This concluding chapter explains that for Movement advocates, the human rights vision of the 1970s was intimately connected with a reckoning with the U.S. failures of Vietnam, Cold War national security strategy, and, of course, Chile. The Movement and the Carter administration shared a vision of human rights as a way to improve not only the world but also the U.S. government and its policies. This is not to say the Movement's views were universally shared, or that human rights faded away after the 1970s. Rather, human rights continued to serve as an instrument of its time, a powerful idea and language, flexible and indelible. The Carter administration's human rights policy was far from perfect or consistent. It was, however, a uniquely self-reflective policy that restrained U.S. intervention and addressed abuses taking place in areas where the United States was most directly complicit in empowering violators.
