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Pompeo Decries Proliferation of ‘Human Rights’ Claims in Speech

Pompeo Decries Proliferation of ‘Human Rights’ in Kansas Speech

(Bloomberg) -- Secretary of State Michael Pompeo criticized what he called the dilution of core human rights for the sake of political “pet causes,” in a speech in his home state of Kansas that will appeal to conservative voters whose support he’ll need if he decides to run for the Senate in 2020.

Politicians have “from time to time have framed pet causes as fights for rights to bypass the normal process by which political ends are achieved,” Pompeo said Friday at Kansas State University. “This is an imperfect analogy, but the thirteenth ice cream cone isn’t as good as the first one was. And with respect to unalienable rights, more, per se, is not always better.”

The speech, given as part of the Landon Lecture Series, hit a theme Pompeo has made a centerpiece of his time as America’s top diplomat -- that certain “unalienable rights” such as life, liberty and religious freedom, have been diluted by political interest groups at home and corrupt regimes overseas.

State Department officials have repeatedly declined to spell out publicly which rights Pompeo believes are superfluous, denying claims by critics that his focus is an attempt to curtail rights that Pompeo has spoken out against before, such as same-sex marriage and abortion.

But they have suggested that in a government with limited resources, officials ought to spend less time on issues such as biodiversity or clean water and more on core rights enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. He’s also established a commission to study the issue that’s being led by Mary Ann Glendon, a Harvard University professor who has previously argued that advocates of same-sex marriage are seeking “special preferences” accorded to married men and women.

Supporters of gay rights were dismayed in June when Pompeo declined to distribute a diplomatic cable to embassies around the world instructing them on how to celebrate Gay Pride Month, a routine practice from years past. He also reversed past policy allowing embassies globally to fly the gay pride rainbow flag from the same flagpole as the Stars and Stripes.

His focus on limited rights could find a receptive audience in Kansas, a politically conservative state where Pompeo served as a congressman and where he’s weighing a run for an open U.S. Senate seat in 2020. Kansas last elected a Democrat to the Senate in 1932, and national Republican leaders have repeatedly urged Pompeo to run.

‘I’m Flattered’

Pompeo has gone back and forth on whether he will enter the race, saying at one point that the idea was off the table but later declining to rule it out. In a radio interview on Friday morning in Kansas, Pompeo said he was focused on his job and wouldn’t directly address the rumors.

“I’m serving America and working on President Trump’s team to deliver America’s foreign policy,” Pompeo said on Wichita’s KNSS radio.“That’s what I’m focused on. I do see the noise. I’m flattered when people say ‘Mike will be a good United States senator representing Kansas.’”

During his stop in the Sunflower State, Pompeo also repeated a past theme that has struck some of his critics as unduly political for a purportedly nonpartisan diplomat -- that former President Barack Obama sacrificed what Pompeo has called the “American creed” for the sake of global interests.

“When we came into office, you’ll recall the previous administration had a very different approach to foreign policy,” Pompeo told KMAN radio. “They called it ‘leading from behind.’ They, too often, apologized for America, and our team will never do that.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Nick Wadhams in Washington at nwadhams@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Bill Faries at wfaries@bloomberg.net, Larry Liebert

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