The Olympics were awarded to China instead of several other better choices for purely political reasons. The idea was that giving them the Olympics would encourage them to behave in a more enlightened manner.
In other words, typical liberal political correctness run amok.
Now we’ve got Hillary telling Bush to boycott them, and people trying to steal the torch due to the well-documented human rights abuses in China, the most obvious of which is the continued abuse of the people of Tibet.
This was completely predictable, but as usual the people who made the decision did so based on what they thought would be an “enlightened” decision mostly made to show how good and decent the decision makers were.
People who opposed this were attacked as “bigots” or “xenophobes”.
Now we have the Olympics there, for better or worse, and punishing athletes who have trained all their lives is not the right answer to a situation that was created by the poor judgment and political posturing of the IOC. So go on with the Olympics, give the athletes their stage and continue to use actual effective political pressure to try to effect change in China instead of turning athletes into pawns.
Oh, there is a slim chance that the Olympics themselves will have a positive effect in China. But that is a very slim chance. They didn’t have much positive impact in Berlin or Moscow, did they?
The idea that shining a light on China is going to change world opinion about China is pretty naive, in my opinion. It’s not as if people who actually wanted to know what was going on in China and Tibet have not known for years. As soon as the Olympics are over, people will go back to their myopic view and there will be little, if any, repercussions for China for having a spotlight on them for a few weeks.
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Dean:
The Olympics were awarded to China instead of several other better choices for purely political reasons. The idea was that giving them the Olympics would encourage them to behave in a more enlightened manner.
In other words, typical liberal political correctness run amok.
Now we’ve got Hillary telling Bush to boycott them, and people trying to steal the torch due to the well-documented human rights abuses in China, the most obvious of which is the continued abuse of the people of Tibet.
This was completely predictable, but as usual the people who made the decision did so based on what they thought would be an “enlightened” decision mostly made to show how good and decent the decision makers were.
People who opposed this were attacked as “bigots” or “xenophobes”.
Now we have the Olympics there, for better or worse, and punishing athletes who have trained all their lives is not the right answer to a situation that was created by the poor judgment and political posturing of the IOC. So go on with the Olympics, give the athletes their stage and continue to use actual effective political pressure to try to effect change in China instead of turning athletes into pawns.
CosmicConservative’s last blog post..Hillary fading fast?
Oh, there is a slim chance that the Olympics themselves will have a positive effect in China. But that is a very slim chance. They didn’t have much positive impact in Berlin or Moscow, did they?
The idea that shining a light on China is going to change world opinion about China is pretty naive, in my opinion. It’s not as if people who actually wanted to know what was going on in China and Tibet have not known for years. As soon as the Olympics are over, people will go back to their myopic view and there will be little, if any, repercussions for China for having a spotlight on them for a few weeks.
CosmicConservative’s last blog post..Hillary fading fast?
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