Look to your own house…
From China Daily comes this story on Kong Quan’s (spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry) response to a recent US State Department report on human rights.
The report details human rights abuses in 90 different countries and regions across the world, with China featured prominently.
Needless to say, Kong Quan is… less than pleased.
For its part, China advises the United States to devote more attention to problems of its own, including the improvement of its human rights record, and to refrain from intervening in the domestic affairs of others under the pretext of human rights, said Kong.
I think it’s safe to say at this point that the majority of Americans believe that there are, in fact, human rights violations in China (still a proud recipient of Most Favored Nation status). I think it’s safe to say that we have some concept that there are unfair labor practices in China, as well as unfair police activity and an oppressive slant to the government. So a denial of such abuses is, to say the very least, suspect.
However, Kong raises a very interesting point. Namely, the question of walking the walk.
The United States has always held itself out as a bastion of civil rights. We have fair trial by jury, due process of law, and Constitutional protection of our rights. We have a freely-elected government that answers to the people with regular elections, and we have a system of checks and balances in place to ensure that no branch of government can ever begin abusing its power without being immediately checked by the other branches.
(On a side note – that last line gave me an image of a linebacker in judge’s robes body-checking George W. “Dubya” Bush into the shrubbery. I don’t know why.)
But in recent years as the current administration has aggressively waged its Wars on NounsTM, it’s becoming increasingly clear that we do need to look to our own house. With announcements from the DOJ every day that legal aliens do not have legal rights in the United States, that Americans of Arabic descent are being rounded up for questioning or “protection”, or more talk about military tribunals, you begin to wonder if we’re living in the same United States that holds due process up as a model for other nations. As for worker relations, we have the current administration’s woeful record of blaming our societal ills on the labor unions, their shoddy treatment of all but the most wealthy, and now an initiative to do away with restrictions against requiring overtime, and an initiative to do away with requirements to pay overtime wages.
Kong Quan is half right. America does need to look to its own house. But looking to our own house does not mean that we should ignore the human rights violations of others, nor does it mean we should excuse them. If we truly wish to be the champions of human and civil rights, it is vital that we call attention to all instances of abuse – both inside and outside of our own boundaries.
In other news, The Moscow Times reports that Britain is now making nice with Russia because – by Tony Blair’s own admission – Britain may have to depend completely on Russia for its oil and gas by the end of the decade. Which means that Bush might have just a little bit of a problem finding a “coalition of the willing” for his next little skirmish….