Abstract

The reality, however, is very different. Power is increasingly concentrated in unaccountable institutions, and the rich and powerful are no more willing to submit themselves to market disciplines or popular pressures than they ever have been in the past. Let's begin with human rights, because they are the easiest place to start: they are actually codified in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, passed unanimously by the United Nations General Assembly in December 1948. In the United States, there has been a good deal of very impressive rhetoric about how we stand for the Universal Declaration, and how we defend the principle of universality against backward, third-world peoples who plead cultural relativism.