The strident first-round offensive in the Carter administration's human rights crusade is over. In retrospect the first phase of the human rights movement had a noble purpose, yet failed to capture and hold the high ground of national policy and public support. It failed as national policy because it did not comprehend the fundamental relationship between human rights, prosperity, international trade, and investment. Public support declined because asymmetric, therefore hypocritical, publicity of human rights violations concentrated on minor blemishes on the record of U.S. business abroad while ignoring more terrible disfigurements of human rights.