Bob Novak: "A Chinese Cardinal Meets the Real Bush"

Columnist Robert Novak writes in today's Washington Post:

On May 31, President Bush met for 35 minutes in the private living quarters of the White House with Cardinal Joseph Zen, the Roman Catholic archbishop of Hong Kong, in an event that was not announced and did not appear on his official schedule. Their meeting did not please the State Department, elements of the Catholic hierarchy and certainly not the Chinese government. But it signifies what George W. Bush is really about.

In Hong Kong, Zen enjoys more freedom to speak out than do his fellow bishops in China proper, and he has become known as the spiritual voice of China's beleaguered democracy movement. Since Hong Kong was handed over to Beijing by the British government in 1997, he has increasingly called for both religious freedom and democracy in China. Consequently, the China desk at the State Department in Washington and the U.S. Embassy in Beijing contended that, for the sake of Sino-American relations, it would be a bad idea for the president to invite the cardinal. So did some of Zen's fellow cardinals.

So, why did the president invite him? The fact that no news of the session leaked out for two weeks indicates that this was no political stunt to revive Bush's anemic poll ratings. The president got divided counsel from his advisers regarding the impact the meeting would have on China's rulers. As he nears the end of a troubled presidency, Bush as a man of faith places the plight of the religious in unfree countries at the top of his agenda.

***
In a city abounding in leaks, I first learned on June 13 about the cardinal's visit to the White House via a circuitous route, from an American Catholic layman. That same day, Raymond Arroyo of the Eternal Word Television Network, acclaimed reporter of Catholic news, made public that the meeting took place.

Bush asked Zen whether he was the "bishop of all China." Replying that his diocese was just Hong Kong, Zen told Bush of the plight of Catholics in China, including five imprisoned bishops. The cardinal is reported by sources close to him to have left the White House energized and inspired. George W. Bush is at a low point among his fellow citizens, but he is still a major figure for Catholics in China who look to him as a clarion of freedom.

[More]

(emphasis added)

My Comments:
Coming from Robert Novak - a man who is, to say the least, not a particular fan of the Bush clan, this column is high praise indeed.

What the One-Child Policy Has Wrought

(Hat tip: Mark Steyn)

This is the policy for which China is being praised for its "responsible stewardship" by all the global warming alrmists:

To say that China’s one-child family policy has been a disaster is an understatement. A report released earlier this month by the nation’s top think tank – the Communist Government’s Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) - says that the policy has created a huge gender imbalance with significant implications for future social stability.

Indeed, according to the report, 24 million men reaching marriageable age by 2020 will never marry because of the sex imbalance. Think of it in these terms: what if the entire population of New York City or of Australia was never able to marry. Imagine the social implications in a city or nation that large where no one can marry. Imagine if that city or country is comprised solely of 24 million men; men with no homes to return to at night; men without the responsibilities of a family to keep them engaged in productive pursuits.

[...]

Interestingly the CASS report termed those condemned to bachelorhood “bare branches” because they would not be able to establish family trees of their own.

How China got to this pitiful state is well documented. A rigid one child per family policy, legal and easily available abortion, and a cultural and economic preference for sons, resulted in sex selective abortions since the early 1980s. Laws to deter such behaviour have failed resoundingly. For example, obtaining knowledge of an unborn baby’s sex from ultrasounds was made illegal to stop abortions of baby girls by the 1990s. But throughout China’s rural villages and towns it remains possible to bribe staff in medical clinics and hospitals to find out the sex of an expected child. Once the parents decide to abort an unborn baby, Chinese law does not require them to carry an unborn baby girl to term.

More girls than boys are aborted. Many more.

[...]

The main concern raised by the CASS report is that 24 million men condemned to a life alone will result in a major strain on the State welfare system. Essentially, without families of their own to care for them as this generation starts ageing, the State will need to step in with sufficient pension funds and aged care facilities for the old bachelors of the latter decades of the 21st Century.

But other problems – such as a rising incidence of prostitution and violent crime - are on the horizon, judging by some current trends.

For example, while the number of baby girls being born has declined, the number of kidnappings and trafficking of young girls has risen. According to the National Population and Family Planning Commission – that’s right, the very organization responsible for the one child family policy -- abductions and trafficking of women and girls has become “rampant”.

Young girls are being kidnapped within China and also from neighboring countries (Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Myanmar, Thailand) by organized gangs who sell them to families with boys of a similar age. The girls will be raised by the families and given as brides to their sons as soon as they reach marriageable age. Others are shipped to brothels within China for a life as sex slaves.

[More]

My Comments:
Yes, let's all hear it for China's "responsible" global "stewardship".


Previous Pro Ecclesia posts on this subject:
Baby-Hating Malthusian Nonsense Goes Mainstream at Copenhagen

China Begins to "Figure it Out" on Demographics

Obama Culture of Death Update™: President's "Science Czar" Supports Forced Population Control Measures [UPDATED]

UK Government Official Says Having More Than 2 Children "Irresponsible"; Catholics Respond

Rich Leonardi on the "Obnoxiousness" of the Concept of "Carbon Footprints"

Malthusian Nonsense Alert: "Save the Planet — Have Fewer Kids"

Deacon Fournier Reviews Population Controllers

Malthusian Nonsense Alert: Babies a Drag on the Economy, Report Says

Darwin Catholic: "Want Sustainable? Try a Family"

Malthusian Nonsense in the Extreme: "When Should You Die?"

Population Control Movement is "Number One Violator of Human Rights," Author Claims

USAToday Columnist: Religion is Killing the Planet

The Pitter-Patter of Carbon Footprints ...

Cardinal Pell Criticizes Australian Medical Ass'n for Publishing Letter Advocating Carbon Tax on Children

Professor Solves Global Warming: Let’s Tax Reproduction

Global Alarming Update: Focus on So-Called "Carbon Footprint" Anti-Family

Malthusian Nonsense from "Global Warming" Alarmists

Cardinal Pell on Global Warming Alarmists: "Scaremongers" and "Zealots"

Malthusian Nonsense Alert: "The Earth Is Full"

How long before China's chief cheerleader in the West, the New York Times' Thomas Friedman, calls for a U.N.-mandated 1-child policy for the entire world?

... “In China’s thousands of years of civilization, the conflict between humankind and nature has never been as serious as it is today,” China’s environment minister, Zhou Shengxian, said recently. “The depletion, deterioration and exhaustion of resources and the worsening ecological environment have become bottlenecks and grave impediments to the nation’s economic and social development.” What China’s minister is telling us, says Gilding, is that “the Earth is full. We are now using so many resources and putting out so much waste into the Earth that we have reached some kind of limit, given current technologies. The economy is going to have to get smaller in terms of physical impact.”

