Friday, June 10, 2005
VDH on the rise of China
As nations come to know the Chinese, and as a ripe Europe increasingly cannot or will not defend itself, the old maligned United States will begin to look pretty good again. More important, America will not be the world’s easily caricatured sole power, but more likely the sole democratic superpower that factors in morality in addition to national interest in its treatment of others.
China is strong without morality; Europe is impotent in its ethical smugness. The buffer United States, in contrast, believes morality is not mere good intentions but the willingness and ability to translate easy idealism into hard and messy practice.
Most critics will find such sentiments laughable or naïve; but just watch China in the years to come. Those who now malign the imperfections of the United States may well in shock whimper back, asking for our friendship. Then the boutique practice of anti-Americanism among the global elite will come to an end.
Read the whole thing.
2 Comments:
By 
Gordon Smith, at
Fri Jun 10, 02:37:00 PM:
Astoundingly arrogant. China has "no morality"? That's ludicrous. They have a lot of awful practices, but to dismiss the entire nation of over a billion people as amoral is absurd. The same holds true for the statement about Europeans.
Lastly, if you're going to say America has the right to declare war when and where it likes on the basis of moral superiority and buckets of true grit, then don't cry when this nation is vilified as invader, empirer-builder, bully, and oppressor.
By Final Historian, at
Sat Jun 11, 12:03:00 AM:
Screwy once again proves to us that people will see what they want to see, and believe what they want to believe.
