When Thomas Jefferson declared that we’re all born with unalienable natural rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, little could he have known that more than 200 years hence, another secretary of state (Jefferson later became our first) would create a Commission on Unalienable Rights to provide the secretary with “fresh thinking about human rights” and propose “reforms of human rights discourse where it has departed from our nation’s founding principles of natural law and natural rights.”

The reaction to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s announcement late last month was swift, especially on the Left. Was this move a response to the United Nations’ obsession with so-called economic and social rights — rights to jobs, housing, healthcare, and the like — which dominate international human rights discourse and practice today? Or was this talk of our nation’s founding principles, natural law, and natural rights actually code, signaling that in the future the State Department would focus less on protecting women’s and LGBT rights? Or was it both?