cover image Reclaiming American Virtue: The Human Rights Revolution of the 1970s

Reclaiming American Virtue: The Human Rights Revolution of the 1970s

Barbara J. Keys. Harvard Univ., $29.95 (368p) ISBN 978-0-674-72485-3

This timely, well-reasoned study demonstrates why Americans from across the political spectrum embraced international human rights as a foreign policy goal. Historian Keys (Globalizing Sport) argues that timing was everything; Americans needed a way to move beyond the drama and the trauma of the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War, and Watergate. The promotion of human rights provided a moral, idealistic way for Americans to accomplish something positive in the world while making them feel good in the process. The 1976 presidential campaign publicly foregrounded the issue; the victor, Jimmy Carter, had insisted on making human rights a core component of his foreign policy agenda. But years before, liberal Democratic congressman Donald Fraser had been working to promote the idea that the way a government treated its citizens was more important than whether or not that government was communist. The U.S., he believed, should help other countries achieve democracy by establishing governments that acknowledge human rights. During the early 1970s, conservative Sen. Henry Jackson, a staunch anticommunist, also supported human rights as a way of destabilizing the Soviet regime. Unfortunately, for all the important ideas and background Keys offers, her book lacks an engaging narrative thread to sustain the interest of nonacademic readers. (Feb.)