The Freedom America Forgot
THE UNITED STATES has promoted human rights internationally for decades. But today, at a moment when support for authoritarian leaders who claim to speak for those left behind by globalization is spiking abroad and at home, the U.S. government must rethink those policies. The rise of populism threatens human rights—and the promotion of certain basic rights without a broader effort to combat the inequality that endangers them is shortsighted.
For 40 years, America’s human rights policy has focused narrowly on political and civil liberties and has been coupled with a free market libertarian agenda for the world. By neglecting social and economic rights and the vast disparities both within and among nations, U.S. policy has exacerbated many of the evils it set out to eradicate. It needs an overhaul.
of World War II, and after President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, that Americans first started to think seriously aboutassumed, Americans would have to think boldly about economics, com-also fair distribution of them.
