Talk:Human rights in the United States/Sandbox

The following text was deleted from the United States article without being moved or merged anywhere. I am putting it in this sandbox in preparation for merging it into this article. It may turn out that all of the points in the following text are already in the article.

Richard 16:53, 13 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Traditionally, the U.S. has been a staunch proponent and leader in the development of the Western ideology of democracy, civil rights and civil liberties. This tradition dates back to the inception of the republic starting with the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Despite the noble ideals espoused in these documents and the pronouncements of its political and civic leaders, the United States has had to struggle to achieve those ideals, succeeding at times yet failing miserably at other times.

Slavery and racial discrimination

At the time of the American Revolution, slavery was an established institution, especially in the southern states. The "peculiar institution" was a potentially contentious issue at the Philadelphia Convention. In order to maintain unity among the former colonies, the Three-Fifths Compromise counted slaves as three-fifths of a person, for the purposes of allocating Congressional representation, and a guarantee of tax-free slave imports was written into the document, but only for a limited time. Slavery continued, but remained a controversial national issue, generating considerable regional conflict over the practice and its expansion into new states. Half the states in the Union maintained slavery until 1865.

Most historians consider the economic and ethical conflicts over slavery to be one of the primary causes of the American Civil War, which began in 1861. The wartime Emancipation Proclamation of Union President Abraham Lincoln turned northern soldiers into slave liberators. Following the northern victory, the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution abolished slavery, and the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution established Black citizenship rights and "equal protection".

These legal protections did not change popular sentiment, especially in the southern states, and substantial racial discrimination persisted. Discriminatory practices continued to be institutionalized in law for the next century, including Jim Crow laws and the separate but equal theory endorsed by the Supreme Court in the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision. It was not until 1954 when the Court reversed its decision, in Brown v. Board of Education. In time, slow cultural changes and the Civil Rights Movement won the passage of strong anti-discrimination legislation, such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Strong federal guarantees now provide the ability to sue any national, state, or local government agency for racial discrimination. Private prejudice is somewhat protected as a form of free expression and free association, but in many business dealings is illegal. Significant economic inequality exists between different racial groups.

Interventionism and support for authoritarian regimes

The United States is sometimes criticized for interventionist policies in Latin America, the Middle East, South-East Asia and elsewhere, and for aid (financial, military and otherwise) given to repressive governments and warlords.

During the Cold War period, aid policies were considered a counterweight to the aid the Soviet Union was giving to socialist countries and insurgencies.

After the end of World War II, Secretary of State George Marshall proposed and implemented a plan to aid Western European nations in rebuilding their shattered economies. This program of foreign aid became known as the Marshall Plan.

However, American foreign aid has also been criticized as driven by self-interest and profit rather than the promotion of democracy and human rights. It is true that, historically, American foreign policy has preferred stability to democracy and thus often supported regimes who violated human rights as long as those regimes were friendly to American geopolitical and business interests.

There are numerous examples of such regimes. The list includes Ferdinand Marcos, the Shah of Iran, Saddam Hussein, Suharto, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and a number of Latin American military dictatorships.

Military weapons and tactics

The tactics of the U.S. military have sometimes been questioned, as in the Vietnam war in which U.S. explosives and Agent Orange left parts of the region uninhabitable. While these charges have some validity, the United States has worked to address the more inhumane aspects of the use of military power.

In 1963, the United States signed the Limited Test Ban Treaty, pledging to refrain from testing nuclear weapons in the atmosphere, underwater, or in outer space.

In 1993, the United States signed the UN-sponsored Chemical Weapons Convention which became effective on April 29, 1997. Through ratification, the United States agreed to dispose of its unitary chemical weapons stockpile, binary chemical weapons, recovered chemical weapons, and former chemical weapon production facilities by April 29, 2007, and miscellaneous chemical warfare materiel by April 29, 2002. Congressional legislation throughout the 1990's directed the military to dispose of its stockpiles of chemical weapons.

In 2004, President George W. Bush committed the United States to eliminating persistent landmines of all types from its arsenal.

International criticism of US human rights violations

The international human rights organizations Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch identify and criticize human rights violations by the United States as follows:

Children's Rights, including the commitment of 2,225 children to prison for life without parole, and the practice of detaining children prisoners with adults, rape, etc..[1]
Death Penalty, as a violation of fundamental human rights against torture and other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment [2]
Torture, Secret prisons and torture[3], etc..
Discrimination against Gays and Lesbians, including unequal access to marriage, discrimination, etc.. [4]
Immigration/Treatment of Non-Citizens, including human rights violations of rights to due process, unfair detention, etc.. [5]
Workers Rights, denial of the human right to organize, right of association, etc.. [6]
Police Brutality, failures to hold police accountable for abusive acts, etc.. [7]
Prison Conditions, inhumane medical care[8], torture [9], prison rape [10][11], etc..
Justice and Sentencing, disproportional sentences for drug laws, etc.. [12]
Racial Persecution /Discrimination, arbitrary racially based arrests[13], racial disparity in sentencing laws [14], racial disparity in voting laws[15], etc..
Women's Rights, Human trafficing and slavery [16], prison rape[17], etc..

Indefinite detainment and torture of "illegal combatants"

Recently, the United States has been the subject of severe international criticism for the establishment of secret prisons and the indefinite detainment and mistreatment of "illegal combatants" at military prisons such as Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib.

Restrictions on civil liberties

In the early 21st century, following the September 11, 2001 attacks and the ensuing War on Terror, issues regarding alleged intrusions upon privacy, invasive inspections, detentions under the USA PATRIOT Act, and alleged restrictions on freedom of expression are currently heavily debated issues. Opponents see them as suppression of human rights and democracy whereas supporters do not see them as restricting civil rights but they see them as not only necessary actions for ensuring national security but for protecting civil rights and democracy.