Surprising good news: the Senate votes down a noxious UN treaty

Alex Newman is a writer at The New American and my respect for his ability and his clarity (in addition to his world view) continues to grow. So I’m pleased to riff on his article yesterday about the Senate telling the UN to take a hike.

Responding to a tsunami of organized opposition against a highly controversial United Nations disability treaty known as the “UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities” (CRPD), on December 4, 38 GOP senators voted against a coalition of 61 Democrats and so-called “RINO” Republicans to kill the agreement by denying a two-thirds majority needed for ratification.

Those activists had been watching with growing alarm as this treaty appeared to be moving inexorably forward to ratification by the Senate. It was especially disheartening to see Republicans In Name Only line up in support of it, including Bob Dole, the quintessential RINO, showing up in his wheelchair to push for passage.

The treaty is a disaster:

The broad alliance of critics that came together to ultimately defeat the UN CRPD scheme had slammed it as everything from a serious threat to national sovereignty and parental rights to an underhanded power grab by global bureaucrats and pro-abortion forces.

Interestingly, one of those most vociferous in its opposition was the Home School Legal Defense Association:

“Thanks to all of you, Americans experience a great victory for freedom today,” noted the Home School Legal Defense Association, which helped lead opposition to the treaty among homeschoolers concerned about multiple provisions in the treaty dealing with parental rights. “Freedom for people to act morally and according to their beliefs is of paramount importance to us. But we would not be able to accomplish anything without engaged citizens who are willing to fight for their freedoms.”

Summit Ministries, located in Manitou Springs, Colorado, just celebrated its 50th anniversary and noted that in that 50 years the school has educated, trained and enabled some 30,000 students to become informed activists in the freedom fight. Many of them (including my son Russ) have decided to home school their kids, and their numbers are growing. At present there are about 2 1/2 million young people being home schooled here in the United States, and enough of them are getting active in issues like these to make a difference.

Wrote Newman:

Homeschoolers, for example, warned that the agreement purports to grant national governments broad and dangerously vague powers to intrude on family life, supposedly to ensure that parents of disabled children are being cared for according to the UN’s dictates. Especially troubling to critics were references to the “best interests” of the child, which analysts have long warned would eventually put politicians, not parents, in charge of making decisions concerning children.

That is the core issue: who teaches the kids? It had little to do with “disabilities” which was just a cover:

Proponents of self-determination and national sovereignty warned that the treaty would have granted the controversial global organization even more power, forcing the U.S. government to defer to an unaccountable international “committee” on disability issues.

The article is worth reading in its entirety.