Could we all just calm down a little bit with the rhetoric? The United States has serious and growing problems around its global support for human rights. The

Could we all just calm down a little bit with the rhetoric? The United States has serious and growing problems around its global support for human rights. The domestic policies it exhibits mirror that; there are clearly long-term problems that are deeply worrying. But support for human rights is not a binary state. The United States has the rule of law, freedom of speech and religion, a functioning judicial system, and an army of human rights specialists who operate freely. It supports many of these initiatives in other countries, both as a society and a government. The fact that the country does many awful things does not mean that other countries should have a free pass to implement arbitrary policies free of criticism. No country in the world has a perfect record of protecting human rights, but that should not prevent them calling for change elsewhere. I hope deeply that the US fixes its problems soon, but that does not stop me from being aware that organ harvesting and political assassinations are also bad.