Remarks By John McCain on His Vision for Defending the Freedom and Dignity of the World's Vulnerable

U.S. Senator John McCain delivered the following remarks as prepared
for delivery at Oakland University, in Rochester, MI, recently.

Last year the world celebrated the 200th anniversary of the abolition
of the British and American slave trade in 1807. Nearly fifty-six
years would pass before Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation
Proclamation, signaling the end of slavery in the United States.

But the achievement of both countries in terminating the international
slave trade and setting into motion the titanic and bloody struggle to
close a shameful chapter in the history of our country should be
remembered as a turning point in mankind's long and fitful progress
toward a more just world.

William Wilberforce had struggled for years in the British parliament
to strike the lethal blow against the abominable institution that had
scarred Western civilization for centuries. He was a humble Christian
man, powerfully motivated by his faith, whose example instructs every
person born in freedom that we have a moral obligation not to turn a
blind eye to assaults on the collective dignity of humanity wherever
they occur.

There is a tendency in our age to accede to the spurious excuse of
moral relativism and turn away from the harshest examples of man's
inhumanity to man; to ignore the darker side of human nature that
encroaches upon our decency by subtle degree. There are many reasons
for this.

Blessed with opportunity, and intent on the challenges of work and
family, our own lives often seem too full and hectic to take notice of
offenses that seem distant from our own reality. There is also the
threat in a society passionate about its liberty that we can become
desensitized to the dehumanizing effect of the obscenity and hostility
that pervades much of popular culture.

It is in our nature as Americans to see the good in things; to face
even serious adversity with hope and optimism. And yet, with so much
good in the world, for all the progress of humanity, in which our
nation has played such an admirable and important role, evil still
exists in the world.

It preys upon human dignity, assaults the innocence of children,
debases our self- respect and the respect we are morally obliged to
pay each other, and assails the great, animating truths we believe to
be self-evident – that all people have a right to life, liberty and
the pursuit of happiness -- by subjecting countless human beings to
abuse, persecution and even slavery.

Confronting evil has never been easy – in our age or any other. But
the failure to do so affects even those who are complacent with our
own blessings and secure in our human rights. Accepting the
degradation of values we believe are universal is to relinquish some
of our own humanity.

America was founded on the belief in the inherent dignity of all human
life and that this dignity can only be preserved through shared
respect and shared responsibility. We can retain our own freedom when
others are robbed of theirs, but not the sense of virtue that made our
revolution a moral as well as political crusade, and which recognizes
that personal happiness is so much more than pleasure, and requires us
to serve causes greater than self-interest.

There is no right more fundamental to a free society than the free
practice of religion. Behind walls of prisons and persecuted before
our very eyes in places like China, Iran, Burma, Sudan, North Korea
and Saudi Arabia are tens-of-thousands of people whose only crime is
to worship God in their own way. No society that denies religious
freedom can ever rightly claim to be good in some other way.

And no person can ever be true to any faith that believes in the
dignity of all human life if they do not act out of concern for those
whose dignity is assailed because of their faith. As President, I
intend to make religious freedom a subject of great importance for the
United States in our relations with other nations.

I will work in close concert with democratic allies to raise the
prominence of religious freedom in every available forum. Whether in
bilateral negotiations, or in various multi-national organizations to
which America belongs, I will make respect for the basic principle of
religious freedom a priority in international relations.

There is another form of human oppression that persists in the world
today that demands our urgent attention and should sting the
conscience of every good person. Inexcusably, it is a crime that,
while prevalent elsewhere, exists within our own borders as well.
Human trafficking – slavery, by another name – exists not just in
places like Thailand, Kuwait and Venezuela.

It is a serious problem here in the United States. It is a tragic
reality that, two hundred years after Wilberforce won his battle to
end the slave trade between Britain and the United States, and nearly
150 years after our nation ended the institution here, the practice
still thrives in the dark corners of our society.

Most of the victims of human trafficking in the United States and in
most other places in the world are the most vulnerable among us,
destitute women and children who are sold into bondage as sex slaves.
A 2004 State Department report concludes that of the estimated 600,000
to 800,000 men, women, and children transported across international
borders each year, approximately 80 percent are women and girls, and
up to 50 percent are minors.

The State Department estimates that between 15,000 and 18,000 human
slaves are brought into the United States, many of whom are forced
into the sex trade every year.

While the past few years have seen increased efforts on the part of
the State and Justice Departments and the FBI to combat the human
slave trade, we must do more.

As President, I'll increase cooperation and communication between all
agencies of the federal government by establishing an Inter-Agency
Task Force on Human Trafficking, whose purpose will be to focus
exclusively on the prosecution of human traffickers and the rescue of
their victims.

The Task Force will strengthen cooperation between federal officials,
state and local law enforcement and prosecutors to ensure that
jurisdictional issues are not a barrier to success, and that we have a
coordinated international response to this scourge. I will require the
Task Force agencies to report directly to me on the status of the
problem and the progress we are making to defeat this stain on the
reputation and character of the United States.

And we will take care to show compassion for victims of this
despicable crime against humanity by making sure shelter, counseling
and legal assistance is available and accessible to them.

