Thompson’s policy troubles get a little worse
It’s been a rough couple of months for Fred Thompson when it comes to public policy and reality. After being away from politics for a few years, it stands to reason he’d be a little rusty, but he’s had time to clear the cobwebs, read some white papers, and listen to some policy briefings.
At last count, he’s flubbed questions on Iraqi WMD, the Jena Six, Terri Schiavo, Social Security, a national consumption tax, and drilling the Everglades. Now he’s taking on the United Nations and gun-control policy.
Last year, the United Nations Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights declared that international human rights law requires all nations to adopt strict gun control laws. These “minimum” provisions are much more restrictive than any of those on the books anywhere in the U.S. and would almost certainly violate the Second Amendment of our Constitution.
Besides concluding that all nations are obligated under international human rights law to control the small arms and light weapons to which its civilian population has access, the UN report remarkably denied the existence of any human right to self-defense, evidently overlooking the work of Hugo Grotius, the 17th century scholar credited as the founder of international law, who wrote, “It is to be observed that [the] Right of Self-Defence, arises directly and immediately from the Care of our own Preservation, which Nature recommends to every one. . . ,” and that this right is so primary, that it cannot be denied on the basis that it is not “expressly set forth.”
Thompson’s written statement on the issue went on to condemn “forced disarmament.” A fair number of conservative blogs picked up on this, and praised Thompson’s firm stand.
The statement read like a passionate declaration on an issue Thompson obviously takes seriously. It’s unfortunate, then, that the former senator managed to get all of his facts wrong.
Mark Goldberg goes point by point, detailing all of Thompson’s many, many errors. Thompson said the commission “declared” that all nations are “required” to adopt strict gun-control laws, but it doesn’t. Thompson said the U.N. panel “denied the existence of any human right to self-defense,” when the U.N. Charter actually does the opposite.
The point of this declaration, and similar UN work, is to impede the transfer of small arms to recovering conflict zones like Liberia or Sierra Leone, thus removing one of the drivers of conflict. It is not intended to violate American’s Second Amendment rights. Even if the UN wanted to — which it doesn’t — it could not amend the Bill of Rights to alter the Second Amendment.
Keep in mind, unlike most of Thompson’s other gaffes, this one was written down. He wasn’t just winging it on the stump; this was a specific policy position.
But just as importantly, Thompson appears to be making these mistakes as part of a shameless effort to pander to the far-right. Kevin Drum notes the conspiracy theories that underscore Thompson’s odd policy position.
National Rifle Association Vice President Wayne LaPierre insists the U.N. is concerned about more than illicit arms in African hot spots. He says the global body wants the firearms of American citizens — and much more.
“So, after we are disarmed, the U.N. wants us demobilized and reintegrated,” says the NRA’s executive vice president, Wayne LaPierre, according to the Economist magazine. “I can hear it now: ‘Step right this way for your reprogramming, sir. Once we confiscate your guns, we can demobilize your aggressive instincts and reintegrate you into civil society.’ No thanks.”
As Kevin concluded, “Fred is just telling social conservatives, ‘I’m one of you. And I’m not afraid to look like a complete loon if that’s what it takes to prove it.'”
His entire campaign strategy seems to be to read (or have some aide read) Free Republic every day and pick out some utterly obscure issue that’s of no concern to anyone but the wingiest of the wingnuts (but is of intense interest to those wingnuts).
Running to the right frequently works in this country (because people in the middle regularly fall for nonsense like the linking of Saddam to 9/11 or the invocation of Cuban communism when you talk about universal health coverage) — but Thompson isn’t just running to the right, he’s running to the far fringes of the right. If it were 1960, he’d be howling about fluoridation.
What is wrong with this guy?
It truly would be like having Homer Simpson for president (basically what we have already).
Stuff like this really bothers me– it’s like meeting a liberal who could do the modern equivalent of calling you up during the Holocaust to tell you what line not to step in during a Nazi ‘selection’ at the ghetto you live in, but doesn’t, just because she’s a bitch.
And it continues…The GOP hopefuls continue to corrode American politics…it’s downright embarrassing except to the GOP who are still justifying grasping at straws. Thompson for president…what a joke.
It’s as messed up as someone knowing a lot of cool, feminist women are going to basically get gang-raped and doing nothing about it because she’s worried that helping out might be detrimental to her personal ambitions somehow.
