Recently, in another context, a Chinese colleague reminded me that the West long used human rights as a club against China, for naked political gain, while conveniently defining the term so as to make themselves wholly blameless. The poor kids stuck in the barrios of major cities and ground up in our ‘justice’ system were never victims of the horrid human rights violations like in China, you know.
This indeed diminishes all who would take the same banner, but of course once the US started torturing the entire concept became meaningless, and indeed freedom, democracy, terrorism and torture are all today poorly defined, sloganesque cudgels with which one country or culture can beat another. The words almost mean nothing today. And these instruments of behavioral modification are becoming less and less effective.
Of course, as I believe I have mentioned, the US was sanctioning and teaching torture even back during the great days of Reagan, and all through the Clinton Admin.
So the hypocrisy of today is not actually worse than that of before, in one aspect at least.
Today’s hypocrisy is just a bit more…naked.
The problem is that the banner is important. But the argument has to be made all over again.
What is the best relationship between the state and the individual? We have our system in the West, but the crime and violence we put up with seems dangerous for China, with its large population.