The differences in outlook between thick and thin societies are likely to become increasingly important to the human rights field. At home, inward migration and the secularization of parts of populations are yielding greater differences in moral matrices within Western countries. Abroad, the rising economic and political power of Asian, African, Middle Eastern, and Latin American countries are making Western dominated international institutions and Western inspired global norms increasingly untenable. If the human rights field were dominated by a flexible universalist approach grounded in liberal pluralism it would pursue four elements: 1) cross-cultural dialogue as a way to develop and support homegrown solutions; 2) institution building as a way to better implement rights; 3) empirical research that employs cultural psychology; and, 4) more systematic and comprehensive assessments based only on the rights agreed to in legally binding agreements. There is a strong consensus on the importance of a relatively small core set of basic rights, but only a loose consensus on a broader set of rights—and this latter consensus depends on letting prioritization vary. This return to basics could help actors adopt a universal minimal standard that allowed local stakeholders to develop and implement context-specific strategies.