ABSTRACT
Contrary to the religious rhetoric, human rights rhetoric attributes this decline in children's well-being to macro causes increasing economic polarization, slashed social safety nets, globalization, and the mobility of capital which strain families and fall particularly hard on the most vulnerable, including children. It provides a historical overview of the human rights campaign in the United States after World War II, a campaign that provided crucial sustenance to the nascent civil rights struggle in this country. The chapter focuses on the differences between the two struggles, particularly honing in on the emergence of an activist religious right as a major player in the current struggle and the way that the religious right has transformed the domestic political landscape. It also explains the growing political power of the religious right, supported explicitly by the Bush Administration, is a key distinction between the human rights struggle then and the children's rights struggle now.
