It is depressing to read that Freedom House, a New York-based organization that monitors a range of political and civil liberties around the globe, reported that 2010 saw a net decline in liberty across the world for the fifth year in a row (“The Compass Lost,” September 17, 2011). This amounts to the longest continual decline in four decades of record keeping. You argue that “the shift stems partly from the western powers’ loss of global heft.” For this reason American government’s global efforts now focus on a few narrow areas, such as religious freedom, people trafficking and bonded labor, and Internet freedom. But the west’s loss of heft has other and more pernicious causes, as well. Only consider the American abuses of human rights in Iraq and Afghanistan, where torture became standard practice. Or the British abuses of human rights during the recent riots, where the Internet was handled with abandon. If the so-called west has lost its moral clout, it is partly because of abuses such as these by the western powers themselves. What moral right could they have to preach human rights to others?