This Anomalous Life: Wilsonian “Ideals” Have Us Telling China to Improve Its Human Rights Record. Who Do We Think We Are?...And Gingrich Thinks Palin Should Be More Prudent! Gingrich That Is!

 

                     This is Your USA Captain Talking!

       There’s absolutely nothing in Natural Law or the respective theologies of Thomas Aquinas, Augustine…or all of
Christianity which brought the world an understanding of tolerance and charity…that requires this nation to be the scold of the world as we have become with China—lecturing its President Hu Jintao that he must free the incarcerated Nobel peace prize winner Liu Xiaobo and otherwise greatly improve his country’s human rights record.

         If the preceding sounds heartless, archaic and cruel to you…isolationist, self-centered, insensitive (as it does even to me on first re-reading)…it is the legacy all of us are carrying from the last idealistic statesman-wanna be professor in the White House—Woodrow Wilson.  Wilsonianism as reflected in our dealings with China today is the direct antithesis of the policy of the Good Neighbor.  The Good Neighbor goes about his business and does not stick his nose where it does not belong. If there’s wife-beating and child abuse going on next door he calls the cops….which in our international framework would be the very imperfect dilatory UN.  Beyond that, the Good Neighbor does nothing but pray for surcease.  To run in next door and intrude in the war is the last thing that should happen. I’m sorry but that is how the world is supposed to work.  

       The only time we should intrude is if the fighting next door threatens our own peace and freedom: that was the wise precept of Robert Taft whom I remind critics was   not an isolationist but the son of a president who excelled in international diplomacy, W. H. Taft pioneering legal studies concerning a world court—his son Robert as a young Yale law grad, accompanying accompanied Wilson to Versailles where he learned first-hand the folly of arrant damn-foolness: claptrap like “make the world safe for democracy” and “open covenants openly arrived at.”

      Not only does our busy-body interventionism often not have anything to do with safeguarding our personal peace and freedom—in the case of China it is recklessly imprudent. China holds $900 billion of our debt and Hong Kong, a part of China, another $100 billion worth. If China were to dump our debt we’d have to turn to ourselves to fund the debt….that and print more money which would be disaster.

      What does the policy of the Good Neighbor have to do with advocating human rights within other nations’ borders?   Easy.  When you see it violated within another country’s borders, do nothing.   If the United Nations has any worth at all…which I doubt…it is to serve as a buzzer—calling attention  to violations contra to humane standards.               

                   Palin Should “Think Through” Things!

      The World Cup for  chutzpah goes today to Newt Gingrich who admonishes Sarah Palin to be more prudent, to “think through what she’s saying.” This from the guy who botched his Speakership by proclaiming things not thought-through…like Clinton’s “disrespecting” him on an Air Force One flight by not bringing him into the private presidential quarters on the plane…and failing to “think through” the implications of becoming embroiled in adultery with another man’s wife, a House staffer, while at the same time excoriating Clinton for Monica Lewinsky… and having to step down mid-term—she becoming his Wife No. 3--after which Newtie became a Catholic and addressed for a fat fee the national conclave of Legatus, the organization of Catholic CEOs…which should have known better than to host this hypocrite-adventurer who will embrace anything, do everything, to get elected president.