We will not change systems, though, without a crisis. But don’t worry, we’re getting there.

We’re currently caught in two loops: One is that more population growth and more global warming together are pushing up food prices; rising food prices cause political instability in the Middle East, which leads to higher oil prices, which leads to higher food prices, which leads to more instability. At the same time, improved productivity means fewer people are needed in every factory to produce more stuff. So if we want to have more jobs, we need more factories. More factories making more stuff make more global warming, and that is where the two loops meet...

[More]

Heck, for all I know, given Friedman's crush on all things ChiCom, he's probably already suggested a U.N.-mandated 1-child policy.


Previous Pro Ecclesia posts on this subject:
Hypocritical Malthusian Nonsense: Father of 5, Ted Turner, Wants U.N. to Institute World-Wide 1-Child Policy

Man vs. Nature: the Inhuman Agenda Behind the Fight Against “Climate Change”

What the One-Child Policy Has Wrought

Baby-Hating Malthusian Nonsense Goes Mainstream at Copenhagen

China Begins to "Figure it Out" on Demographics

Obama Culture of Death Update™: President's "Science Czar" Supports Forced Population Control Measures [UPDATED]

UK Government Official Says Having More Than 2 Children "Irresponsible"; Catholics Respond

Rich Leonardi on the "Obnoxiousness" of the Concept of "Carbon Footprints"

Malthusian Nonsense Alert: "Save the Planet — Have Fewer Kids"

Deacon Fournier Reviews Population Controllers

Malthusian Nonsense Alert: Babies a Drag on the Economy, Report Says

Darwin Catholic: "Want Sustainable? Try a Family"

Malthusian Nonsense in the Extreme: "When Should You Die?"

Population Control Movement is "Number One Violator of Human Rights," Author Claims

USAToday Columnist: Religion is Killing the Planet

The Pitter-Patter of Carbon Footprints ...

Cardinal Pell Criticizes Australian Medical Ass'n for Publishing Letter Advocating Carbon Tax on Children

Professor Solves Global Warming: Let’s Tax Reproduction

Global Alarming Update: Focus on So-Called "Carbon Footprint" Anti-Family

Malthusian Nonsense from "Global Warming" Alarmists

Cardinal Pell on Global Warming Alarmists: "Scaremongers" and "Zealots"

China Begins to "Figure it Out" on Demographics

Mark Steyn writes at The Corner:

On page 5 of my notoriously "alarmist" book, I asked, "Will China be the hyperpower of the 21st century?", and answered no: It will get old before it's got rich.

Like Japan and Russia and the "experts" at The Economist, China has now begun to figure it out. From the London Times:

China Steps Back From One-Child Policy

By the way, demographic decline is one more reason why they're never gonna sign on to the ecochondriacs' emissions regime. A cheap labor market with aging and dwindling labor doesn't need any more self-inflicted wounds.

Man vs. Nature: the Inhuman Agenda Behind the Fight Against “Climate Change”

At Inside Catholic, Joe Hargrave writes on the Malthusian assumptions underpinning current efforts to curb carbon emissions blamed for causing "climate change":

... One year ago, a study conducted by Oregon State University concluded that "having one less child" would be the best way for a family in the United States to reduce their impact on the environment, even more so than all of the energy-efficient cars and appliances that they could use in a lifetime. But it is the researchers at the Optimum Population Trust (OPT) at the London School of Economics who consistently make strident arguments for population reduction as the most effective way of combating global warming.

Their decision to look directly at how contraception would affect carbon emissions should be unnerving enough for Catholics: For every $6.63 spent on birth control, it would cost $31.48 to reduce carbon emissions with low-carbon technology by the same amount, in their estimation. But it is the shift in language that we ought to find more disconcerting. To quote the chairman of the OPT: "It's always been obvious that total emissions depend on the number of emitters as well as their individual emissions." Is this how we are to be seen by those who have arrogated to themselves the task of rescuing the planet? As "emitters"?

Those who think that the very question is alarmist would do well to consider the praise some of our Western intellectuals offer the Chinese population-control regime, which includes regimented family size as well as forced abortions and sterilizations. At the Copenhagen summit last year, Chinese officials proclaimed that, due to such policies, "China has seen 400 million fewer births, which has resulted in 18 million fewer tons of CO2 emissions a year." Of course, the majority of those prevented births were not caused by forced abortion; rather, they are largely attributable to the fact that the Chinese government has promoted contraception to the point that "85 percent of the Chinese women in reproductive age use contraceptives, the highest rate in the world."

Around the same time, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman expressed his admiration for the Chinese authoritarian regime, lauding it as "a reasonably enlightened group of people" that can, without any checks or balances, impose whatever policies it sees fit "to move a society forward in the 21st century." While this did not directly praise China's population-control measures, a column in the Financial Post by Diane Francis caused quite a controversy for doing exactly that. In the midst of her alarmist screed forecasting the immanent doom of the planet if governments did not take sharp measures to reduce the population, she identified the main obstacle to this goal: "Leaders of the world's big fundamentalist religions preach in favor of procreation and fiercely oppose birth control."

Used in this pejorative sense, there is of course nothing "fundamentalist" about the largest religious organization on the planet that also happens to preach these unpopular ideas with the most resolve: the Catholic Church. But there is something quite fundamental about the Church's teaching on the sanctity of human life and the true purpose of sexuality. In Evangelium Vitae, Pope John Paul II wrote that, "to defend and promote life, to show reverence and love for it, is a task which God entrusts to every man, calling him as his living image to share in his own lordship over the world" (42). In bringing new life into the world, men and women take part in "a certain special participation" of spouses in the "creative work of God" (43)...

[Read the whole thing]

(Hat tip: The American Catholic)


Previous Pro Ecclesia posts on this subject:
National Academy of Sciences Plots Attacks on AGW Skeptics [UPDATED]

Political Accountability for Scientific Arrogance

Another American Media Failure

World May Not be Warming, Say Scientists

Nope, No Reason for Skepticism Whatsoever

What the One-Child Policy Has Wrought

Baby-Hating Malthusian Nonsense Goes Mainstream at Copenhagen

Sen. Inhofe Sticks Fork in Global Alarming Hysterics

BBC Asks "What Happened to Global Warming?"

