A few miles up the road from Ground Zero, the Obama administration recently submitted its account of the United States human rights record to the United Nations Human Rights Council. The administration’s report, the first ever submitted by this nation to that body (whose members include Libya and Cuba), was succinctly summarized by identical Washington Post and CBS News headlines:  “US admits human rights shortcomings in UN report.”

It’s certainly telling that the Obama administration chose to issue condemnations of America’s sins — alleged or otherwise, past or present — and to submit these to the UN. But even more illuminating is what the administration chose to omit in its report. In a 29-page overview of the respect (or lack thereof) for rights shown in America and throughout American history, the administration couldn’t find space for a single meaningful reference to the document that lays out and informs our fundamental conceptions of rights more than any other: the Declaration of Independence. This omission offers further compelling evidence to support an increasingly obvious truth: President Obama doesn’t take seriously the ideals of the American revolutionary period. Or, to state it more exactly, he takes very seriously the project of overcoming or supplanting those ideals.