Copyright by Gregory Krauss 2007 - The University of Texas at Austin

Chapter 5. Human Rights Case Studies
George Lister would frequently end conversations and speeches with a
signature slogan: “To Our Hopeless Cause!” he would say with a fist raised in the air.
A passage by Elliott Abrams written for Lister’s memorial service speculates that
Lister’s hopeless cause was “getting the U.S. Government to enlist, always, and
everywhere, and forever” in the cause of human rights. 1
Abrams is correct that Lister’s personal lifelong struggle was to get the U.S.
government to do more on behalf of human rights. But Lister’s own explanation of
the phrase suggests that, ultimately, he hoped that a more human rights-friendly U.S.
foreign policy would make a difference in the lives of people around the world. In a
1998 speech at George Washington University, Lister said that the phrase had come
from political dissidents under the Soviet dictatorship. “To Our Hopeless Cause!”
Lister told his audience. 2 “By that,” Lister explained, “the Russian human rights
activists meant that even though they didn’t think they were going to win, they were
going to give human rights their best effort. But of course in the end they did win.” 3
By the end of Lister’s life he had witnessed the fall of the Soviet Union and
the shift of many other countries to democratic governance. Lister was jubilant about
the progress. “Who would have thought, even a few years ago, that the Soviet Union
would disappear without a war, that Blacks and Whites would shake hands in South
Africa, and that we now receive human rights visitors from China?” Lister asked. 4
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