China Begins to "Figure it Out" on Demographics

Obama Culture of Death Update™: President's "Science Czar" Supports Forced Population Control Measures [UPDATED]

UK Government Official Says Having More Than 2 Children "Irresponsible"; Catholics Respond

Rich Leonardi on the "Obnoxiousness" of the Concept of "Carbon Footprints"

Malthusian Nonsense Alert: "Save the Planet — Have Fewer Kids"

Deacon Fournier Reviews Population Controllers

Malthusian Nonsense Alert: Babies a Drag on the Economy, Report Says

Darwin Catholic: "Want Sustainable? Try a Family"

Malthusian Nonsense in the Extreme: "When Should You Die?"

Population Control Movement is "Number One Violator of Human Rights," Author Claims

USAToday Columnist: Religion is Killing the Planet

The Pitter-Patter of Carbon Footprints ...

Cardinal Pell Criticizes Australian Medical Ass'n for Publishing Letter Advocating Carbon Tax on Children

Professor Solves Global Warming: Let’s Tax Reproduction

Global Alarming Update: Focus on So-Called "Carbon Footprint" Anti-Family

Malthusian Nonsense from "Global Warming" Alarmists

Cardinal Pell on Global Warming Alarmists: "Scaremongers" and "Zealots"

Hypocritical Malthusian Nonsense: Father of 5, Ted Turner, Wants U.N. to Institute World-Wide 1-Child Policy

The former Mr. Jane Fonda, Ted Turner — father of five — thinks there's too many of thee, but obviously not enough of he:

Climate change and population control can make for a politically explosive mix, as media mogul Ted Turner demonstrated Sunday when he urged world leaders to institute a global one-child policy to save the Earth’s environment.

[...]

Mr. Turner – a long-time advocate of population control – said the environmental stress on the Earth requires radical solutions, suggesting countries should follow China’s lead in instituting a one-child policy to reduce global population over time. He added that fertility rights could be sold so that poor people could profit from their decision not to reproduce.

“If we’re going to be here [as a species] 5,000 years from now, we’re not going to do it with seven billion people,” Mr. Turner said.

Former Irish president Mary Robinson warned that radical prescriptions for population control would backfire, ensuring that the subject will remain off the agenda of international climate talks.

“If we do it the wrong way, we can divide the world,” Ms. Robinson said. “A lot of people in the climate world could communicate this very badly.”

China boasts that its controversial one-child policy has helped limit emissions growth in that rapidly industrializing country. At the Copenhagen climate summit last year, national planning official Zhao Baige said Chinese population policy has resulted in 400 million fewer births since 1979, with a population that now stands at 1.3 billion. The lower birth rate converts to a reduction of 1.8 billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions per year, Ms. Zhao said.

But critics contend it has not only interfered with reproductive choice, but contributed to high levels of female infanticide and abortions.

[More]

My Comments:
"Former Irish president Mary Robinson warned that radical prescriptions for population control would backfire, ensuring that the subject will remain off the agenda of international climate talks."

I believe that's the first time I've ever found myself agreeing with something Mary Robinson said.


Previous Pro Ecclesia posts on this subject:
Man vs. Nature: the Inhuman Agenda Behind the Fight Against “Climate Change”

What the One-Child Policy Has Wrought

Baby-Hating Malthusian Nonsense Goes Mainstream at Copenhagen

China Begins to "Figure it Out" on Demographics

Obama Culture of Death Update™: President's "Science Czar" Supports Forced Population Control Measures [UPDATED]

UK Government Official Says Having More Than 2 Children "Irresponsible"; Catholics Respond

Rich Leonardi on the "Obnoxiousness" of the Concept of "Carbon Footprints"

Malthusian Nonsense Alert: "Save the Planet — Have Fewer Kids"

Deacon Fournier Reviews Population Controllers

Malthusian Nonsense Alert: Babies a Drag on the Economy, Report Says

Darwin Catholic: "Want Sustainable? Try a Family"

Malthusian Nonsense in the Extreme: "When Should You Die?"

Population Control Movement is "Number One Violator of Human Rights," Author Claims

USAToday Columnist: Religion is Killing the Planet

The Pitter-Patter of Carbon Footprints ...

Cardinal Pell Criticizes Australian Medical Ass'n for Publishing Letter Advocating Carbon Tax on Children

Professor Solves Global Warming: Let’s Tax Reproduction

Global Alarming Update: Focus on So-Called "Carbon Footprint" Anti-Family

Malthusian Nonsense from "Global Warming" Alarmists

Cardinal Pell on Global Warming Alarmists: "Scaremongers" and "Zealots"

Malthusian Nonsense Alert: "Save the Planet — Have Fewer Kids"

From The Chicago Tribune:

LONDON — There are plenty of ways to cut your carbon footprint, whether it's driving less or buying an energy-efficient refrigerator. But the British Medical Journal, in an editorial last month, urged a more controversial one: having fewer children.

With 60 million people already living in one of the most densely populated countries in the world, the journal said, British couples should aim to have no more than two children as part of their contribution to worldwide efforts to reduce carbon emissions, stem climate change and ease demands on the world's resources.

Limiting family size is "the simplest and biggest contribution anyone can make to leaving a habitable planet for our grandchildren," the editorial's authors said.

Family planning as a means to reduce climate change has been little talked about in international climate forums, largely because it is so politically sensitive. [ED.: Please. It's talked about quite regularly among many population control zealots and global climate change alarmists, including many NGOs affiliated with the United Nations. See the links below.] China's leaders, however, regularly argue that their country should get emission reduction credits because of their one-child policy, and many environmentalists—and even a growing number of religious and ethics scholars—say the biblical command to "be fruitful and multiply" needs to be balanced against Scripture calling for stewardship of the Earth.

[More]

My Comments:
Yes, we should all be just like Communist China.


Previous Pro Ecclesia posts on this subject:
Deacon Fournier Reviews Population Controllers

Malthusian Nonsense Alert: Babies a Drag on the Economy, Report Says

Darwin Catholic: "Want Sustainable? Try a Family"

Malthusian Nonsense in the Extreme: "When Should You Die?"

Population Control Movement is "Number One Violator of Human Rights," Author Claims

USAToday Columnist: Religion is Killing the Planet

The Pitter-Patter of Carbon Footprints ...

Cardinal Pell Criticizes Australian Medical Ass'n for Publishing Letter Advocating Carbon Tax on Children

Professor Solves Global Warming: Let’s Tax Reproduction

Global Alarming Update: Focus on So-Called "Carbon Footprint" Anti-Family

Malthusian Nonsense from "Global Warming" Alarmists

Cardinal Pell on Global Warming Alarmists: "Scaremongers" and "Zealots"

Why is Jon Huntsman Considered a "Moderate"?