Wayne LuNatic supposes the UN wants to “demobilize your aggressive instincts and reintegrate you into civil society.’” to which he says, on behalf of gun nuts everywhere, “No thanks.” Because Wayne and his legions are proud of their sociopathically aggressive instincts, and have no desire to be a part of civil society. Indeed, they aim for devolution, to live in a feral state in the wilds of Ted Nugent’s ranch, killing wild game and eating it raw in roaming packs, while the men wrestle to the death for access to Alpha-B*tch Coulter.
It truly would be like having Homer Simpson for president (basically what we have already). -Swan
Homer is a working class father of three with a mortgage. Homer is no Bush. In fact, Homer (and Bart) hated George Bush and even drove him out of the neighborhood. Jimmy Carter moved in, and he and Homer got along swimmingly. Frankly, I think we’d be better off with Homer as President.
And yes, I know he’s a fictional cartoon character. I still stand by my statement.
🙂
Jane Hamsher at Firedoglake had a post up the other day titled, “Chemo Brain,” in which she talks about her own experiene and the effects of chemotherapy on the brain – terrible short-term memory loss being among them – effects which are becoming not just anecdotal, but accepted within the medical community. I have a friend who described similar effects during and still ongoing some 5 years after, her chemo for breast cancer.
Now, I’m pretty sure someone other than Fred actually wrote these policy positions, which may be even worse than if he was solely responsible for them.
Either way, we’ve been down this road twice already, and we don’t need to stay on it.
It would seem, Mr. LaPierre notwithstanding, that the WTO and NAFTA have done far more to make the United States “demobilized and reintegrated” (whatever that means).
Of course, Mr. Thompson doesn’t realize that either. Nor did he when he was in the Senate.
To paraphrase some principle or other, the halt and lame (of brain) aspire to the greatest of heights, far beyond their meagre cdapacities (i.e. GWB).
Of course, that may well hold true of ALL of the candidates!
“…and then the black helicopters will come and put The Mark of the Beast on Everyone!”
The only thing more sorry than the rhetoric is that there’s a constituency for it in America.
Funny how the right insists that no weapon should even be taken out of the hands of anyone because that would limit a person’s right to self-defense yet feel perfectly fine saying it was right to invade Iraq to take away somebody’s weapons (which were in fact non-existent), which if they had them would have told the world they were for self-defense. Do they possess no irony meter among them?
We invaded Iraq because we said there are just some weapons that no one should be able to have, yet the NRA refuses to admit that when they look at themselves. The problem with the NRA is they are incapable of accepting any sort of limitations on armaments.
Which is why the NRA helped write the current limitations on automatic weapons, silencers, almost all forms of ordinance including large caliber weapons, grenades, rockets, automatic shotguns, and destructive devices, Petorado.
Mr. Benen, your information appears to be either incorrect or out-of-date. The IANSA report submitted to the UN Human Rights Councils’s SCPPHR (yes, it’s a stupidly long acronym) which Mr. Thompson refers to specifically stated that “Self-defence is a basis for exemption from criminal responsibility that can be raised by any State agent or non-State actor. Self-defence is sometimes designated as a “right”. There is inadequate legal support for such an interpretation. Self-defence is more properly characterized as a means of protecting the right to life and, as such, a basis for avoiding responsibility for violating the rights of another. “ While the earlier texts have recognized the right to self-defense, it has been nearly fifty years since most of them were written — they are thus not particularly useful for noticing the thoughts of modern-day UN members, and of absolutely no use in debunking the report Mr. Thompson was talking about.
The cited Article 51 only provides for the right of self-defense in a limited number of situations, specifically that “Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security.” This obviously leaves some space for interpretation : Member is usually defined as only signing countries not individuals, unarmed attacks can require self-defense (as codified law, it is a matter of self-defense if someone able to gravely injure you attacks you, whether that be with weapons, arms, fists, or threat of rape), and the limitations exists only til act of the Security Council. The cited IANSA report uses issues similar to this, stating that : “Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations applies to States acting in self-defence against armed attacks against their State sovereignty. It does not apply to situations of self-defence for individual persons.”
