The American Left's love affair with Tibet
By:
Giles Howard
Issue date: 3/27/08 Section: Opinion
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi visited the Dalai Lama on Friday and reiterated the liberal talking points of the last few weeks when discussing the current situation in Tibet.
Specifically, Pelosi said, "If freedom-loving people throughout the world do not speak out against China's oppression … we have lost all moral authority to speak on behalf of human rights anywhere in the world."
My initial reaction to this quote, which appeared in The New York Times, is simply to laugh because the idea that Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House or the U.S. Congress in general has any moral authority at this point seems to me like a bad joke.
Every time Congress authorizes federal funding for the Mubarak dictatorship in Egypt or the dictatorship of the House of Saud in Saudi Arabia, it abdicates its position as an arbiter of human rights.
This year alone, Egypt will receive $13 billion from the United States, according to the Australian Broadcast Corporation. I guarantee Mubarak isn't going to use this money to pay for free and fair elections.
But Pelosi's empty rhetoric of freedom and morality isn't the subject of this column; instead, I thought I just don't understand what the big deal is and what exactly the American Left hopes to accomplish by meddling in the internal affairs of China when it has failed spectacularly in every foreign policy adventure it has undertaken from the Vietnam War to the Sanctions Regime in Iraq.
I'd say that American liberals are simply using the question of Tibet to embarrass China, a nation that they hate. But this really only explains the motivations of Lou Dobbs, and he's a member of the jingoistic center rather than the American Left.
No, I think that the liberal relationship with Tibet isn't quite so calculating and is instead the result of a genuine emotional identification with the Tibetan independence movement.
One reason might be that Buddhism is religion that liberals don't feel threatened by; they might not understand it at all, but it doesn't completely disgust them the way evangelical Christianity does.
Specifically, Pelosi said, "If freedom-loving people throughout the world do not speak out against China's oppression … we have lost all moral authority to speak on behalf of human rights anywhere in the world."
My initial reaction to this quote, which appeared in The New York Times, is simply to laugh because the idea that Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House or the U.S. Congress in general has any moral authority at this point seems to me like a bad joke.
Every time Congress authorizes federal funding for the Mubarak dictatorship in Egypt or the dictatorship of the House of Saud in Saudi Arabia, it abdicates its position as an arbiter of human rights.
This year alone, Egypt will receive $13 billion from the United States, according to the Australian Broadcast Corporation. I guarantee Mubarak isn't going to use this money to pay for free and fair elections.
But Pelosi's empty rhetoric of freedom and morality isn't the subject of this column; instead, I thought I just don't understand what the big deal is and what exactly the American Left hopes to accomplish by meddling in the internal affairs of China when it has failed spectacularly in every foreign policy adventure it has undertaken from the Vietnam War to the Sanctions Regime in Iraq.
I'd say that American liberals are simply using the question of Tibet to embarrass China, a nation that they hate. But this really only explains the motivations of Lou Dobbs, and he's a member of the jingoistic center rather than the American Left.
No, I think that the liberal relationship with Tibet isn't quite so calculating and is instead the result of a genuine emotional identification with the Tibetan independence movement.
One reason might be that Buddhism is religion that liberals don't feel threatened by; they might not understand it at all, but it doesn't completely disgust them the way evangelical Christianity does.
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