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Reclaiming American Virtue: The Human Rights Revolution of the 1970s
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.
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.
- GenresHistoryNonfiction
368 pages, Hardcover
First published February 17, 2014
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
January 3, 2022
An outstanding study that blends political, human rights, and foreign policy history. Keys' argues that the U.S. embrace of human rights as a fundamental, almost untouchable part of its foreign policy and domestic politics came about in the 1970s in large part in reaction to the trauma of Vietnam. Vietnam implanted in liberals/leftists a deep desire to find a way to do good in the world and a deep need to reorient the U.S. global role away from supporting right-wing dictatorships in the Third World to cutting off aid to these nations, publicizing their misdeeds, and taking action to help individual activists in these countries. The HR activism of Amnesty, Donald Fraser, McGovern, and Carter (sort of) signaled a major retraction of liberal ambitions from spreading democracy and "modernizing" societies to simply stopping certain horrific practices like torture or arbitrary imprisonment. This concept of liberal retrenchment is something I've written about in my own stuff, and Keys explains it brilliantly in this book. Carter was the first president to at least try to put human rights at the center of his FP, and even though he didn't really succeed, his presidency plus the activism of many other groups helped instill the concept in the political lexicon and the foreign policy bureaucracy.
Conservatives also embraced human rights in large part because of Vietnam, but their path/reasoning was quite different. Keys mostly focuses on neocons like Scoop Jackson who believed that Vietnam was a justified conflict both strategically and morally but that A. the US had come to be seen as a near pariah in much of the world because of it and B. the US was losing its will to continue the Cold War because of Vietnam and needed to reassure itself of its moral standing and global role. Neocons embraced HR as a cudgel against the USSR and as a means of pushing back (quite rightly, imo) against Third World governments that were blasting the US for its deplorable behavior in Vietnam. They were far less willing to support liberal efforts to cut off aid to allied regimes that abused HR, showing the significant selectivity of their HR embrace. THe big point is that HR had both emotional appeal and political utility across the political spectrum in the US in the 1970s, which helps explain its broader rise in that period.
As innovative as this argument is, Keys' most interesting points are about the history of emotion and the use of words. She shows that human rights had been in the U.S. lexicon for a long time (since the 40s at least), but that even groups like the Civil Rights movement did not primarily frame their activism as part of international human rights (as opposed to domestically derived civil rights). It was Vietnam that generated the cocktail of guilt, shame, wounded pride, resentment, fear of decline, and so on that created political energy for a focus on human rights framed as an international movement. One of the most interesting points in this book is the idea that the turn to human rights prevented a full reckoning with Vietnam. For Carter and many others, as Keys shows, the turn to human rights was a way to reassure Americans that they were good, that Vietnam was an aberration that did not reflect any meaningful trend or trait in the nation, and that they were returning to a long tradition of morality in foreign policy. Keys would probably say that this was an invented tradition. Historians like Rick Perlstein have argued that liberals particularly despised Reagan because his sunny, blithe patriotism cut off a reckoning with America's demons that was going on in the 70s. Keys would come to a more pessimistic conclusion in saying that this reckoning was quite limited and more about rescuing a view of the US as innately good than deeply considering its actions/role in the world.
This book is accessible, well written, interesting, and not too long. I'd say it's a must read for historians of U.S. foreign policy, especially those like me who study the foreign policy/domestic politics realm.
Conservatives also embraced human rights in large part because of Vietnam, but their path/reasoning was quite different. Keys mostly focuses on neocons like Scoop Jackson who believed that Vietnam was a justified conflict both strategically and morally but that A. the US had come to be seen as a near pariah in much of the world because of it and B. the US was losing its will to continue the Cold War because of Vietnam and needed to reassure itself of its moral standing and global role. Neocons embraced HR as a cudgel against the USSR and as a means of pushing back (quite rightly, imo) against Third World governments that were blasting the US for its deplorable behavior in Vietnam. They were far less willing to support liberal efforts to cut off aid to allied regimes that abused HR, showing the significant selectivity of their HR embrace. THe big point is that HR had both emotional appeal and political utility across the political spectrum in the US in the 1970s, which helps explain its broader rise in that period.
As innovative as this argument is, Keys' most interesting points are about the history of emotion and the use of words. She shows that human rights had been in the U.S. lexicon for a long time (since the 40s at least), but that even groups like the Civil Rights movement did not primarily frame their activism as part of international human rights (as opposed to domestically derived civil rights). It was Vietnam that generated the cocktail of guilt, shame, wounded pride, resentment, fear of decline, and so on that created political energy for a focus on human rights framed as an international movement. One of the most interesting points in this book is the idea that the turn to human rights prevented a full reckoning with Vietnam. For Carter and many others, as Keys shows, the turn to human rights was a way to reassure Americans that they were good, that Vietnam was an aberration that did not reflect any meaningful trend or trait in the nation, and that they were returning to a long tradition of morality in foreign policy. Keys would probably say that this was an invented tradition. Historians like Rick Perlstein have argued that liberals particularly despised Reagan because his sunny, blithe patriotism cut off a reckoning with America's demons that was going on in the 70s. Keys would come to a more pessimistic conclusion in saying that this reckoning was quite limited and more about rescuing a view of the US as innately good than deeply considering its actions/role in the world.
This book is accessible, well written, interesting, and not too long. I'd say it's a must read for historians of U.S. foreign policy, especially those like me who study the foreign policy/domestic politics realm.
January 4, 2026
Dust jacket hardcover
It talks about the rise of the human rights movement, its effects ơn the Vietnam war, American influence for human rights during thể Greek junta period, pressure for human rights within the Soviet Union, and the backlash against detente and maintaining the alliance structure if it meant associating with dictators
It talks about the rise of the human rights movement, its effects ơn the Vietnam war, American influence for human rights during thể Greek junta period, pressure for human rights within the Soviet Union, and the backlash against detente and maintaining the alliance structure if it meant associating with dictators
September 25, 2020
Reading 3x for class. Still great
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews