Samuel Moyn: The Rights of Man Return
[Samuel Moyn, who teaches European history at Columbia University, is author of The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History (Harvard, 2010).]
WHEN EGYPTIANS entered the streets, Barack Obama began to flirt with a shift in a long-standing American policy, before events overtook him and forced his hand.
Nearly two years ago, revolts had broken out after a stolen election in Iran, but Obama didn’t claim “human rights” were being violated. Instead, he said that while the United States could not interfere, it “bore witness” to the Iranian insurgents and the repression they might face.
In fact, as several observers have noted, all through his presidency Obama had soft-pedaled the common American notion that U.S. interests and humanity’s aspirations coincide. And no wonder, given the global consensus that Obama’s predecessor had confused the two, especially after the failure to find weapons of mass destruction led George W. Bush to prioritize the goal of democracy and the “freedom agenda” as a rationale for war.
But when it came to Egypt, Obama turned the page. He clearly announced: “The universal rights of the Egyptian people must be respected, and their aspirations must be met.”
Because he came to link himself with a thirty-year wave of international human rights, Obama’s message—like the Tunisian, Egyptian, and now Libyan events themselves—has so far been interpreted in ways that fit recent historical parallels. Neoconservatives have already begun to claim that Bush was right; the Middle Eastern earthquake, they say, vindicates their view that democracy defined and shepherded by the West, if necessary at gunpoint, is how the end of history comes about. Liberals respond that it only shows the need for a multilateral and internationalist renaissance of human rights, after Bush’s betrayal of the idea....
Read entire article at Dissent Magazine
WHEN EGYPTIANS entered the streets, Barack Obama began to flirt with a shift in a long-standing American policy, before events overtook him and forced his hand.
Nearly two years ago, revolts had broken out after a stolen election in Iran, but Obama didn’t claim “human rights” were being violated. Instead, he said that while the United States could not interfere, it “bore witness” to the Iranian insurgents and the repression they might face.
In fact, as several observers have noted, all through his presidency Obama had soft-pedaled the common American notion that U.S. interests and humanity’s aspirations coincide. And no wonder, given the global consensus that Obama’s predecessor had confused the two, especially after the failure to find weapons of mass destruction led George W. Bush to prioritize the goal of democracy and the “freedom agenda” as a rationale for war.
But when it came to Egypt, Obama turned the page. He clearly announced: “The universal rights of the Egyptian people must be respected, and their aspirations must be met.”
Because he came to link himself with a thirty-year wave of international human rights, Obama’s message—like the Tunisian, Egyptian, and now Libyan events themselves—has so far been interpreted in ways that fit recent historical parallels. Neoconservatives have already begun to claim that Bush was right; the Middle Eastern earthquake, they say, vindicates their view that democracy defined and shepherded by the West, if necessary at gunpoint, is how the end of history comes about. Liberals respond that it only shows the need for a multilateral and internationalist renaissance of human rights, after Bush’s betrayal of the idea....