"The Last Utopia": How we invented "human rights" by Adam Kirsch, Barnes & Noble Review

It's strange to think of human rights as having a history, much less a controversial one. Could anyone but a monster deny that every person has a right to be free and equal, to be protected against torture and censorship, to have enough to eat? Our reverence for human rights is so instinctive that, in the 21st century, whenever we see a gross injustice being committed, the most powerful objection we know how to raise is that someone's human rights are being violated -- whether it is Iraqis tortured at Abu Ghraib or women sentenced to stoning in Iran. And a whole powerful infrastructure has grown up to protect these rights, from the International Criminal Court to nongovernmental organizations like Human Rights Watch, which just received a $100 million donation from George Soros.

Read the full Salon.com story here. See also: Last Exit to Utopia: The Survival of Socialism in a Post-Soviet Era