Jon Huntsman, former Governor of Utah, and current U.S. Ambassador to China, is leaving his current post in the Obama Administration at the end of next month to consider a run for the Republican presidential nomination. His solidly pro-life record has attracted the interest of Sam Brownback's former chief of staff and 2008 presidential campaign manager:

... Rob Wasinger, who headed the campaign of the former U.S. senator from Kansas who is now the state’s governor, told LifeNews.com he joins other Hunstman supporters in encouraging the man who has served as President Barack Obama’s ambassador to China to seek the Republican nomination. Wasinger says Huntsman’s pro-life position and record attract him to the oft-mentioned potential candidate.

“There are some candidates out there who claim to be pro-life, but as Governor, Jon Huntsman did the hard work of advocating for the cause of life when others would run and hide,” Wasinger said. ” I have found that in my years of public service, it is the people that actually have a record on an issue that are the most reliable. Anyone can rollout talking points; but only a true leader can actually put together a record of service.”

Huntsman signed a trio of pro-life bills in February 2009 that the Utah legislature approved — including legislation to make second-trimester abortions illegal, a measure to allow women to know about the pain their unborn children will feel during an abortion, and a bill that would create a legal defense fund to pay for litigation related to lawsuit abortions advocates file against state legislation. Huntsman has also lived out his pro-life views in that he has seven children, two of whom were from international adoptions. ...

Huntsman is also supportive of 2nd amendment rights, and as Governor of Utah supported school vouchers, market-based approaches to health care reform, and across-the-board tax cuts. So, my question is why do so many on the right, in the middle, on the left, and in the media consider Huntsman to be a "moderate"? Writing at The Corner, Ramesh Ponnuru wondered the same thing a few days ago:

I’ve now read a few articles and blog posts either lauding the Utah governor as a moderate or denouncing him as same. Huntsman has signed pro-life bills, voucher bills, and tax cuts. Yes, he is open to some kind of civil union for gay couples and wants Republicans to make more of an effort on environmental issues. But if that’s all it takes for a Republican politician to get an image both inside and outside the party as a “moderate” these days, that’s a pretty good thing, isn’t it?

Pro-Lifers Can't Support Rudy Giuliani Over Abortion Despite New York Times Op-Ed

From LifeNews.com:

Sometimes (more often than I care to admit), something has to be seen to be believed. You actually must read/see something with your own two eyes to figure out how in the world anyone could possibly believe what was just said.

Enter "Anti-Roe and Pro-Rudy," a mind-bending op-ed that runs in today's New York Times. The author, Eric Johnston, says he is a "fervent pro-lifer," and since we don't know him, we take him at his word.

Johnston supports pro-abortion Rudy Giuliani: "I think Mr. Giuliani will be the most effective advocate for the pro-life cause precisely because he is unreligious and a supporter of abortion rights."

Well, that's the kind of statement that'll get your attention. Let's see how Johnston attempts to square the circle.

To understand his approach, it helps to recall the now familiar "Nixon goes to China'" historical reference. Johnston doesn't use the parallel and no doubt would reject it, but as you remember the idea was that only Nixon, a fervent anti-communist, could have gone to Communist China to begin the normalization of Sino-American relations.

Likewise, only Giuliani, who has a long track record of support for abortion, can "shake up the nearly 35-year-old debate over Roe v. Wade," according to Johnston.

Note that Johnston begins with an argument Giuliani supporters often make to soften the resistance of people who would otherwise not even consider the former Mayor of New York City. And that is that even though the Republican party is against abortion, Giuliani has been ahead in the GOP presidential polls for months.

Understand what Johnston is doing: combining an "is" --Giuliani is leading in the polls--with an "ought"--pro-lifers should get behind him because Giuliani can best shake up the "status quo" on the abortion debate.

***
We've heard a ton of arguments why pro-lifers should make their peace with Giuliani. Most of them center around the likelihood of his winning the nomination. As we have seen, that rationalization is wearing thin.

Eric Johnston's complementary argument--that Giuliani would actually advance the cause quicker and more effectively--is both bizarre and unpersuasive.

I'm sure you won't be fooled, even for a second.

[Read the whole thing]

RedState: Huntsman "Plotted" Against President of U.S. (by Deciding to Run for President Himself) While Serving as Ambassador to China

Of all the reasons I've seen for not supporting Jon Huntsman for the GOP nomination for President (and I've read some compelling ones as well as some ludicrous ones), Erick Erickson of Red State provides the stupidest reason I've come across so far.

By this logic, Thomas Jefferson would be unfit to receive Erickson's vote for President. I mean, he decided to run for President against John Adams while serving as Adams' Vice-President (not to mention all his machinations while serving as Washington's Secretary of State). Although the position of VP has been unfavorably compared by one occupant of that office to "a bucket of warm spit/piss", it is (since one is next in line to the Presidency), arguably, a more important position than Ambassador to China.

I don't know, maybe Erickson does feel that way about the 3rd President, as well. Mr. Jefferson certainly has his detractors.


Previous Pro Ecclesia posts on this subject:
Huntsman PAC Launched - Does This Mean Pro-Life Former Utah Gov is Running?

Is Jon Huntsman the 2012 GOP Dark Horse?

Why is Jon Huntsman Considered a "Moderate"?

Bolton Accused of Causing Chaos Ahead of United Nations Summit

From Cybercast News Service:

(CNSNews.com) - Less than three weeks before more than 170 nations' leaders meet for a major world summit in New York, media around the world are reporting that the Bush administration's point man at the United Nations has thrown plans for the gathering into disarray.

Newly appointed U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton is calling for scores of changes to a draft "outcome document" prepared for the Sept. 14-16 meeting.

***
Media reaction has been biting, with newspaper headlines in Europe and Asia accusing Bolton variously of showing "contempt," throwing the U.N. summit into "chaos," working to "derail" a world agreement on poverty and setting out to "wreck" U.N. reform plans.

***
China's ambassador to the U.N., Wang Guangya, was quoted by the Xinhua news agency as saying it was rather late for the U.S. to be suggesting so many changes, since the summit was less than three weeks off.

[Full story]

My Comments:
"China's ambassador to the U.N., Wang Guangya, was quoted by the Xinhua news agency as saying it was rather late for the U.S. to be suggesting so many changes, since the summit was less than three weeks off."

Well, you damn commie, you have your lefty friends in the Democrat Party to thank for that! Oh yeah, and my future Senator, RINO George Voinovich.

