Reclaiming American virtue : the human rights revolution of the 1970s / Barbara J. Keys.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Keys, Barbara J.

Contributor:

Maryann B. Sudo CW'63 and John B. Baxter, Jr., American History Fund.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Human rights--Government policy--United States.

Human rights.

Human rights--Government policy.

Human rights advocacy.

United States.

Human rights advocacy--United States.

United States--Foreign relations--20th century.

International relations.

Physical Description:

362 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Massachusetts : Harvard University Press, 2014.

Summary:

The American commitment to international human rights emerged in the 1970s not as a logical outgrowth of American idealism but as a surprising response to national trauma, as Barbara Keys shows in this provocative history. Reclaiming American Virtue situates this novel enthusiasm as a reaction to the profound challenge of the Vietnam War and its tumultuous aftermath. Instead of looking inward for renewal, Americans on the right and the left alike looked outward for ways to restore America's moral leadership. Conservatives took up the language of Soviet dissidents to resuscitate a Cold War narrative that pitted a virtuous United States against the evils of communism. Liberals sought moral cleansing by dissociating the United States from foreign malefactors, spotlighting abuses such as torture in Chile, South Korea, and other right-wing allies. 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. It would be a small step from world's judge to world's policeman, and American intervention in the name of human rights would be a cause both liberals and conservatives could embrace.

Contents:

The United States and the birth of universal human rights

Civil rights and universal human rights

Morality and the Vietnam War

Right-wing dictatorships and liberal human rights appeals

Senator Jackson, Soviet Jews, and anticommunist human rights

Turning point: 1973

Kissinger and the origins of human rights diplomacy, 1974/1975

The human rights lobby

Morality and human rights in the 1976 presidential campaign

"We want to be proud again": the Carter years.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Maryann B. Sudo CW'63 and John B. Baxter, Jr., American History Fund.

ISBN:

0674724852

9780674724853

OCLC:

840460721

Publisher Number:

99957564340