Posted on 04/24/2003 12:15:17 AM PDT by JohnHuang2
Kirk Boyd is fashioning the first step for implementing global government. This Mill Valley, California-based human rights lawyer has crafted what he believes will be the first enforceable International Bill of Rights (IBOR).
Boyd founded The International Bill of Rights Project (IBOR), which is a research project of the University of California, Santa Barbara. There are 27 people working with this project to develop an International Bill of Rights, which Boyd hopes will become the global standard. These two dozen-plus budding Thomas Jeffersons say IBOR will be made "enforceable" by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France, which in their utopia will morph into the International Court of Human Rights. Their vision has been granted so much credulity that Boyd has been invited to addresses the United Nations Human Rights Commission to argue for implementation of IBOR.
Kirk Boyd has three law degrees, including a Ph.D., from the University of California at Berkeley’s Boalt School of Law. One could argue that Boyd’s credentials mean show that he is hyper-educated, but do not necessarily attest to his insight.
Nor that of IBOR. The text of the International Bill of Right is replete with platitudes and hackneyed phrases. This worldwide covenant would guarantee the right to such things as "cultural identity," the right to be protected from unreasonable searches and seizures, the right to free speech, to religious worship, to "free" health care (undoubtedly paid for primarily by Americans), to shelter, to education, to a fair trial, to an end to nuclear weapons, and to the end of slavery.
Article 2, Section 1 (Free Speech) is representative of the nebulous terms and limitations imposed upon human behavior in this utopian manifesto:
"Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to see, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of borders. No one may be coerced into expressing his or her views and convictions or into renouncing them. The only exception is that the urging of violence against individuals or groups based upon race, religion or sex is impermissible."
This language, which recalls the restrictive P.C. speech codes of ultra-leftist universities such as Boyd’s alma mater of Berkeley, brings to mind another, similarly limited constitution: Brezhnev’s Soviet Constitution of 1977. That Orwellian deception (which, coincidentally, also guaranteed "free, qualified medical care" to all citizens) promised endless rights, limited by this phrase: "Enjoyment by citizens of their rights and freedoms must not be to the detriment of the interests of society or the state, or infringe the rights of other citizens." With such restrictions, the Soviets could legally deprive the guaranteed "enjoyment" of these rights to such giants as Aleksandr Solzenitsyn and Andrei Sakharov.
Like the Soviet Constitutions, the IBOR contains a definite antipathy towards business. Article 3, Petitions, illustrates the author’s attitude towards business as government:
"Everyone shall have the right to submit petitions in writing to government authorities or private business entities. Government bodies or officials must respond in writing to such petitions within a reasonable period of time."
Article 7 (Representation) is an attempt to deny businesses, or those operating businesses, the ability to advocate a candidate. This echoes Article 65 of the 1918 Soviet Constitution, which prevented any capitalist from holding governmental office. Under IBOR, other organizations are not so limited. Article 7 of IBOR states:
"Only individuals, not corporations or other entities, shall be allowed to contribute money or other assets to candidates or ballot measures, but individuals may combine to contribute as a group. The total annual contribution by any individual, whether it is to one candidate or divided among several candidates and ballot measures, shall not exceed 30% of the median income for the country in which the election is taking place."
This is an arbitrary and capricious provision; its only value is its championing of the "corporate conspiracy" mantra of liberals and Marxists. Boyd is obviously one who subscribes to the belief that capitalism is a threat to civilization.
The list of "rights" continues for 39 articles, the last being the enforcement provision, which once again exudes IBOR’s liberal philosophy. According to Boyd, the European Court of Human Rights would become the International Court of Human Rights. The new court would function as an appeals court, with 35 judges approved by the United Nations.
This is the genius of Boyd’s plan, according to David Caron a professor of international law at Boalt: "(I)f human rights are going to be enforceable, it has to reach the international courts."
Boyd (and Caron’s) concept of the enforcement mechanism for this scheme is ludicrous. Obviously, Professor Caron believes that the courts, rather than an executive branch, enforce the law. They do not. They merely interpret it.
It is absurd to expect the United Nations, which repeatedly refused to enforce its own resolutions on Iraq, to enforce anything by thirty-five judges culled from any member nation (presumably including France, China, Iran and Libya). Moving enforcement a step further up an international bureaucracy to a collection of moralizing and pontificating Euro-socialists (or Middle Easterners immersed in concepts of Sharia) opens the door to three distinct possibilities:
1. Those well-meaning judgments passed by the court will go unenforced by a spineless United Nations. Tyrants are fearless of such "threats." Josef Stalin purportedly replied to a Papal sanction by asking, "How many divisions does the Pope have?" This inaction would only embolden tyrants and further contribute to the UN’s snowballing irrelevance. As Mao Tse-tung observed, "Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun," not the tip of a sternly wagged finger.
2. Anti-American judges will push "war crimes" cases against the United States (and the Little Satan, Israel) for alleged "violations of international law." American fighting men, who have taken greater precautions against shedding civilian blood than any fighting force in the history of warfare, will undoubtedly be hauled before the ICC and judged by Third World prelates and condemned with the full "moral" sanction of the United Nations - and the "blame America first" super-majority of delegates will not tarry in implementing these judgments. Even the threat of court-sponsored retribution could blackmail the United States or paralyze the Commander-in-Chief. Under these circumstances, the U.S. could morph from the liberator of Iraq into a true "paper tiger."
3. Worse even than this fate, the judges could choose to pursue the restrictions on human rights codified within IBOR to erode the broader freedoms guaranteed within Western democracies. No less a democratic government than Canada has banned the Bible’s injunctions against homosexuality as "hate speech." An Islamic bloc in the General Assembly could easily declare that "telling it like it is" about militant Islam constitutes hate speech and seek to end the practice within the United States.
Boyd’s manifesto, in other words, is the blueprint of a world run by educrats at the UCal, or emasculated socialists from "the Continent." The University of California is a place that disdains free speech for military personnel, conservatives, and Republicans. There is clearly something amiss at the University of California’s Boalt law school. This is not an institution to be trusted to develop a plan to implement human rights for the entire world. As Orwell said about Soviet propaganda in his Notes on Nationalism, "One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool."
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