Obama Culture of Death Update™: President's "Science Czar" Supports Forced Population Control Measures [UPDATED]

Remember when President Obama, in lifting his predecessor's ban on ESCR, mocked the very notion of ethics and morality as providing limits on scientific inquiry? The President then went on to disband the President's Council on Bioethics, which had, apparently, been spending too much time (as one "progressive Christian" commenter opined in my comboxes) "focus[ing] ... on the out-of-date and nonsensical natural law theories supported by Catholic bishops."

But I suppose those actions are not surprising when one considers that this is the guy who Obama had in mind as his new "science czar":

Individual rights must be balanced against the power of the government to control human reproduction. Some people—respected legislators, judges, and lawyers included—have viewed the right to have children as a fundamental and inalienable right. Yet neither the Declaration of Independence nor the Constitution mentions a right to reproduce. Nor does the UN Charter describe such a right, although a resolution of the United Nations affirms the “right responsibly to choose” the number and spacing of children (our emphasis). In the United States, individuals have a constitutional right to privacy and it has been held that the right to privacy includes the right to choose whether or not to have children, at least to the extent that a woman has a right to choose not to have children. But the right is not unlimited. Where the society has a “compelling, subordinating interest” in regulating population size, the right of the individual may be curtailed. If society’s survival depended on having more children, women could he required to bear children, just as men can constitutionally be required to serve in the armed forces. Similarly, given a crisis caused by overpopulation, reasonably necessary laws to control excessive reproduction could be enacted.

It is often argued that the right to have children is so personal that the government should not regulate it. In an ideal society, no doubt the state should leave family size and composition solely to the desires of the parents. In today’s world, however, the number of children in a family is a matter of profound public concern. The law regulates other highly personal matters. For example, no one may lawfully have more than one spouse at a time. Why should the law not be able to prevent a person from having more than two children?

[More]

(emphasis added)


UPDATE
More on this despicable appointment from Joe Hargrave at The American Catholic: Obama’s Science Pick: A Violent Enemy of Human Life.

... with Obama’s selection of Dr. John P. Holdren to “Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy”, among a few other high positions – and with the recent revelations of what this man, along with his co-authors, advocated in a 1977 book called Ecoscience (of which I was entirely ignorant), I believe the benefit of the doubt has just been cut.

First, I’ll say that I regret for the sake of some readers that the most thorough analysis of this book is presently available on Alex Jones’ website Infowars. It doesn’t bother me at all, because the analysis comes with several photocopied pages from this obscure book. But I do understand that many people either love or revile Mr. Jones. Those feelings, however, shouldn’t get in the way of accepting what is obviously true. If this is all a major fabrication, they did a heck of a job.

The analysis presents the highlights before going in depth, and I will reproduce those here:

- Forcibly and unknowingly sterilizing the entire population by adding infertility drugs to the nation’s water and food supply.

- Legalizing “compulsory abortions,” ie forced abortions carried out against the will of the pregnant women, as is common place in Communist China where women who have already had one child and refuse to abort the second are kidnapped off the street by the authorities before a procedure is carried out to forcibly abort the baby.

- Babies who are born out of wedlock or to teenage mothers to be forcibly taken away from their mother by the government and put up for adoption. Another proposed measure would force single mothers to demonstrate to the government that they can care for the child, effectively introducing licensing to have children.

- Implementing a system of “involuntary birth control,” where both men and women would be mandated to have an infertility device implanted into their body at puberty and only have it removed temporarily if they received permission from the government to have a baby.

- Permanently sterilizing people who the authorities deem have already had too many children or who have contributed to “general social deterioration”.

- Formally passing a law that criminalizes having more than two children, similar to the one child policy in Communist China.

- This would all be overseen by a transnational and centralized “planetary regime” that would utilize a “global police force” to enforce the measures outlined above. The “planetary regime” would also have the power to determine population levels for every country in the world.

[Read the whole thing]

UPDATE #2
Even more info here. A must read.



This Obama Culture of Death Update™ has been brought to you by Prof. Douglas Kmiec, Eric McFadden, all the fine folks at Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good / Catholics United / Catholic Democrats, and countless other Catholics for whom "Hope" and "Change" trumped LIFE.







Previous Pro Ecclesia posts on this subject:
Obama Culture of Death Update™: Obama Disbands President’s Council on Bioethics

Obama Culture of Death Update™: Obama Advisor Says “It is Not Our Goal to Reduce the Number of Abortions” [UPDATED]

Obama Culture of Death Update™: Administration Now on Record That Promoting "Reproductive Health" Equals Promoting Abortion Abroad

Obama Culture of Death Update™: President Lifts Ban on Federal ESCR Funding

Obama Culture of Death Update™: Obama Nominee for Deputy Sec. of State Says Taxpayers Constitutionally Obligated to Fund Abortion

Moral Accountability . com

Obama Culture of Death Update™: Abortion Necessary to "Ensure Our Daughters Have the Same Rights and Opportunities As Our Sons"

Obama Culture of Death Update™: "White House Web Site Becomes Pro-Abortion After Obama Takeover"

Obama Culture of Death Update™: Among President Obama's First Official Acts is Promoting Abortion Abroad [UPDATED]

Huntsman PAC Launched - Does This Mean Pro-Life Former Utah Gov is Running?

LifeNews reports:

Former two-term Utah Governor Jon Huntsman, who recently stepped down from his position as ambassador to China to possibly launch a bid for the Republican nomination for president, has started a federal political action committee.

The move is seen as a precursor for a possible Republican bid for president in 2012 against pro-abortion President Barack Obama.

Huntsman, who is pro-life and supported and signed into law various pro-life bills, would be able to travel and raise money in the weeks ahead as he decides whether to take the next step in the process of becoming a candidate. Huntsman filed paperwork with the Federal Election Committee to begin “H PAC,” which would function eventually as the full-fledged campaign committee should he decided to move ahead further.

Huntsman spokesman Tim Miller told Politico the former governor will not use the “testing the waters” or exploratory committee that most other potential candidates have used to move step-by-step towards an official primary election campaign.

“This is a paperwork step,” Miller said. “He’s doing the organizational things required by campaign finance law. When he wants to make an announcement he will make an announcement.”

Miller indicated a decision on becoming an official candidate for the GOP nomination would come likely in early summer — in time for the all-important Ames, Iowa straw poll vote. Politico indicates Huntsman, freed form the legal constraints of serving as ambassador, has begun meeting with potential aides, donors and campaign workers as he prepares for the future...

[Read more]

My Comments:
This seems like good news. And now the bad news: Jimmy Carter has just given Hunstman the kiss of death.


