I think that Donald Trump is a dolt and a buffoon and I wish he were not president. But he is president and I’m trying to move past that. There are some who just can’t find it in themselves to do that and the editors of the Washington Post are among them. From their editorial on the Trump’s speech:
Yet elements of his address left doubt as to whether Mr. Trump views such values as truly universal. “The fundamental question of our time is whether the West has the will to survive,†he said. If by “the West†he means anyone embracing the values of human rights, freedom and the dignity of every individual, he may be right. But those are hardly the property of the United States and Europe. They are treasured by the ailing Liu Xiaobo in China, by bloggers fighting for freedom in Uganda and by legislators fighting off the Maduro regime’s thugs in Venezuela. They belong to people of all colors, all sexual orientations and all — or no — religion. When Mr. Trump urges “us all to fight like the Poles, for family, for freedom, for country and for God,†does “all†truly mean “all�
Have they lost their minds? The governments of China, Venezuela, and Uganda and, in fact, most of the governments in the world emphatically do not believe in what the editors deem “universal values”. Those values are far from universal. Liu Xiaobo has been imprisoned by the Chinese authorities for having Western values. Consider this quote from Mr. Liu:
Modernization means whole-sale westernization, choosing a human life is choosing Western way of life. Difference between Western and Chinese governing system is humane vs in-humane, there’s no middle ground… Westernization is not a choice of a nation, but a choice for the human race.
or, in other words, Mr. Liu agrees with Trump and not with the editors of the Washington Post.
It is a grave error to believe that the whole world longs for freedom of speech, of religion, of the press and for liberal values in general. They don’t. That was Bush’s mistake in thinking that when we invaded Iraq the people there would rejoice. Some—the most Westernized—did. The rest have been fighting us ever since.
I don’t believe that we should impose our values on anyone else. I believe that the people in China or North Korea or Iran are entitled to wallow in their own misery without our interference. I do not long to “go abroad, in search of monsters to destroy”. We have plenty of them here. But I don’t think we should pretend that China’s or North Korea’s or Venezuela’s monsters do not exist.
I thought this was in line with his Saudi speech. It was good for one of these, not great. Pretty much in line with other POTUS speeches.
Steve