Secretary of State Mike Pompeo created a Commission on Unalienable Rights last summer. The idea was to solicit advice from academics, philosophers, and activists about how the United States should approach advancing human rights in a way that is grounded in the founding documents of the nation as well as the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

This Thursday, the commission released a draft report. It could not have been more timely, for it comes during a period in which protests and riots have broken out across the nation that challenge the very idea that America’s founding was a good thing. In the upside-down view of history, instead of seeing this nation’s founding as something to celebrate, demonstrators see America as evil from its outset.