Previous Pro Ecclesia posts on this subject:
Is Jon Huntsman the 2012 GOP Dark Horse?

Why is Jon Huntsman Considered a "Moderate"?

Baby-Hating Malthusian Nonsense Goes Mainstream at Copenhagen

Matthew Archbold reports:

China's at the forefront of saving the planet. And they're doing it one baby at a time. That is, killing one baby at a time, according to Max Schulz from the Washington Examiner:

Want to save the planet from global warming? Forget about getting rid of coal plants or the internal combustion engine. Get rid of the humans. They're the true problem.

That insidious message gained new currency with the United Nations Copenhagen climate change circus this month. While the conference likely will be remembered for participants' failure to reach a binding emissions reduction agreement, its legacy may be that it brought mainstream respectability to the fringe left-wing notion that mankind is a scourge on the planet.

In so doing, it has breathed new life into population control proposals that had seemed discredited since the population bomb alarmists warned about in the 1960s and '70s failed to detonate...

[...]

Can you imagine being present at a conference where they're boasting about 400 million forced abortions and not storming out or at least slamming the door. But no, our President and the elite of the world sat on their hands or worse...even approved. 400 million?! That's not environmentalism, that's a holocaust.

[More]

My Commnents:
Just a few days ago, we commemorated the Feast of the Holy Innocents. But, in retrospect, Herod had nothing on these environazis.

Archbishop Burke's Keynote Address at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast

The full text of the speech can be read here.

Here's an excerpt:

... Over the past several months, our nation has chosen a path which more completely denies any legal guarantee of the most fundamental human right, the right to life, to the innocent and defenseless unborn. Our nation, which had its beginning in the commitment to safeguard and promote the inalienable right to “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness” for all, without boundary, is more and more setting arbitrary limits to her commitment (cf. The Declaration of Independence: Action of Second Continental Congress, 4 July 1776, in The Constitution of the United States with the Declaration of Independence and the Articles of Confederation, New York: Barnes and Noble Books, 2002, p. 81). Those in power now determine who will or will not be accorded the legal protection of the most fundamental right to life. First the legal protection of the right to life is denied to the unborn and, then, to those whose lives have become burdened by advanced years, special needs or serious illness, or whose lives are somehow judged to be unprofitable or unworthy.

What is more, those in power propose to force physicians and other healthcare professionals, in other words, those with a particular responsibility to protect and foster human life, to participate, contrary to what their conscience requires, in the destruction of unborn human lives, from the first or embryonic stage of development to the moment of birth. Our laws may soon force those who have dedicated themselves to the care of the sick and the promotion of good health to give up their noble life work, in order to be true to the most sacred dictate of their consciences. What is more, if our nation continues down the path it has taken, healthcare institutions operating in accord with the natural moral law, which teaches us that innocent human life is to be protected and fostered at all times and that it is always and everywhere evil to destroy an innocent human life, will be forced to close their doors.

At the same time, the fundamental society, that is, the family, upon which the life of our nation is founded and depends, is under attack by legislation which redefines marriage to include a relationship between two persons of the same sex and permits them to adopt children. In the same line, it is proposed to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act. At the root of the confusion and error about marriage is the contraceptive mentality – which would have us believe that the inherently procreative nature of the conjugal union can, in practice, be mechanically or chemically eliminated, while the marital act remains unitive. It cannot be so. With unparalleled arrogance, our nation is choosing to renounce its foundation upon the faithful, indissoluble, and inherently procreative love of a man and a woman in marriage, and, in violation of what nature itself teaches us, to replace it with a so-called marital relationship, according to the definition of those who exercise the greatest power in our society.

The path of violation of the most fundamental human rights and of the integrity of marriage and the family, which our nation is traveling, is not accidental. It is part of the program set forth by those whom we have freely chosen to lead our nation. The part of the program in question was not unknown to us; it was announced to us beforehand and a majority of our fellow citizens, including a majority of our fellow Catholics, chose the leadership which is now implementing it with determination. For example, I refer to our President’s declared support of the Freedom of Choice Act, which would make illegal any legislation restricting procured abortion; his repeal of the Mexico City Policy, permitting U.S. funding of procured abortion in other nations, together with the grant of fifty million dollars to the United Nations Fund for Population Activities which, for example, supported the Republic of China’s policy of one child per family by means of government-dictated sterilization and abortion; his proposal to rescind the regulations appended to the federal Conscience Clause, which assure that, not only physicians, but also all health-care workers may refuse to provide services, information or counsel to patients regarding medications and procedures which are contrary to their conscience; his removal of limitations on federal funding of embryonic-stem-cell research, involving the wholesale destruction of human life at the embryonic stage of development; and his choice of the members of his administration, who are remarkable for the number of major officials, including several Catholics, who favor the denial of the right to life to the unborn and the violation of the integrity of marriage and the family. These are only some examples of a consistent pattern of decisions by the leadership of our nation which is taking our nation down a path which denies the fundamental right to life to the innocent and defenseless unborn and violates the fundamental integrity of the marital union and the family.

***
Our prayer and conversion of life, and the serious reflection upon and study of the truths of the moral life, both as individuals and in our Catholic institutions, require that we accept our responsibility as citizens to work tirelessly to change unjust programs, policies and laws. In a nation set so firmly on a path of violation of the most fundamental moral norms, Catholics and others who adhere to the natural moral law are pressured to think that their religious commitment to the moral law as the way of seeking the good of all is a merely confessional matter which cannot have any application in public life. Apparently, a number of Catholics in public life have been so convinced. How often do we hear Catholic legislators who vote in favor of anti-life and anti-family legislation claim that they are personally opposed to what the legislation protects and fosters, but that they as public officials may not allow religious beliefs to affect their support of such legislation? How often do we hear fellow Catholics supporting candidates for office, who are anti-life and anti-family, because of political-party loyalties or for reasons of other policies and programs supported by the candidate, which they deem to be good? How often is such thinking justified by the claim that religious faith is a purely private matter and has no place in the public forum? On the contrary, the common good depends upon the active engagement of religious faith in the public forum.

***
Our uncompromising commitment to protect the inviolable dignity of innocent human life and to safeguard the integrity of marriage and the family are not based on peculiar confessional beliefs or practices but on the natural moral law, written on every heart and, therefore, a fundamental part of the Church’s moral teaching. At the same time, what is always and everywhere evil cannot be called good for the sake of accomplishing some other good end. All of us must be concerned about a wide range of goods which are important to the life of our nation, but the concern for those goods can never justify the betrayal of the fundamental goods of life itself and the family. We must take care to uproot from our moral thinking any form of relativism, consequentialism and proportionalism, which would lead us into the error of thinking that it is sometimes right to do what is always and everywhere evil.

