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It was also proof that even NGOs play politics. They can give all the excuses they want to. But at the end of the day they opposed an effort to make the Human Rights Council more responsive to the cause to which they were supposedly dedicated. After that, it was impossible for me to take their claims seriously.
The right to speak freely and to associate and worship freely, the right to determine your own future and to be treated equally under the law—these are sacred rights. They are ours by virtue of our humanity, not by virtue of the country or tribe we were born into. Americans take these rights seriously, too seriously to allow them to be cheapened, especially by an institution that calls itself the Human Rights Council.
We left the HRC, not because we don’t care about human rights for all, but because we do. We were criticized for the move, but I’ve never been more sure about anything in my life. The United States could not continue to give credibility to an organization that made a mockery of human rights.
The United States does more for human rights, both inside and outside of the United Nations, than any other country in the world. It’s not even close. And...
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The number-one difference between me and some of those who left the administration on less-than-good terms was that I never thought I was a stand-in for the president. They sometimes did. As a member of the president’s cabinet, I conducted myself the same way I wanted my cabinet to treat me when I was governor. I wanted them to be creative. I wanted them to remember that they served the people. And I wanted them to challenge me if they ever thought I was going in a direction they disagreed with.
At the end of the day, the person who serves as president is the choice of the people. Our job is to serve the people, and that means honoring the office of the presidency. When we think something is wrong, our job is to stand up and make our voices heard. It is not to plot and scheme behind the president’s back. We owe our loyalty to the American people and the Constitution.
When an institution like the UN fails to support our values, we have an obligation to object, and to object loudly.
This is the foundational dilemma of the United Nations. It is set up to treat all countries the same. But all countries are not the same. Some respect freedom and human rights, and some don’t.
“Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim.”
Our values are our most potent foreign-policy tool. They give us leverage at the United Nations and throughout the world. And as long as we are in the UN, we must use them.
when the United States calls out a country or an injustice, the world takes notice. This goes for our allies, too.
Year in and year out, the United States contributes at least 20 percent of the funding for the United Nations system.
The American people contribute more than 35 percent of the funding for the world’s largest multilateral humanitarian organization, the World Food Program.
U.S. taxpayers shoulder 42 percent of the burden of paying for the work of the UN Refugee Agency.
Our foreign aid should help the most vulnerable, but it should also serve America’s interests. Where we give our money and how much shouldn’t be on autopilot. It should go where it can do the most good and where we can expect cooperation and friendship in return.
the real world effects of socialism—even initially well-intentioned socialism—the idea that we would adopt this system in the United States is unfathomable.
a stunning 90 percent of Venezuelans live below the poverty line.
I’ve seen how socialism destroys freedom, even in those countries that manage to grow their economies off the sweat of their repressed people.
A good example of the difference between the threat posed by free versus unfree governments is two of the largest- and fastest- growing economies in the world: India and China.
China steals intellectual property. It helps North Korea cheat on sanctions. The Chinese manipulate their currency in ways that poison our trade relationship. And they are enlarging their military at a rapid pace.
In addition to being a bad economic actor and a strategic threat, the Chinese government is one of the greatest human rights abusers in the world.
The massive protests in Hong Kong in 2019 held an important message for the Chinese regime: Freedom is the yearning of every human heart. Even higher incomes and more consumer goods can’t diminish it forever.
China is a powerful country, but it is also an unstable one because of the way its government treats its people.
We have an obligation to tell them that if you care about global poverty, if you care about childhood disease, literacy, even the environment, you should support capitalism. In the last twenty-five years, over a billion people have raised themselves out of extreme poverty.
The World Bank reports that the global poverty rate is at its lowest point in recorded history. That’s not the result of socialism. It’s because of capitalism.
We all have an obligation to educate young Americans about where socialism leads. Especially those of us who have traveled to countries that claim to be socialist. It...
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In December 2017, I announced that the United States would no longer participate in the drafting of a United Nations document on immigration called the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration.
If we no longer acknowledge a difference between legal and illegal immigration—and between people who need international protection and those who just want to escape poverty or crime—we will have a system of completely open immigration. We will have effectively eliminated our borders. We can never do that.
It was a nonbinding, largely symbolic document.
American decisions on immigration policies must always be made by Americans and Americans alone. Only we will decide how best to control our borders and who will be allowed to enter our country.
I had met refugees from the war in Syria and from the violence in South Sudan and the Congo. I didn’t meet them at a migration conference in New York or Geneva. I met them where they lived, in refugee camps in Turkey, Jordan, and Central Africa. The message of these desperate people was always the same. They wanted to go home.
The solution to the global migration crisis was spelled out by President Trump in his 2018 address to the UN General Assembly. “Ultimately, the only long-term solution to the migration crisis is to help people build more hopeful futures in their home countries,” he said. “Make their countries great again.”
I don’t blame people for wanting to come to our country. I welcome it. But we have to be smart about it. We can’t let just anyone into our country. We have to vet people for security reasons. We have to prioritize people with skills, not just with family connections. We have to make sure the numbers don’t get larger than our ability to absorb. In short, our immigration system is badly broken. Our country will continue to be at odds over this issue until we fix it.
Disrupting the status quo can be valuable. But it also requires a plan for what comes next. The far left has a plan, and it’s dangerously wrong. The far left wants to remake America and to undo so much of what has made us great. Its belief is that everything we learned in grade school is wrong. American principles like freedom of speech, religious freedom, and equality before the law don’t allow us all to pursue our best lives, it claims. Instead, they protect “privilege.”
As an Indian American woman, I am keenly aware of the discrimination that has existed and continues to exist in our country. But we mustn’t elevate identity politics to the absurd heights that the left takes it.
Few people there fit the stereotypical image of “white privilege.” When we have a discussion of race in America, these communities should not be forgotten. We ask them to pay their taxes and fight our wars. We must not also ask them to pay for illegal immigrants’ health care and education, or to pay reparations for injustices that their ancestors of eight generations ago might or might not have perpetrated. To truly be one America, we have to include everyone, regardless of race. In some ways we are all victims, but if we dwell on victimhood, we become a nation of grievances, and that
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We don’t need to remake America into something different. America isn’t perfect, but it is our belief in inalienable rights that has made us the most generous, most prosperous, and most free country in the history of humankind.
We don’t need a different America. All of us need to show less entitlement and more gratitude for the universal principles that have made our nation great and will make it greater in the future.
