When they think no one's listening.
Maybe you've been wondering why the Obama Administration is so willing to make a deal with Iran without demanding anything in the area of human rights. The answer comes via The New Yorker (hat tip to the Wall Street Journal for spotting this yesterday), from no less an authority than the man who is a terrifying heartbeat from the presidency.
Talking with a New Yorker writer about a trip to China back in 2011, Biden actually volunteered the following - on the record, no less - about a conversation he had with Xi Jinpeng:
Xi unambiguously opposes American democratic notions. In 2011 and 2012, he spent several days with Vice-President Joe Biden, his official counterpart at the time, in China and the United States. Biden told me that Xi asked him why the U.S. put “so much emphasis on human rights.” Biden replied to Xi, “No President of the United States could represent the United States were he not committed to human rights,” and went on, “If you don’t understand this, you can’t deal with us. President Barack Obama would not be able to stay in power if he did not speak of it. So look at it as a political imperative. It doesn’t make us better or worse. It’s who we are. You make your decisions. We’ll make ours.”
You want to let that sink in? Biden just told the leader of Communist China the current American leader only talks about human rights because he would lose his political viability if he did. What's more, he, Biden, doesn't think America's commitment to human rights "makes us better or worse" than a nation like China, which respects human rights not at all. And furthermore, whatever American leaders may say in public, "You make your decisions. We'll make ours."
In other words, no, we don't really mean it when we press you on human rights. And when you do nothing about it, which we fully expect, we will do nothing in response.
Extraordinary.
It explains a lot, though. When Obama runs roughshod over the Constitution, or the rights of Christian business owners to operate in accordance with their faith, or the rights of police officers not to be falsely convicted in the court of public opinion, or the rights of workers not to join a union if that is their preference, or the rights of ordinary Americans not to purchase health insurance if that is their choice . . . well, here's what you need to understand:
Obama and Biden are really no different from Xi Jinpeng insofar as they are political actors seeking power. They work within the system they have to acquire and maintain as much of it as they can. Xi's system is despotic communism, so it's a bit easier for him. There is no frame of reference for anyone to claim individual rights, so he doesn't have to go through the charade of pretending to give a rip about it. Obama and Biden had to be elected, so they had to pay the notion just enough lip service to "stay in power" (Biden's exact words here), but in practice to usurp as much power as they can either from the people or from the duly elected Congress.
That's why Obama issues executive orders he has no authority to issue. That's why he negotiates treaties with enemy nations without obtaining the advice and consent of Congress. That's why he publicly laments that our constitutional system doesn't provide for him to just do whatever he wants whenever he wants. Because he doesn't give a rip. Political power for him is the only thing that matters.
The only thing Biden is good for is the fact that he so often clumsily blurts out the truth about all this.
Question: If Dick Cheney had told a nation with an abyssmal human rights record that the U.S. didn't really care and only talked about it because of politics, how do you think the MSM would have treated the story? By contrast, how are they treating this?
Yep.