An important part of our moral reflection must include a clear understanding of the principles regarding cooperation in evil, especially by the act of voting. Too often, in our time, our inability to accomplish all that we should for the sake of the defense of the right to life and of the protection of the integrity of the family is used to justify the direct choice of a political leader who espouses a position or positions in violation of the natural moral law. The Servant of God Pope John Paul II, in his Encyclical Letter Evangelium vitae, addresses at length the question of cooperation in evil which violates the dignity of innocent human life. He offers as an example the case of a legislator who has the possibility of voting for a law which would restrict the evil of procured abortion, even though it would not eradicate it completely. He concludes that the legislator could vote for the legislation, while his own opposition to procured abortion remains clear, for his vote does not in fact represent an illicit cooperation with an unjust law, but rather a legitimate and proper attempt to limit its evil aspects (Pope John Paul II, Encylical Letter Evangelium vitae , On the Good and Inviolability of Human Life, 25 March 1995, Acta Apostolicae Sedis 87 [1995], 487, no. 73). In an analogous manner, as voters, we are often faced with a choice among candidates who do not fully oppose unjust laws. In such a case, we must choose the candidate who will most limit the evil effects of unjust laws. But, there is no element of the common good, no morally good practice, which a candidate may promote and to which a voter may be dedicated, which could justify voting for a candidate who also endorses and supports the deliberate killing of the unborn, euthanasia or the recognition of a same-sex relationship as a legal marriage. The respect for the inviolable dignity of innocent human life and for the integrity of marriage and the family are so fundamental to the common good that they cannot be subordinated to any other cause, no matter how good it may be.

In the present situation of our nation, a serious question has arisen about the moral obligation of Catholics to work for the overturning of the Supreme Court decisions in Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton. There are those who would tell us that such work is futile and, therefore, is to be abandoned, so that we can devote ourselves to help prevent individuals from choosing abortion. As Catholics, we can never cease to work for the correction of gravely unjust laws. Law is a fundamental expression of our culture and implicitly teaches citizens what is morally acceptable. Our efforts to assist those who are tempted to do what is always and everywhere wrong or are suffering from the effects of having committed a gravely immoral act, which are essential expressions of the charity which unites us as citizens of the nation, ultimately make little sense, if we remain idle regarding unjust laws and decisions of the courts regarding the same intrinsic evils. We are never justified in abandoning the work of changing legislation and of reversing decisions of the courts which are anti-life and anti-family.

[Read the whole thing]

(emphasis added)

Digest of Today's Posts (27 July 2009)

125 Years of Catholics in Columbia, VA

The Faith of Frank McCourt

Forget About the Trilateral Commission, the Bilderberg Group, and the Council on Foreign Relations ...

China Begins to "Figure it Out" on Demographics

Human Life Is More than a "Distraction"

Marco Rubio: The Most Important Freshman Senator

Stephen Hayes writes in The Weekly Standard:

... None of this was inevitable.

Eighteen months earlier, Rubio had driven himself around the state doing “fundraisers” that generated so little cash they barely covered his expenses. In the first poll measuring support for possible Senate candidates, Rubio registered 3 percent. In the spring of 2009, when Florida’s then-popular governor announced that he was joining the race, the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) immediately pledged its “full support” for Crist. Top Republicans in Florida and Washington rushed to endorse Crist and publicly urged—while privately demanding—that Rubio quit the race. Crist outraised Rubio by more than ten to one in the first quarter they were both in the race, and Rubio seriously considered dropping out.

But Rubio stayed in, and several things helped him gain momentum—a guerrilla ad campaign that defined Crist at the outset, crucial early endorsements from Mike Huckabee and Jim DeMint, a well-timed cover story in National Review, and an unconventional low-dollar fundraising strategy. The most important factors were the candidate and his message.

While most establishment Republicans were seeking to expand the party and recruit moderate candidates, Rubio wanted to debate the direction of the party. And while many other Republican candidates shaped their message to appeal to Tea Party conservatives, Rubio didn’t have to. He had been a Tea Party conservative long before the Tea Party was born.

[...]

Crist embraced the $787 billion proposal and literally hugged the popular president who had come to sell it. The crowd chanted “Yes We Can!” as Crist introduced Obama. “We know it’s that important that we pass a stimulus package. .  .  . This is not about partisan politics. This is about rising above that, helping America, and reigniting our economy.”

[...]

Rubio’s ad team—Harris, Thompson, and Miller—had been prepared for Crist’s announcement and immediately released a web ad that sought to define the choice for Florida Republicans. Over kaleidoscopic images swirling on the screen a narrator intones: “An election coming into focus. A choice for Florida’s future. Some politicians support trillions in reckless spending, borrowed money from China and the Middle East, mountains of debt for our children, and a terrible threat to a fragile economy.” With ominous music in the background, the blurry photo of Crist with Obama comes into focus. “Today, too many politicians embrace Washington’s same old broken ways. But this time, there is a leader who won’t. Let the debate begin.” As the ad ends, “Marco2010” flashes on the screen.

[...]

Within hours of Crist’s announcement, the National Republican Senatorial Committee pledged its backing. “While I believe Marco Rubio has a very bright future within the Republican party, Charlie Crist is the best candidate in 2010 to ensure that we maintain the checks and balances that Floridians deserve in the United States Senate,” said NRSC chairman Senator John Cornyn. “Governor Crist is a dedicated public servant and a dynamic leader, and the NRSC will provide our full support to ensure that he is elected the next United States senator from Florida.”

It was a big blow. “The senatorial committee endorsed him within minutes of his announcement,” Rubio recalled recently. “Followed by a flood of other people.” They included former Florida senator Mel Martinez, Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell, Senator John McCain, and Representatives Mario and Lincoln Diaz-Balart, who are, like Rubio, Cuban-Americans. Dozens of Florida Republicans jumped aboard the Crist bandwagon, eager to be on the winning team. Rubio won the endorsement of Mike Huckabee, but most people dismissed it as payback; Rubio had endorsed Huckabee in 2007.

Rubio had known the NRSC endorsement was coming. Cornyn had reached out to Jeb Bush the previous night to give him a heads up, and, coincidentally, Rubio had a meeting scheduled with Cornyn in Washington on the day that Crist announced. “I went over to the senatorial committee, and Senator Cornyn was gracious enough to come over from the Capitol to the senatorial committee to explain to me their decision and their rationale. It was a very respectful meeting. I told them they were wrong. I told them that I was going to win and that they would be shocked in a year.”

