Sticking it to the Chicoms
February 6th, 2007
Kevin Libin, former editor of the Western Standard and now the National Post’s Alberta correspondent, has a superb column in this month’s issue of Financial Post Business magazine. In his view, liberal and leftist critics are being hypocrites in attacking prime minister Stephen Harper’s pro-human rights stance vis-à-vis China.
On the one hand, Libin writes, the left considers the crusade against “climate change” a moral imperative, having inflated protecting the environment into a virtual litmus test of human goodness. Yet, on the other hand:
And how do we feel about business dealings that harm living, breathing human beings? Hold on, say some of these same critics. Let’s not be hasty. We owe it to ourselves to consider the economic implications before taking a firm stance on human rights.
Not only is the left’s cravenness on this issue hypocritical, its desire to blink in the face of the big, glowering communist tyranny is misplaced. The “Chicoms”, as I still love to call this odious regime without irony, need Canada’s markets and resources far more than we need them, Libin shows.
The broader question is, why is the liberal-left so extreme in its partisanship that it won’t support Harper even when he’s doing what they claim is their life’s work? It’s almost as if liberals don’t want any conservative, anytime, to have human rights driving a policy or bilateral relationship.
One can only guess at the motive. The embarrassment of having their inconsequential poses put to shame by hard-nosed action is an obvious one. But perhaps it’s simply that no conservative can ever be allowed to be seen as a champion of human rights. Conservatives are always and everywhere bad, and applauding them even this one time simply confuses the line between us and them, between purity of motive and baseness.
Still, the left’s – and, in this case, much of Canada’s mainstream establishment’s – is an especially shameful pose right now, when there’s an actual Canadian citizen under a death sentence in China. Aren’t liberals against the death penalty, even for Saddam Hussein?
