For decades, Democrats and progressives have sought to claim human rights as their own. They depicted conservatives as Cold War-obsessed, uninterested in either freedom or democracy. For many liberals, the Cuban Revolution was about human rights. So too were the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. Every Latin American dictator was a Republican friend; every revolutionary was an inspiration for change.Too often, conservatives refused to engage. That ended when President Ronald Reagan appointed Elliott Abrams and Paul Wolfowitz, respectively, to the Latin America and East Asia bureaus at the State Department. Both took on leftist groups that used the language of progressivism but sought autocracy. Both tied liberty to economic freedom. And, under the tenures of both, tens of millions of people won freedom.While groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch increasingly place subjective partisanship above objective principle, and while the Southern Poverty Law Center allegedly crossed the line into illegality with dirty tricks against mainstream conservative groups, many conservatives proudly advocated for individual liberty, freedom, and human flourishing.
Increasingly, however, Republicans are pivoting away from any interest in such core human rights principles. The problem is not just the Trump administration. Donald Trump was at one time a Democrat, and he switched parties because he saw an opportunity to hijack the party’s mechanism. In reality, he does not adhere to either party’s traditional ideology. Short-term strategic and economic gaming dominates Trump’s transactional approach. But in Congress, too, there is broad silence aside from isolated outposts such as the bipartisan Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission. The value of think tanks is in their insulation from short-term politics. Increasingly, however, right-of-center think tanks have largely abandoned human rights advocacy.
