GOP Adopts Reaganesque Stance on Religious Liberty
Rights of conscience are under assault not only in the United States, but all over the globe. The draft of the 2016 Republican platform, as adopted Tuesday evening, doesn’t mince words about what party’s position on the issue.
The platform language also takes a strong stance on global human rights, especially the right of conscience (religion, speech, association, etc), which are under ever-increasing assault worldwide. 2015 Pew polling found that 77 percent of the world’s population lives in a country with either “high” or “very high overall level restrictions on religion.”
At one point, an amendment was proposed striking language condemning the Castro regime and Obama administration’s policy of opening the door to Havana, arguing that the best way to improve the regime is through trade and open dialogue. This was promptly shut down by others on the committee, who remember the failure of improving the Chinese regime through trade.
In particular, the original language states that “China’s behavior has negated the optimistic language” of the 2012 platform.
“The liberalizing policies of recent decades have been reversed” under Xi Jinping it reads, with “dissent brutally crushed, religious persecution heightened and the cult of Mao revived.”
The committee added additional language on “International Religious Freedom” in the draft, which condemns both religious oppression in the sorts of regimes mentioned above and the Obama administration’s neglect of the role of the United States Committee on International Religious Freedom, a bipartisan watchdog group championed by GOP congressmen in the late 1990s. Additionally, the GOP platform promises to restore religious freedom advocacy to a prominent place in diplomatic negotiations.
USCIRF “has been neglected by the current Administration at a time when its voice more than ever needs to be heard,” according to the original draft of the language obtained by CR. “A Republican Administration will return the advocacy of religious liberty to a central place in its diplomacy.”
Finally, the document directly addresses the plight of Christians, Yazidis and other religious minorities in the Middle East, who have suffered genocide at the hands of ISIS since the Jihadist insurgency’s rise to power in the summer of 2014. The adopted language formally acknowledges ISIS’ actions as genocide and even supports the creation of a safe haven for religious minorities in Northern Iraq.
This language comes at a time when the rights of conscience are under assault not only in America, but around the world. Prisoners of conscience still languish in prisons and face arbitrary arrests in communist regimes like China, Cuba, and Vietnam, Russia is cracking down on religious expression, and ISIS has been committing genocide against religious minorities in Iraq and Syria for two years now.
Furthermore, these trends have shown no reversal whatsoever under President Obama, whose administration has cut deals with totalitarian regimes, effectively shrugged at China’s human rights record, brazenly opened the door to Cuba, and whose Middle East policies have given rise to an international Jihadist insurgency under ISIS.
In an age of global persecution, Americans need a policy on global human rights reminiscent of the kind Reagan enacted on behalf of dissidents in the Soviet Union and elsewhere. These sections of the Republican platform offer an example of what that might look like in the 21st century. (For more from the author of “GOP Adopts Reaganesque Stance on Religious Liberty” please click HERE)
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