Meanwhile, the text of the report also entails many “musts” rather than simple “urges”. Among them include the statement that “Under human rights law, States have a primary obligation to maximize human rights protection, especially with regard to the right to life. This commitment entails negative and positive obligations; State officials must refrain from violations with small arms and States must take steps to minimize armed violence between private actors.” More problematically, “Minimum effective measures that States must adopt to comply with their due diligence obligations to prevent small arms violence must go beyond mere criminalization of acts of armed
violence. States must also enforce a minimum licensing requirement designed to keep small arms out of the hands of persons who are most likely to misuse them.” This doesn’t seem overwhelmingly frightening to those who don’t follow gun politics, but anyone who has looked at licensing permit information from Massachusetts, Britain, California, or Hawaii can see that even in these enlightened states that racist, sexist, homophobic, classist, and corrupt police officers are quite capable of refusing valid applications from black, hispanic, female, gay, lesbian, poor, or politically unconnected individuals, in standards that would make even the worst pre-integration 1920s school system blush. It does not take a overactive imagination to see the same methods be abused to positively genocidal degrees in other countries.
It can be argued that the United Nations is so toothless that, even if such acts were made policy, they would remain completely unenforced, but given recent Supreme Court cases giving international treaties and agreements (even those which were signed but not ratified) equal or greater standing in the eyes of the law to actual federal or state law, it’s quite possible to see this type of policy become de facto regulation binding on most of the law-abiding American public regardless of how poorly the United Nations enforces the act against actual genocidal non-government agencies.
Um, you are totally off on this. Are you going to do some type of retraction here? Perhaps an apology for beating up on Mr. Thompson when you ARE COMPLETELY WRONG? One of the “Mentions on other sites…” even points out how you are COMPLETELY WRONG! Ha
Just to note that while the report did nothing to bind the USA to any treaty, what the report is trying to do is the same thing people such as Michael Bellesiles and Saul Cornell do, alter perceptions of history to allow future policies which would be in direct conflict with the original meaning.
Goldberg said:
It seems Goldberg did not read the report for which Thompson is being chastised for misreading.
Report, bottom of page 2:
The report says that self defense is not individual, that it is only regarding state sovereignty. Thompson states that the report said that. Then Goldberg criticizes Thompson for reading the report correctly?
Either Goldberg does not understand the issues to which is being referred to or he intentionally is misleading people.
Can you say “OOPS!” Mr. Goldberg!?
Now that his aspersion against Fred Thompson has been completely refuted, lets see what other eggs he laid for us to step in;
“…most estimates place the number of the victims of the Darfur genocide — which occurred in the context of an armed insurgency, in which the victim population was not, in fact, disarmed — at between 200,000 to 400,000 dead in five years of fighting. This declaration, and those like it at the UN, are attempts to address the proliferation and misuse of small arms, which kill 500,000 people each year.
Please pay special attention to Mr. Goldberg’s last sentences, “Most of these deaths occur in sub-Saharan Africa, where the availability of small weapons like the AK-47 is no impediment to violent conflict.
The point of this declaration, and similar UN work, is to impede the transfer of small arms to recovering conflict zones like Liberia or Sierra Leone, thus removing one of the drivers of conflict.”
By direct implication Goldberg inadvertantly suggests that if Africans are denied more weapons from entering the country, the abundant weapons that are there now will be overwhelmingly in the hands of the bad guys who prepared for a war and will then murderously and quickly overtake their victims who, thanks to the U.N., now have no way to arm themselves against their attackers….simply brilliant strategy to assist the bad guys Mr. Goldberg.
He leaves us no alternative but to continue this line of …logic inthat he prefers the victims be unarmed to keep the period of bloodletting to a minimum and raise the number of slaves captured…allowing a prolonged period of fighting is so wasteful, eh?
We know throughout history bad guys ALWAYS get their hands on weapons, regardless of any and all laws to the contrary and whether it be in a third-world country or in the U.S. of A., when you deprive the good guys of their own defense they perish, sometimes without much evidence they ever existed.
A member of the Jewish faith who refuses to learn from the Holocaust by drooling that it would be “better” if the people who were fighting against murderous attackers shouldn’t have what they need to survive in their own defense is beyond insane.
To hell with Goldberg AND the U.N.
For those of you curious about the facts in this situation, check out the following site. I think you may be surprised:
http://blogs.knoxnews.com/knx/silence/archives/2007/11/fred_thompson_t_1.shtml