Reclaiming American VirtueThe American commitment to promoting human rights abroad emerged in the 1970s as a surprising response to national trauma. In this provocative history, Barbara Keys situates this novel enthusiasm as a reaction to the profound challenge of the Vietnam War and its aftermath. Instead of looking inward for renewal, Americans on the right and the left looked outward for ways to restore America's moral leadership. Conservatives took up the language of Soviet dissidents to resuscitate the Cold War, while liberals sought to dissociate from brutally repressive allies like Chile and South Korea. When Jimmy Carter in 1977 made human rights a central tenet of American foreign policy, his administration struggled to reconcile these conflicting visions. Yet liberals and conservatives both saw human rights as a way of moving from guilt to pride. Less a critique of American power than a rehabilitation of it, human rights functioned for Americans as a sleight of hand that occluded from view much of America's recent past and confined the lessons of Vietnam to narrow parameters. From world's judge to world's policeman was a small step, and American intervention in the name of human rights would be a cause both liberals and conservatives could embrace. |
Contents
| 1 | |
| 15 | |
2 Managing Civil Rights at Home | 32 |
3 The Trauma of the Vietnam War | 48 |
4 The Liberal Critique of RightWing Dictatorships | 75 |
5 The Anticommunist Embrace of Human Rights | 103 |
6 A New Calculus Emerges | 127 |
7 Insurgency on Capitol Hill | 153 |
9 A Moralist Campaigns for President | 214 |
10 We Want to Be Proud Again | 242 |
Universal Human Rights in American Foreign Policy | 269 |
Abbreviations | 279 |
Notes | 283 |
Bibliographical Essay | 339 |
Acknowledgments | 347 |
| 351 | |
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Abourezk abuses activists Ad Hoc Records administration Africa amendment Amnesty International Amnesty's anticommunism antiwar appeal Benenson Bricker Amendment Brzezinski campaign Chile civil rights Cold War Committee Cong Congress congressional critics December democracy Democratic détente dictatorships dissidents draft economic efforts emigration Ford foreign aid Fraser Papers freedom George McGovern Ginetta Sagan global Greece groups hearings Helsinki Accords human rights movement Human Rights Policy human rights promotion international human rights issue Jackson January Jewish Jimmy Carter junta Kissinger Kissinger's Latin America liberal human rights Library lobbying Lyons McGovern Memo military moral Morris Papers Moynihan neoconservative Nixon October organization peace political prisoners president presidential Quoted regime reports repression role Salzberg Senate September Solzhenitsyn South Vietnam Soviet Jews Soviet Union speech tion Title IX torture U.S. foreign policy UDHR United Nations universal human rights University Press Vietnam War Vietnamese violations Washington York