But "Human Rights" are not intended to be "nice things that we could and should have in the current American society". They are intended to be the Universal Hum

But "Human Rights" are not intended to be "nice things that we could and should have in the current American society". They are intended to be the Universal Human Rights, valid everywhere and all the times. They logically pre-exist before any government, because they are the moral foundation on which you are entitled to resist/overthrow by force a government that violate the Human Rights of his citizens. If you say for example that free access to education is an Human Right and your government must provide it, you are not merely stating "free access to education is very important, and is a deal breaker when it comes to election". It’s saying that should your government fail to provide free education, that is a casus belli between the government and the citizens, and that you have the right and the duty of insurrection to fix the situation as soon as possible. Human Rights are a kind of schelling points where we agree that "those roles are so Universal that as soon as we recognize a violation of them, we instantly recognize who is the Bad Guy (the one who is violating them) and who is the Good Guy and (the one who is denied his basic human rights) and EVERYTHING GOES to fix the situation". If you have to put a bullet in the head of the Bad Guy, so be it. If you say that "Housing is a Human Right", you are instantly obligated to donate all of your disposable income as soon as you encounter one homeless. If you don’t, well, any bystander is justified in taking it from you, by force if necessary. By putting everything that sounds nice in "Human Rights", you cheapen the term. Let’s say that in 20 years Human Rights really means exactly that : housing, basic income, internet access, and so on. In the mind of everyone, Human Right violation is no big deal, like someone not having internet access. Then how do you communicate the horrors of innocent citizens getting arrested, tortured and murdered ? Are you really going to put those two realities in the same term, "Human Rights Violation" ?