The State Department has submitted a report to the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights in conjunction with something called the Universal Periodic Review. The report is the federal government’s assessment of how the country is doing on the human rights front.
The very first line of the report states: “The story of the United States of America is one guided by universal values shared the world over–that all are created equal and endowed with inalienable rights.” Perhaps I’m being too picky or hypersensitive, but I couldn’t help but ask upon reading that sentence, “Would it have killed you to say that all are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights?” After, the Declaration of Independence (to which the report is plainly alluding) uses that language.
More substantively . . . the notion that these