Inventing Human Rights: A History by Lynn Avery Hunt Reviewed by Gary J. Bass
The New Republic Online
"When Hitler came to devour Czechoslovakia, Neville Chamberlain shrugged it off as just a 'quarrel in a faraway country between people of whom we know nothing.' It was a notorious phrase, but not a careless one. After all, Chamberlain, while himself genuinely knowing little about Czechoslovakia, was a shrewd politician who had become prime minister not least for his skill in aiming his words at British public opinion. Chamberlain must have thought that these words would sell Britons on appeasement: that the remoteness and the obscurity of the Czechs would make it morally and politically acceptable to sacrifice them to Germany. This was the language of moral unconcern, Chamberlain's deliberate attempt to make the fate of the Czechs a matter of indifference to his own people...." Read the entire New Republic Online review.