It has been over six decades since the United States closed its borders to international human rights laws and agreements, and, of course, a great deal has happened in those intervening six decades. Most significant is that more of the world s people embrace the language of human rights and articulate their aspirations in those terms. Because the U.S. government arrogantly disregards international human rights treaties, declarations, and conventions, Americans do not. Even when the U.S. has occasionally ratified a human rights treaty, it includes a statement that legally exempts the U.S. from the treaty provisions. The U.S. is not, therefore, a legal party to human rights treaties on civil and political rights, elimination of racial discrimination against racial minorities, and against women, the rights of the child, and the rights of migrant workers. The contributors to this volume are prominent social scientists who take topics that are standard fare in sociology, such as inadequate housing, children living in poverty, and inadequate health care, and instead of dwelling on these as social problems, lay out the case for human rights, that is, for example, housing is a human right, children have the right to economic security, and all people have the right to health care, housing, and so on....

Achieving human rights is an ongoing struggle in fact a collective struggle. Even though the progressive realization of human rights for all depends on international, national, and local laws, human rights are realized on the ground, in praxis and reciprocally, which is to say, in deeply democratic communities and societies. The logic of human rights and the logic of capitalism and profit-making have always been somewhat at odds with one another because self-interest rests somewhat uneasily in the realm of solidarity and collective struggle, but the advent of market fundamentalism in the 1980s put these two logics in dramatic opposition with one another. When Prime Minister Thatcher stated, there is no such thing as society, what she really meant was societies are obstacles to the operation of unencumbered financial, commodity, labor, and land markets. Since the mid-1980s, the world economy has increasingly been dominated by voracious multinationals that exploit workers and the environment and, with the assistance of international agencies, exploit national and local governments. As opposed to the logic of profits, the logic of human rights relies on social solidarity, which is to say, collectively working together to promote human rights. The interesting paradox of human rights is that all humans have equal rights and unique rights. That is they have equal rights to freedom, self-determination, economic and social security, democracy, and peace. Yet all humans have equal rights to their own particular identity, personality, faith, and culture. Of course there are also rights that particular groups have, such as the members of a language community or an indigenous group or people with disabilities. Quite simply enacting human rights ensures our inclusive humanness. Quite possibly people did not fully appreciate the significance of this until the age of globalization....