A Broken Promise

Historically, Britain leased Hong Kong from China. However, in 1984, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Chinese Premier Zhao Ziyang negotiated the underlying plan for the lease to end, such that Hong Kong would remain a semi-autonomous region for a 50-year period after the lease ended. According to that agreement, Hong Kong would remain free and semi-autonomous until 2034. Unfortunately that is not what is happening.

Yesterday The Federalist reported that Joshua Wong and Agnes Chow were arrested and sent to prison on Wednesday following their involvement in a series of protests created in resistance to the Chinese Communist Party’s tightening control of the territory.

The article reports:

Joshua Wong received the heaviest sentence with 13 and a half months in prison, Agnes Chow was sentenced to 10 months, and Ivan Lam received seven months. While Wong has been charged in other cases, Chow is still facing potential charges of inciting secession and all of the activists are subject to further scrutiny from the Chinese government.

…Wong, Chow, and Lam were all part of a pro-democracy political party Demosisto, which disbanded shortly before the communist National People’s Congress passed a new “security” law in July that criminalizes regular protest activity as “terrorism” for disrupting traffic, “subversion” for disrupting any government agents, and “secession” for groups speaking of potential independence. Any attempt by protest groups to work with the members of the international community was also made a criminal offense.

Violators of the new legislation were subjected to harsh punishments including potential life in prison.

The activists previously pleaded guilty for participating in what was deemed an “unauthorized assembly” in front of police headquarters in June of last year when the pro-democracy protest movement first began to gain international attention.

As noted by the New York Times, both Wong and Lam, eventually joined by Chow, were influential in organizing and lifting Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement off of the ground. Nearly 10 years ago, the activists recognized the influence the Chinese Communist Party was having on their generation and began to coordinate protests against a “national education curriculum in Hong Kong schools, which they considered ‘brainwashing.’”

The young activists also helped organize the Umbrella Movement, a series of campaigns and protests against “limits on direct elections in 2014.”

When urgency and awareness picked up about the Hong Kongers’ fight for freedom in 2019 following protests over China’s intention to extradite criminal offenders to be tried in mainland China, they rose into the international spotlight as leaders of the movement.

This doesn’t sound as if China is living up to its part of the bargain. The really sad part is that no country in the world will stand up to China on this matter. In that case, we can expect a total end to freedom in Hong Kong.

Avoiding The Obvious For Political Reasons

Hillary Clinton and her daughter, Chelsea, have written a book called The Book of Gutsy Women. There are more than a hundred women included in the book. The book includes such people as Madame Curie, Anne Frank, Helen Keller, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Florence Nightingale. Included also are Ellen DeGeneres and Billie Jean King. Actually there are a lot of good choices in terms of who is included in the book. More telling, however, is who is not.

On Thursday, The American Thinker posted an article titled, “Five ‘Gutsy Women’ Who Didn’t Make it into Hillary Clinton’s Book.” Those five women are Margaret Thatcher, Clare Boothe Luce, Ayn Rand, Laura Ingalls Wilder, and Phyllis Schlafly.

The article notes:

To be “gutsy,” according to the Clintons, is “about never giving up — and working to pave the way for the next generation.”

With that in mind, here are the profiles of five gutsy women who didn’t make the list because they don’t fit Hillary’s politically correct narrative.

Please follow the link above to read the entire article. The women conveniently left out were significant trailblazers. It’s a shame that Mrs. Clinton and her daughter choose not to recognize accomplishment when it doesn’t fit their political agenda.

The Economic System That Works

We have all heard the expression, “The proof is in the pudding.” In other words, you can judge the value of something by how well it works. Sounds like common sense, but somehow common sense occasionally takes a vacation from our political dialog. Recently, the left wing of the Democrat party has come out in support of socialism. Tom Steyer and George Soros have invested millions of dollars into Democrat candidates who support socialism while many Democrats are trying to play down the fact that the party is flirting with socialist ideas. Capitalism has dropped in approval among the public while socialism is popular in many circles. Yet when you compare the results of the two economic systems, capitalism helps many more people than socialism.

Yesterday Investor’s Business Daily posted an editorial titled, “The Coming Global Middle-Class Majority: Thank Capitalism, Not Socialism, For The Boom.”

Here are some highlights from the editorial:

…capitalism in the last few decades has had the most revolutionary impact on improving human lives in history.

