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

Publication Info.

Cambridge, Massachusetts : Harvard University Press, 2014.

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Description	1 online resource (362 pages) : illustrations
Bibliography	Includes bibliographical references and index.
Contents	Introduction: enter human rights --The postwar marginality of universal human rights -- Managing civil rights at home -- The trauma of the Vietnam War -- The liberal critique of right-wing dictatorships -- The anticommunist embrace of human rights -- A new calculus emerges -- Insurgency on Capitol Hill -- The human rights lobby -- A moralist campaigns for president -- "We want to be proud again" -- Conclusion: universal human rights in American foreign policy.
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.
Note	Print version record.
Subject	Human rights -- Government policy -- United States.
	Human rights advocacy -- United States.
	United States -- Foreign relations -- 20th century.
	POLITICAL SCIENCE -- Political Freedom & Security -- Civil Rights.
	POLITICAL SCIENCE -- Political Freedom & Security -- Human Rights.
	POLITICAL SCIENCE -- Human Rights.
	Diplomatic relations. (OCoLC)fst01907412
	Human rights advocacy. (OCoLC)fst00963343
	Human rights -- Government policy. (OCoLC)fst00963297
	United States. (OCoLC)fst01204155
Chronological Term	1900 - 1999
Genre/Form	Electronic books.
	Electronic books.
Other Form:	Print version: Keys, Barbara J. Reclaiming American virtue 9780674724853 (DLC) 2013015286 (OCoLC)840460721
ISBN	9780674726031 (electronic bk.)
	0674726030 (electronic bk.)

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