We must also do more to ensure governments that tolerate human
trafficking crack down on this modern form of slavery. We can support
efforts to change the economic incentives and do more to aid the
victims.

But we must view this evil form of twenty-first century slavery every
bit as important as drug trafficking. All too often the same criminal
networks that trade in fourteen-year-old girls also trade in
narcotics--and even in materials that can be used by terrorists.
Identifying and destroying criminal networks that evade national
boundaries is also a matter of our national security.

It is also the appropriate concern of a nation conceived in liberty,
and dedicated to the proposition that all people are equal, to
encourage and coax other cultures into abandoning practices that
afflict the happiness and health of women and children, whether they
be practices that mutilate their bodies or impose on them marriage
before their maturity and without their informed consent.

I would insist that our diplomacy actively raise and discourage in our
relationships with other countries customs that so degrade and
physically threaten people, and explain that the full benefits of
friendship with the United States are predicated on a shared respect
for the basic right of women and children not to suffer atrocities to
their physical and emotional health to protect traditions that should
have been ended long ago.

While the Internet has brought many benefits to our society in the
form of economic and educational opportunities, political organization
and the free exchange of ideas, information and knowledge, there are
those who exploit the very pervasiveness and anonymity the medium
provides to trade to prey upon our children.

I respect those who are advocates for an unregulated Internet in
defense of freedom of expression. However, the Internet cannot be used
as a safe haven for criminals and predators. The home has
traditionally been a safe harbor for families, where children are safe
from the dangers of a world that can sometimes threaten their
innocence. But with the proliferation of Internet access, come those
who would rob them of their innocence through the computers we provide
them to learn, to socialize and to explore the world.

Recent years have seen an explosion both in the proliferation of child
pornography and in child sexual exploitation cases involving the use
of the Internet and email as a means for predators to stalk and lure
children. I have worked aggressively over the years to promote the
safe use of the Internet and to craft legislation designed to ensure
that children are secure as they use this transformative technology.

Child pornography is a terrible crime involving the abuse of children
and the trafficking in images of this abuse. Child exploitation in any
form must be stopped and those responsible must be punished to the
maximum extent of the law. The FBI and Justice Departments, as well as
state and local law enforcement, have worked aggressively in recent
years to arrest and prosecute those who traffic in child pornography
over the Internet, and who prey upon our children on-line or by other
means. Progress has been made.

Just last month, for example, South Carolina's Attorney General Henry
McMaster announced that the state's Internet Crimes Against Children
Task Force had arrested its one hundred and twenty first child
predator.

Aided with funding from the Justice Department, the South Carolina
task force has made significant progress in tracking down, arresting
and prosecuting child predators in South Carolina. Such federal, state
and local cooperation is a model for success that we must build on
because, sadly, across our nation crimes against our children continue
to rise. This is an abomination, and I am firmly resolved to fighting
these crimes with all the means at our country's disposal.

As President, I will move to clear obstacles to cooperation between
federal agencies and their state and local counterparts to ensure
maximum cooperation in the pursuit and prosecution of child
predators.

At the same time, I will elevate the importance of international
cooperation in our relations with other countries to ensure that
criminals who traffic in images of child abuse find no haven or
quarter in other countries.

Today, because of the anonymity and global reach the Internet provides
users, we must adapt our law enforcement efforts accordingly. For
example, companies that provide Internet access and forums for content
and communications also have responsibilities as corporate citizens.

Consequently, I believe we must expand the range of companies required
to report the existence of child pornography when they become aware of
its existence – and impose higher fines and criminal penalties on
companies that do not report child pornography. Furthermore, I believe
those convicted of preying upon our children should not be allowed to
hide behind the anonymity of the Internet, which is why I am pleased
to hear the Justice Department, consistent with legislation I have
been pushing, will soon require convicted sex offenders to register
their e-mail and instant message addresses with the Department's
national registry.

This approach has been endorsed by several social networking websites
which will to use the registry information to "scrub" their sites for
convicted sex offenders, making their sites safer for children.

This registry information can be used by parents to check e-mails and
other information to ensure that persons interacting with their
children are not convicted sex offenders preying on them.

Our nation, whose founders sacrificed for the belief that we would be
an example to the world, has long appreciated that our freedom confers
responsibilities on us all, and among them, is our respect for the
freedom of others.

Ours is not a perfect history. But it is a history distinguished by
our pursuit of this ideal. We have always been a country of hope and
of ideals, even of audacity in our belief that all good things are
possible here and wherever the Rights of Man are respected.

As we pursue greater individual freedom and economic opportunity, as
we take advantage of new technologies and explore a world more
accessible to more people than ever before, we must be diligent in our
support of those rights, and in our active opposition to the enemies
of human dignity in our own society and in all the dark corners of the
world.

We must remember that our freedoms are not only defended by our
diplomacy and military power but, very importantly, by the decency and
respect with which we treat one another, and by our belief that as we
our dignity is entitled to respect so are we obliged to respect and
defend the dignity of others.

Ours is a nation with a conscience, and thank God we are. As William
Wilberforce said so many years ago, "When we think of eternity, and of
the future consequences of all human conduct, what is there in this
life that should make any man contradict the dictates of his
conscience, the principles of justice, the laws of religion, and of
God?"

Thank you.
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