Critical Response
: Critical response 1
In the ‘Great Human-Rights Reversal; The Democratic left has conceded human rights to the conservatives’ , a Wall Street Journal of 10 May 2012, the author Daniel Henninger states that the human-rights agenda has downgraded since Barack Obama became president of the U.S. Henniger initiates that human-rights issues fade away from the political left into ‘its home’ on the right, to the neoconservatives and the evangelical Christian activists. According to the author, the administration of Mr. Obama have responded in a contradictory way in situations like Libya and Iran. But is that really the case, or is Mr. Obama taking the stability of the international community into account?
According to Henninger, the new direction of human-rights issues under the presidency of Mr. Obama became clear when Hilary Clinton announced that "Our pressing on those issues [human rights] can't interfere with the global economic crisis, the global climate change crisis and the security crisis." This indicates that the author thinks that since than human-rights issues became less important for the U.S. Another example the author uses to criticize the left policy on human rights is to go back to the roots of human-rights policy. Human rights became an important foreign policy of the U.S. under the presidency of Jimmy Carter. Mr. Carter officially placed human rights on the formal agenda, and later on Christian evangelical groups successfully continued this policy. Furthermore the author initiates that since the presidency of George Bush the neoconservatives and religious human-rights groups took care of human-rights issues, while the left was opposing. The problem of the democratic left, is according to Henninger, that it’s interests are local and biased. This reduces the credibility of the U.S. as a world leader.
However the author does not show any opposing points to clarify his arguments. For example the statement of Hilary Clinton seems realistic. Why would one
In the ‘Great Human-Rights Reversal; The Democratic left has conceded human rights to the conservatives’ , a Wall Street Journal of 10 May 2012, the author Daniel Henninger states that the human-rights agenda has downgraded since Barack Obama became president of the U.S. Henniger initiates that human-rights issues fade away from the political left into ‘its home’ on the right, to the neoconservatives and the evangelical Christian activists. According to the author, the administration of Mr. Obama have responded in a contradictory way in situations like Libya and Iran. But is that really the case, or is Mr. Obama taking the stability of the international community into account?
According to Henninger, the new direction of human-rights issues under the presidency of Mr. Obama became clear when Hilary Clinton announced that "Our pressing on those issues [human rights] can't interfere with the global economic crisis, the global climate change crisis and the security crisis." This indicates that the author thinks that since than human-rights issues became less important for the U.S. Another example the author uses to criticize the left policy on human rights is to go back to the roots of human-rights policy. Human rights became an important foreign policy of the U.S. under the presidency of Jimmy Carter. Mr. Carter officially placed human rights on the formal agenda, and later on Christian evangelical groups successfully continued this policy. Furthermore the author initiates that since the presidency of George Bush the neoconservatives and religious human-rights groups took care of human-rights issues, while the left was opposing. The problem of the democratic left, is according to Henninger, that it’s interests are local and biased. This reduces the credibility of the U.S. as a world leader.
However the author does not show any opposing points to clarify his arguments. For example the statement of Hilary Clinton seems realistic. Why would one