This may be ancient history to some, or even unknown history to others, but in 1948, after the deadliest war in world history, the United States of America, led by Eleanor Roosevelt, delegate to the UN appointed by President Truman, was the driving force behind the draft of a document unanimously adopted by all members of the United Nations General Assembly. It was called the UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS.

Here are some of the most important provisions set forth in this landmark charter recognizing human rights among all peoples of the world:

Article 2.
Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.

Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.

Article 3.
Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person. [...]

Article 5.
No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

Article 6.
Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.

Article 7.
All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination.

Article 8.
Everyone has the right to an effective remedy by the competent national tribunals for acts violating the fundamental rights granted him by the constitution or by law.

Article 9.
No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile. [...]

Article 12.
No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks. [...]

Article 25.
1. Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.
2. Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.

Article 28.
Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized.

Article 30.
Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein.

This document would not have been created without the active support of the US government, and the heroic efforts of Eleanor Roosevelt, widow to FDR. It was front page news when the UN adopted it in December 1948. Now I wonder how many Americans have even heard of it.

From the start, it was understood that this document was aspirational in nature. There is no mechanism to enforce its provisions. Nonetheless it remains one of the most pwerful statements for advancing the rights of all individual human beings and providing them the opportunities, economic and cultural to reach their full potential. These were the ideals that the United States advanced as justification for a "new world order," one in which the rights and privileges of human beings of all would take priority over the rights of nation states, governments and corporations.

Yet, here we stand today, less than seventy years later, and what do we see? The loss of many of the very rights set forth in the Universal Declaration of Rights in our own country,and the destruction of the lives of billions of other people around the globe, thanks to the good, old USA.

Our nation has a sordid history since 1948 in taking actions that violated both the letter and the spirit of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Our government since it "adopted" the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, has regularly violated the human rights of people in other countries through the prosecution of aggressive wars (Korea, Vietnam, Panama, the First Gulf War, Iraq, Afghanistan and the multitude of nations in which the CIA and our covert special operations forces operate in secret today).

And our government, under both Republican and Democratic administrations, actively promoted and and gave military assistance to dictatorial and authoritarian regimes around the globe that oppressed and murdered their citizens so long as those regimes allied themselves with US interests. A short list would include despots from Saddam Hussein in Iraq, Pinochet in Chile, the Shah in Iran, the Saudi Royal Family, Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, to just about every murderous junta in every nation in Latin America were all our pals. The US was also instrumental in creating and engineering an international economic order that preyed upon the most vulnerable people in the most vulnerable nations for the benefit of US banks, financial speculators and multinational corporations. An international economic order that is now strangling the lifeblood (and financial asssets) out of millions of people in the developed and developing world alike, including millions of Americans.

The actions of former President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton over the prior eight years in Guatemala, Columbia, Libya, Syria, Yemen, etc, continued this long series of outrages and violations of international law. George Bush once allegedly said that the US Constitution was just a goddamned piece of paper. Well, the United States government for decades has been wiping its ass with the international agreements and treaties that are set forth on paper, including the Universal Declaration of Human rights.

We now lead the world in the electronic surveillance of people around the world, including our own citizens. We have adopted torture, assassination and undeclared wars as official US government policies. We have meddled and influenced so-called democratic elections in far too many countries to count, including the nation states of Russia, Ukraine, Egypt, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Haiti, Indonesia, probably every nation in Latin America and who knows how many many in Africa and Asia. We have hundreds of military bases around the world to insure we can intimidate both our friends and allies with the threat of an attack by our armed forces if they "get out of line." We routinely ignore human rights violations in countries with which we have strong economic ties while denouncing the human rights violations of our enemies and rivals.

Meanwhile, the US leads the world in the incarceration of our own people, and the detention of foreign nationals, political refugees and other immigrants, often using brutal methods to arrest them and keep them detained without due process of law in what are effectively concentration camps. Us law enforcement agencies assault and beat peaceful protestors asserting their first amendment rights, often in defense of corporate interests.

We have the worst social safety net among the developed nations of the world, and it's about to get even worse, if the Republicans get their way. But the stripping of our rights, the redistribution of wealth from the lower and middle classes to the wealthiest among us, and the divisive nature of our politics this has been a bi-partisan effort. Thank you, Bill Clinton, and thank you, Barack Obama, and all your little neo-liberal conserva-dems, too. The GOP couldn't have managed it without you.

And to think that once upon a time, prominent national leaders, progressive leaders in both parties, dreamed of a better world for all people, one in which governments served the interests of all citizens, and not just the greed of a few. Call me a purist of you like, but it seems to me that our current state of affairs has been the project of lesser, weaker, greedier and more corrupt political leaders than the ones we had not so long ago.

Whatever ideals and progress we achieved after the conclusion of the Second World War have been eroded and, in many cases, outright dismantled by a corrupt and hypocritical political class that cares nothing for the human rights of anyone other than themselves and their donors. The election campaign of Senator Sanders last year, the election of Trump as President and the ongoing phony hysteria generated by the propaganda organs of the deep state (otherwise known as our traditional news media) has exposed that corruption and hypocrisy in all its bloated and malicious immoral glory. At least to anyone who uses a modicum of critical thing to see that that the news we are fed on a 24 hour basis and told is true is a collection of lies and bullshit.

How far we have fallen as a nation in the eyes of the world, and in the eyes of those who know their history. Benjamin Franklin famously answered, when asked the question “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?", "A republic, if you can keep it." Well, we have no republic, no democracy and no freedoms that are worth a tinker's damn. Perhaps, we never did, but at least we had the dream that one could be realized. Now even that illusion has been shattered. God Bless America? If you have a corporate logo or a large investment portfolio, yes, yes he has. Anyone else, though, has experienced the "blessing" God bestowed upon Job, without the "happy ending" of that mythical tale.

Human rights just aren't worth the paper they're written on it seems. Not in today;s America, anyway.