Sunday, December 27, 2009

Commissar Clinton

Earlier this month, I noted that "democracy" is not among "the three Ds" -- "defense, development and diplomacy" -- that Hillary Clinton says, in one of her stock speeches, animate the administration's concept of global leadership. In other words, "democracy" does not even "medal" within its own letter.

As the Post's editors explain:


Ms. Clinton's lumping of economic and social "rights" with political and personal freedom was a standard doctrine of the Soviet Bloc, which used to argue at every East-West conference that human rights in Czechoslovakia were superior to those in the United States, because one provided government health care that the other lacked. In fact, as U.S. diplomats used to tirelessly respond, rights of liberty -- for free expression and religion, for example -- are unique in that they are both natural and universal

Hillary Clinton isn't much a Secretary of State, but she would have made an excellent Commissar.