Where Freedom Stands in the Hierarchy

If Chris Patten, the last British governor of Hong Kong, is sincere in what he writes at Project Syndicate:

LONDON – Nowadays, the West can be described as decadent. That does not mean simply that we are addicted to “bread and circuses,” from welfare programs in Europe (which we can barely afford) to the Super Bowl in the United States. It means also that we are increasingly reluctant to allow our own vision of civil liberties and human rights to shape our foreign policies, owing to the potential commercial costs.

Consider the case of the Chinese dissident and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo, who recently died while serving an 11-year prison sentence for calling for democracy in China. The Chinese authorities refused Liu’s request, made just weeks before his death, to seek treatment abroad for his aggressive cancer, and his wife remains under house arrest.

China’s treatment of dissidents like Liu is nothing short of savage. Yet Western leaders have offered only a few carefully phrased diplomatic statements criticizing it.

then I think that he’s operating under a misconception. For most of the people in “the West” civil liberties and human rights barely register in their hierarchy of values. Their views are more like the lines from a play I recall:

Freedom is the most important thing in the world to me. After I’ve eaten.

I wish I recalled the play’s name. Cactus Flower, perhaps?

Once you get past health care fully paid by someone else, an education paid for by someone else, a sinecure at wages higher than your skills and abilities could demand, and a pension higher than your ability or willingness to save can provide, add a little of this and a little of that and ultimately you’ll get down to civil liberties and human rights somewhere. Patrick Henry has been dead for almost 250 years.