Congress has struck down an international treaty to protect the rights of people with disabilities, thanks to Rick Santorum and his band of UN-bashers.
Katrina vanden HeuvelEditor’s Note: Each week we cross-post an excerpt from Katrina vanden Heuvel’s column at the WashingtonPost.com. Read the full text of Katrina’s column here.
At least they had the decency to wait twenty-four hours.
Last Tuesday, following the international day honoring the disabled, thirty-eight Senate Republicans voted down the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons With Disabilities. With former Senate majority leader and disabled WWII veteran Bob Dole silently beseeching them from his wheelchair, Dole’s fellow Republicans railed against “cumbersome regulations” that could threaten American “sovereignty.”
No matter that Democratic Senator John Kerry patiently and eloquently explained that the treaty would in no way impact US law but merely encourage other countries to adopt our own standards and make life easier for disabled Americans abroad. Or that the treaty—signed by 154 countries and ratified by 126—was modeled on the landmark Americans With Disabilities Act, a billchampioned by Dole and signed into law by President George H.W. Bush. Or that the treaty itself was drawn up by that notorious UN-hugger George W. Bush. Or even that eight Republican senators voted to ratify it, including increasingly rabid Obama foreign policy critic John McCain, who listed two dozen supportive veterans organizations before noting that the treaty was about “American leadership in the world.”
Editor’s Note: Each week we cross-post an excerpt from Katrina vanden Heuvel’s column at the WashingtonPost.com. Read the full text of Katrina’s column here.
Katrina vanden HeuvelTwitterKatrina vanden Heuvel is editorial director and publisher of The Nation, America’s leading source of progressive politics and culture. She served as editor of the magazine from 1995 to 2019.