairman from Zimbabwe. No doubt the "experts" will always be "experts" in feminist ideology and tactics. CEDAW's international "experts" have already issued negative reports about the practices of countries that were foolish enough to ratify the treaty. CEDAW would give global bureaucrats and activist judges extraordinary powers to revise U.S. laws, education and customs and cause unlimited legal mischief. |
