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This is not a political cartoon and I’m not taking anyone’s side. I’m just asking a question.
Chen Guangcheng is a brave guy who, according to his TIME, “is best known for exposing alleged abuses in official family-planning policy, often involving claims of violence and forced abortions.” Even Batman went to visit him!
But how can the world applaud his efforts, press for his release and freedom, but turn a blind eye to the darkness he uncovered? And how then can a nation in which 50 million innocent children have been aborted spend so much time, effort, and media attention on a single person who another country considered a criminal? If leadership has so little care for the most innocent of its own citizenry, isn’t this sort of prime-time diplomacy just an expensive show on an international stage that, in the end, means nothing and results in less than that?
In a way, the Chinese government’s persistent reaction to US intervention is sharp and thought-provoking. They insist, and rightly so (maybe), that things like this are an internal matter.
But I’m genuinely interested in what you, the readers, might think about these questions:
1) By what right or authority does America suggest or impress its will on other nations? When is it right or not right to do so, if ever?
2) Is it not slightly contradictory that a nation would spend so much time, effort, and media attention on someone whom another nation considered criminal, yet sweep so many of its own failings under the rug (I won’t name them here)?
3) Doesn’t China have the right to point to America’s own human rights record to show that any assumed moral high ground has long ago eroded?
To me, in the end all people are familiar with this story are faced with a moral question regarding guilt and innocence and their relationship to the right or wrongness of punishment.
(And please know that I’m all for “world peace.” I just don’t have the realistic expectation that it’s going to happen as long as the human heart remains evil. And there are no signs that is going to change, this side of God’s grace and judgment through His Son, Jesus.)
Let me know what you think. (Comments with personal insults will be deleted, but knock yourself out.)
