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March 23, 2007
Common Ground and Credit Where Credit Is Due
The liberal foreign policy worldview too often begins from an assumption that America is a problem needing to be solved by the rest of the world and that eveyone will be better off once America has been put in its proper place. As a corollary, liberals are often prone to dismiss repressive actions by other governments, when speaking out means criticizing governments with interests divergent from U.S interests.
Matt Jerzyk of RI Future deserves credit for not automatically succumbing to the temptation to automatically blame only America for all that is bad in the world. Mr. Jerzyk posted yesterday in support of a protest of a the Chinese ambassador's appearance at Brown University. The protest is in response to China’s continuing obstruction of United Nations action to protect the people of Darfur from the government of Sudan.
Let's hope that in the future, left and right can find other areas of common ground in the world beyond America's borders to defend classically liberal, humanitarian, and yes American values, without having to wait for people to suffer as badly as they are suffering in Sudan.
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Protesters were in response to China's stance against an independent Taiwan. However, they should have been protesting our sale of arms to Taiwan.
Posted by: Robert at March 23, 2007 9:40 AMSpeaking of China, I wish the international community had put a little more heat on it vis a vis human rights abuses and the Tibet situation before Beijing was awarded next year's Olympics.
Posted by: Rhody at March 23, 2007 11:17 AMI'd love to see some of the athletes take a stand for human rights not by boycotting the games, but through interviews or demonstrations like the U.S. sprinters made on the medal stand in Mexico City. I worry this could be a Berlin '36 situation here if the Chinese leaders are not watched closely.
Mr. Jerzyk? lol Who cares? This blog stroking blog is silliness. Why not save it for your blog wine tasting parties.
Posted by: Tim at March 24, 2007 9:23 AMTim,
1. When the different parts of the political blogosphere -- left vs. right, liberal vs. conservative, libertarians vs. everyone else, etc. -- don’t interact with one another, blogs can become the echo chambers that justify the harshest criticisms made against them.
2. Offering comments on the left-blogoshpere only when I disagreed with what was being said would raise the echo-chamber quotient nearly as badly, as very few people whom I didn’t already agree with would take any interest in what I was saying. {Fill in your own joke here about how many people take an interest in what I say, under any circumstance.}
3. Given the current state of America’s progressive movement, blaming a country other than the United States for anything that’s wrong in the world is not the easiest position for someone heavily invested in the progressive politics to take.
4. So why not acknowledge Matt Jerzyk for stepping outside of the box and taking the right stand for the right reasons on a serious and high-profile issue?
(As for the use of titles in my postings, my rough rule of thumb is last names only for professional journalists, titles for everyone else. Except that because of my old-fashioned conservative traditionalist leanings, I just haven’t been able to get comfortable with referring to women journalists by last name alone.)
Posted by: Andrew at March 24, 2007 12:00 PM