If The Shoe Fits

The United States will withdraw from the 47-member United Nations Human Rights Council.  There are several reasons cited for this withdrawal according to U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley:  the Council’s “chronic bias against Israel,” its “hypocritical and self-serving” attitude and its unwillingness to make “essential reforms.” "For too long, the Human Rights Council has been a protector of human rights abusers, and a cesspool of political bias," Haley said, and added that the "essential reforms" that would have ensured continued U.S. participation had not been achieved. 

It should be noted, too, that the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights recently rebuked the Trump Administration’s “Zero-Tolerance” policy which has led to the separation of some 2000-plus children from their immigrant parents at U.S. borders.  Haley fired back at this rebuke by saying, “Once again, the United Nations shows its hypocrisy by calling out the United States while it ignores the reprehensible human rights records of several members of its own Human Rights Council….While the High Commissioner’s office ignorantly attacks the United States with words, the United States leads the world with its actions, like providing more humanitarian assistance to global conflicts than any other nation….We will remain a generous country, but we are a sovereign country, with laws that decide how best to control our borders and protect our people.  Neither the United Nations nor anyone else will dictate how the United States upholds its borders.”

It hurts when “the shoe is on the other foot.”  Usually it is the United States making broad and sweeping condemnations of human rights abuses in other nations.  Apparently the U.S. has the right to make these statements because of  “our generosity”  and by “providing more humanitarian assistance to global conflicts than any other nation.”  But no other nation or group of nations dare mention our own human rights abuses!  We “do our own thing” as a sovereign nation and “neither the United Nations or anyone else will dictate how the United States upholds its borders.”  

Hypocrisy means “the practice of claiming to have moral standards or beliefs to which one’s own behavior does not conform.”  It is a common practice (and no one is immune) among individuals, groups and nations.  It makes us think it is okay for us to throw the first stone at others caught in bad behavior—but it is not okay for anyone else to throw stones at us.  It hurts when “the shoe is on the other foot,” especially when the shoe fits!