Rubio left the NRSC headquarters and walked three blocks to the Russell Senate Office Building for his next meeting. Heath Thompson, one of the political consultants who had met with Rubio back in January, was now working for the candidate. He had set up a meeting for Rubio with one of his previous clients, Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina.

[...]

DeMint was angry that the NRSC had supported Crist. “If you listen to what the moderates have said—we need youth, we need minorities, we need women. And here we have this young Cuban American who had proved himself as speaker of the House in Florida. And the committee was dissing him and ignoring him.”

One month later, with continuing calls for Rubio to drop out, DeMint offered his endorsement. “This gave me some hope,” says DeMint. “We could recruit some people and help some people who could help turn this country around.”

DeMint’s statement endorsing Rubio was a mixture of enthusiasm and frustration.

For months now, Republicans have been looking around, asking everyone they meet who our next leaders will be. And somehow, inexplicably, many of us have grown blind to the diamonds all around us. There are already many young, conservative leaders ready to fight for freedom in Washington and in state capitals all around the country. But we’ll never find them if we only look for well-known politicians or choose our party’s direction based on the latest polls instead of timeless principles.

Rubio says the endorsement was critical, maybe campaign-saving. “The fact that a sitting U.S. senator would endorse somebody who had only raised $250,000—long-term it’s proven to be a lot of support. But at the beginning it was a little dose of oxygen—just enough to keep you breathing for another couple of weeks.”

[...]

Marco Rubio has gotten as much positive national media attention as any Senate candidate since, well, Barack Obama. There is a natural inclination to think that he has been overhyped. That’s certainly the assumption I took with me to Florida in late September for the first of two five-day stints with his campaign.

It was wrong.

If anything, Rubio is underrated. Some Democrats seem to understand this. That fact, probably more than anything else, explains why the White House encouraged Bill Clinton as early as last spring to use his influence to get Meek out of the race and clear the way for Charlie Crist to run as a Democrat.

No Republican in the country offers a more compelling defense of American exceptionalism and a more powerful indictment of the Obama administration than Marco Rubio. He has had lots of practice. He ran against Obama more than he ran against either of his two opponents.

[...]

Rubio’s promise means that the left will target him and the right will lionize him. On Election Night, as Rubio spoke in front of an array of American and Florida flags, Arianna Huffington tweeted that political strategist Matthew Dowd thought Rubio looked “like a Central American dictator.” Three days later, the Republican party chose Rubio to deliver its weekly address to the nation.

[...]

“Marco Rubio is a natural leader and is likely to be a leader of our party,” says DeMint. “In five years, no one will remember Jim DeMint, and Marco will be president.”

[Definitely read the whole thing]

My Comments:
Jim DeMint obviously has MUCH better instincts than John Cornyn and the rest of the RINO-establishment embiciles at the NRSC. If the GOP had learned its lesson, they would be making DeMint the next NRSC Chairman, rather than giving the underperforming Cornyn another shot at the role.


Previous Pro Ecclesia posts on this subject:
All the Proof You Need That the GOP Did NOT Get the Message ...

Is Marco Rubio Still Catholic?

REFUDIATED !!!

"Party Unity" is Only for Wing Nuts (Suckers)

The Archbold Boys Go Off on the GOP [UPDATED]

John Cornyn and the Rest of the Idiots at the NRSC Will Never Learn, Will They?

The "Stupid Party" is All the More Stupid for Having John Cornyn Among Its Ranks

Rubio Leads Crist in Florida

Pro-Life Catholic Rubio Pulls Even With Crist in Florida Senate Race

NY-23 a Test Case for 2010 Florida Senate Race [UPDATED]

It's Hard to Believe It's Been Almost 20 Years ...

... since the massacre at Tiananmen Square. (Hat tip: Amy Welborn)

And here is how the world community has responded to Red China's refusal to acknowledge the repressive actions taken against peaceful pro-democracy demonstrators.

Times of London Columnist: "Eventually, We Will All Hate Obama Too"

David Aaronovitch writes in The Times of London:

It amuses me that some of those who criticise the present US Administration for its Manichaeism - its division of the world into good and evil - themselves allocate all past badness to Bush and all prospective goodness to Obama. As the ever-improving myth has it, on the morning of September 12, 2001, George W. and America enjoyed the sympathy of the world. This comradeship was destroyed, in a uniquely cavalier (or should we say cowboyish) fashion, through the belligerence, the carelessness, the ideological fixity and the rapacity of that amorphous and useful category of American flawed thinker, the neoconservative. They just threw it away.

***
This week you could hear the author Andrew O'Hagan on Radio 4, reading from his collection of self-conscious essays, The Atlantic Ocean, in which - despite his own claims - every impact of American life on Britain is somehow configured negatively. He writes of an exported popular culture “born in the suburbs of America” and defined as “Spite as entertainment. Shouting as argument. Dysfunction as normality. Desires as rights. Shopping as democracy.” This in the country that has sent Big Brother, Pop Idol, Wife Swap and Location, Location, Location over the Atlantic in the other direction, while taking delivery of Curb Your Enthusiasm and The Wire.

I should admit that I am irked by O'Hagan's dismissal of the “idiots who supported that bad and stupid war (ie, Iraq)” and am willing to match my idiocy against his intelligence in any debating forum that he cares to name. More interesting, though, is the desire to blame America. For all that O'Hagan claims that the US has lost its purchase on the world's affections, it remains the chosen destination for the most ambitious of the planet's migrants. For all that he claims that this change in sentiment is recent, I can't help recalling those - the most honest - who commented, in journals he writes for and on the very day after September 11, that the Americans had had it coming.

In part I think that anti-Americanism is linked to a view of change as decline. The imagination is that dynamic capitalism, associated with the US, is destroying our authentic lives, with our own partly willing connivance. It is a continuing and - at the moment - constant narrative, uniting left and right conservatives, which will usually take in the 19th- century radical journalist William Cobbett (conveniently shorn of his anti-Semitism), and end with an expression of disgust over the Dome, the Olympics or Tesco. Just as bird flu is a disease from out of the East, runaway modernity is a scourge originating to the West.

So Barack Obama, en fête around the world, will one day learn that there is no magical cure for the envy of others. What makes America the indispensable power (and even more indispensable in the era of the new China), is precisely what makes anti-Americanism inevitable.

(emphasis added)

My Comments:
Of course, with a name like "David Aaronovitch", he MUST be a "neocon" himself.
/sarcasm