Who discovered human rights, not as a U.S. policy, but as a fundamental aspiration of human beings everywhere, to which all are entitled? If the challenging thrust of President Jimmy Carter's human rights policy is meeting resistance in his own country, is it perhaps because of conveniently comforting doubts about the universality of human rights—for instance, the notion that in too many places on this planet, rights have not yet been “discovered“?

I call this collection of doubts and fears the BHK syndrome, because it is suggested by three principal sources, the first two predictable—William Buckley, Jr., and William Randolph Hearst, Jr.—the third not quite expected—George F. Kennan.

The BHK syndrome would begin by dismissing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948, that inventory of the rights of man that is the total substance of democracy, as a document not quite fully understood by people from its non-Western signatories.

Moonies I met in the Barrytown, New York, seminary of the Unification Church is a young man I will call Tom Kellogg, now in his mid-twenties. We became friends, and it was when I was talking with Tom that the seriousness of this question struck me with great force. Tom comes from one of New York's prominent families; he graduated, first in his class, from one of New England's most prestigious preparatory schools; and he has a baccalaureate degree in biochemistry. Obviously he is a young man who, by all standards of American culture, has a “future“; one would also think Tom would know that he has a past. In short, he “belongs.” For several minutes I ceased being an investigative researcher and became a father, the father of two sons. If Tom Kellogg could become a Moonie, so could my own twelve-year-old preppie! My twenty-year-old son, who is somewhat lonely, living without a systematic ideology and concerned about his vocation, probably is in the ninety-seventh percentile of those who could be persuaded to join one of the religious cults.

After almost two years of the Carter administration the commitment to human rights, which represents a key aspect of its policies, has become a topic for much discussion and interest but seems still to be inadequately understood. The main reason for this failure, I feel, is that very few earnest efforts have been made to determine the actual scope and significance of the administration's approach as it emerges from the way it operates and from the way it developed out of the principles of freedom and morality that have inspired the best traditions and beliefs of the American people.

Long before Mr. Carter announced his candidacy Richard N. Gardner, our present ambassador to Italy, had become one of his closest advisors on foreign affairs, with special regard to human rights. During recent conversations in Rome, Ambassador Gardner recalled that “an active commitment to the promotion of human rights everywhere in the world is not a novel feature in American foreign policy.

It is not without a certain reluctance that I address the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. While flattered and somewhat astonished that you would be interested in the musings of an old Greek whose life's span reaches back over two millennia, I am aware of some enormous difficulties and complexities (aporiae, I used to call them). The nature of modern weaponry, for example, and the extent of its destructive power far outstrip anything we could have imagined. Furthermore, the modern world contrasts so sharply with my times that I wonder if anything I said or could say would be retevant. The Greek city was small—deliberately so, in order to give citizens the opportunity to be involved in its decisions and acts. The most complex nation-state of today makes such participatory democracy almost impossible; hence, the wisdom of the former age shatters against the very size of the modern political entity.

It is unquestionably a rare opportunity that has been given me to comment on developments the world has undergone in almost a century since I was observing it with some regularity. For the sake of perspective I might point out that less than half a century elapsed between the French Revolution and my own university matriculation. I then kept a pretty close watch on the world, particularly the European part of it, for nearly another half-century. And now, suddenly, I am asked to render judgment on what has happened in a period of like duration.

So, despite the extraordinary opportunity that has been vouchsafed me (and it is, of course, quite flattering as well), I cannot pretend to be altogether comfortable with it. To be sure, I was not unfamiliar with the deadlines of either newspapers or creditors, but I think Engels and I were well known to (if not always well loved by) our nineteenth-century associates for the care and thoroughness with which we approached any subject we had to write or speak about.

If we now choose the right road, the poorest countries could become the world's breadbasket

‘he acute food crisis that gripped the world in 1972-74 has visibly subsided. Harvests have been bountiful for two successive years; this year's production, too, definitely looks good, even though it will not match last year's record crop. World output of wheat, coarse grain, and milled rice for 1977-78 is currently estimated at 1,322.5 million metric tons (mmt). This is only 11 mmt short of the total of 1,333.1 mmt harvested in 1976-77. Fate has been kind at our time of direst need.

Food stocks, badly depleted in the crisis years, have been substantially replenished. In the USA storage bins are overflowing with grain—this has depressed farm prices, triggering agitation among farmers, who are faced with plunging profits. Even in India the problem, for a change, is not how to cope with chronic shortages but how to deal with a large surplus and to store the bulging stocks the Government has acquired from the producers.

In a century of unexampled economic and technological progress, with the most educated and sophisticated population ever known, much of the world still writhes under the torture, brutality, and forced labor exacted by tyrants of both Right and Left. In more than half the world's nations governments are masters and people are subjects, and to seriously criticize the masters is dangerous to both life and limb. This world needs a great many things, including a more adequate distribution of food, energy, and medical care, but surely a high priority must be given to the eradication of tyranny. The opinion leaders of the democracies must strive as dedicatedly to, end public enslavement in the twentieth century as their predecessors strove to end private enslavement in the nineteenth.

During the last two centuries or so, Western intellectuals have experienced a considerable rise in status and employment. A research fellow today normally occupies a more enviable position than the average author in the early eighteenth century, who commonly had to fawn on an aristocratic patron for his daily bread. From the second part of the eighteenth century the market for writers and teachers vastly expanded. The miseries once experienced by ill-paid scribblers in “Grub Street” in early Georgian London became a matter of legend. Education has now become one of the world's major growth industries.

In Great Britain—despite the country's economic difficulties—the annual rate of growth of educational expenditure has consistently exceeded the average annual growth of the Gross National Product.

Dudko: I received your questions and I think that they are quite interesting and relevant, so I am glad to respond.

Question: Do you think that the young people's interest in religion is now increasing and growing stronger, or declining? How could you explain it?

I believe that the interest in religion on the part of the young people at the present time is increasing and growing stronger, not declining. The increased interest may be explained by many motives; however, the most important explanation is the complete disillusionment with irreligiosity, even on the part of the so-called atheists,, I presented the essential motive from the human point of view, but from my religious point of view the essential explanation is as follows: the process of faith has taken place and is spreading.