While at the United Nations in 2000, a European delegate concluded an interview with the comment that America's refusal to ratify the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) was an "unenlightened diplomatic decision."  We should stick to that decision.

President Bill Clinton signed the invasive treaty in 1995, but the Senate indicated that they would reject it.  Now, Senator Barbara Boxer, California Democrat, decries our national "humiliation" as a non-signatory to the treaty. Ms. Boxer, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has urged the Obama administration to push for ratification. If ratified, the CRC would require Congress to make sweeping new domestic laws to comply with the treaty's provisions. Ms. Boxer is willing to submit our families to the power of the U.N. so that no American child is subject to "arbitrary or unlawful interference with his or her privacy."   And who is it that will interfere with a child's privacy?  His own mother and father who may prohibit his association with a gang, or “force” her to attend a private school.

According to the CRC, the child, age 0-17, is the subject of his own rights, including "freedom of expression,” "freedom of thought, conscience and religion” and "rights to association.” In contrast, U.S. law views a child's rights as held in guardianship by parents until his maturity. The U. N. treaty employs redefined phrases such as "evolving capacities of the child" to determine when a child can protest parental decisions. But, "evolving" according to whom? The implementation manual is clear: “[The Committee] wishes to recall its view that the rights and prerogatives of the parents may not undermine the rights of the child /as recognized by the Convention...”

Only the United States and Somalia have declined to ratify the CRC treaty. This diplomatic "embarrassment" is dragged across the table in order to prevent a meaningful discussion of the dangers that this treaty poses to American sovereignty and American families. The treaty wedges U.N. committees between parents and children.  It subjects our families to unelected, unaccountable foreign investigators without the shield of U.S. law.  Provisions in the implementation manual for the CRC direct nations to set up offices in cities so that children may bring complaints to be investigated.  Corporal punishment is prohibited. Where a 13-year-old disputes her parent's decisions on education and health care, the CRC can subject that family to the local U.N. committee's review. The treaty directs nations to set up legal structures to monitor compliance and to adjust curriculum for children to reflect the treaty's provisions. In Britain, home-schooling curriculum has been challenged by the CRC monitoring body.

The rub, of course, is that the treaty does address the rights of the world's most oppressed children. Images of 10-year-olds toting rifles or thin ragged girls in sweat shops are the wrenching visions invoked by politicians who push for passage of the CRC. But grievous abuses such as these cannot be used against U.S. families. (For the record, the United States has signed the separate codicils on child soldiers and child prostitution.)  A point rarely made in any discussion of the CRC is that some signatory nations plastered white-out on all CRC provisions that conflicted with Sharia Law. It is still legal to throw acid in the face of a girl who offends a male or to stone a 14-year-old child to death in Afghanistan. Other nations continue to violate child labor laws. There is no expectation that ratification of the treaty by the United States will cause nations in violation to suddenly comply. This raises the question: If U.S. law already protects American children, what reason is there for the United States to ratify the Convention on the Rights of the Child?

American ratification of the treaty will do nothing to insure that Thai children are not sold into sex-slavery. But U.S. ratification does separate American children from their own culture. The U.N.'s International Baccalaureate program is used in more than 1000 U.S. schools. The director of the Program, George Walker, wrote, "The program remains committed to changing children's values so they think globally, rather than in parochial national terms from their own country's viewpoint."  Our children are being conditioned to view the U.N. as an authority superior to their own nation— the child is encouraged to see himself as a free-standing bearer of rights guaranteed by the U.N.  In short, the CRC is not needed to protect American children from the ravages of child labor. It is needed to divide children from their parent's moral values and their national culture. Those who yearn for a universal standard of citizenship view the CRC as early training in the supremacy of a global institution over national sovereignty. Critics of the treaty also point out that it cements government control and socialism in U.S. law, ensuring that a particular vision is sustained regardless of which party enjoys political power.

So dire is the new threat of the U.S. ratification of the CRC that Senator Jim DeMint, South Carolina Republican has introduced Senate Joint Resolution 16, a Parental Rights Amendment. Mr. DeMint explains, "As we look at where this country is going, particularly more association with the United Nations and [in view of] the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, these treaties would supersede all the laws in 50 states."  The Joint Resolution is an explicit guard for the rights of parents in the Constitution. The complementary legislation is House Joint Resolution 42, introduced by Republican Congressman Pete Hoekstra of Michigan. The legislation seeks to protect states' rights from international law and treaties.

This is legislation that both sides of the aisle should support.