And yes, that’s a fact, one reaffirmed in a new study by the liberal-leaning Brookings Institution think tank.

The study validates what some have known now for years: Capitalism makes everyone wealthier, even the poor. But it also magically turns hundreds of millions of poor people into the middle class. It’s the greatest economic transformation ever.

The Brookings study, by Homi Kharas, asserts that in just two years — 2020 — the majority of the world’s estimated 7.5 billion people will be “middle class.” Kharas defines middle class as anyone who can pay for food, shelter and clothing, with enough left to supply some luxuries, including TV, a motorbike or car, higher education, home improvements and better food.

The editorial notes the difference between perception and reality:

Put another way, thanks to the free-market revolution that is still reshaping the world, per person global output increased more in the 15 years after the fall of communism than it had in the previous 10,000 years of human civilization.

To say this is an underrecognized, underreported phenomenon is an understatement. Today, in our colleges and universities, our best students learn that the world is bifurcated sharply into haves and have-nots, a result of capitalism run amok. And that capitalism leaves a small handful of people richer but the rest of us poorer.

Simply not true. Indeed, most of the world is getting richer, largely due to free trade, more open investment, and the recognition by many countries that not all regulations are good. And among those who have benefited the most are those who are the poorest.

Socialism didn’t achieve these things. Capitalism, now a dirty word, did. Yet, as we’ve mentioned before, a recent Gallup Poll shows that among those aged 18 to 29, 51% have a positive view of socialism while just 45% have a positive view of capitalism. They’re sadly mistaken.

As left-leaning economist Robert Heilbroner so eloquently wrote in the pages of the New Yorker all the way back in 1989, “Less than 75 years after it officially began, the contest between capitalism and socialism is over: capitalism has won … Capitalism organizes the material affairs of humankind more satisfactorily than socialism.”

The editorial concludes:

Yes, growth cycles go up, and they go down. But there is no question that the free market policies put in place in the early 1980s under U.S. President Ronald Reagan and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher have had an enormous effect around the world. The ideas they fostered and that other governments picked up made the world a much wealthier place. They helped pull literally hundreds of millions out of poverty and misery.

Remember that the next time you hear Sen. Bernie Sanders, Sen. Elizabeth Warren or congresswoman wannabe Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez extol the wonders of socialism. Capitalism creates wealth. Socialism creates poverty. And the explosion in the global middle class proves it.

I guess those who support candidates espousing socialism need to study recent economics and history.

He Didn’t Even ‘Phone It In’

It bothers me that President Obama chose not to attend Justice Scalia’s funeral. Evidently I am not the only person bothered. Charles Lipson is the Peter B. Ritzma Professor of Political Science and the founder and director of the Program on International Politicis, Economics and Security at the University of Chicago. On Thursday he posted an article at Real Clear Politics about President Obama’s absence from the funeral.

The article reminds us:

President Obama’s decision not to attend Justice Antonin Scalia‘s funeral is shameful. It mirrors his decision to skip the state funeral for Margaret Thatcher in 2013. On these somber, formal occasions, the president is called upon to represent our country as the head of state. He is not representing his party, his political agenda, or himself personally. He is representing our country—or at least he should be. On Saturday, it is his duty to mourn a man who sat on the Supreme Court for decades. He is shirking that duty.

President Obama missed the opportunity to bring the nation together. Unfortunately, during his term as President, he has generally missed opportunities to unite Americans.

The article concludes:

President Obama need not reach these rhetorical heights. But he ought to behave with quiet dignity and represent our nation at Scalia’s funeral. He does not have to pretend he agreed with Scalia’s decisions. He does not have to praise the justice’s judicial philosophy. But he ought to honor the life of a man who spent three decades on the Supreme Court and five years before that on the U.S. appellate bench.

Refusing to attend the funeral does more than insult the memory of a life-long public servant. It is a failure to perform a basic presidential duty. Obama has shirked his responsibility to all of us.

President Obama has not handled the office of President with class. He has exploited the office and divided Americans rather than uniting them. Hopefully, Americans will elect a President in November who will unite us and respect the office of President.

 

What Goes Around Comes Around

What goes around comes around. Sometimes that is good, sometimes it is not. What happened in Britain’s Parliament yesterday was one of those times when it is not.

Yesterday Fox News posted a story about the vote taken in Britain yesterday regarding getting involved in Syria. The article points out that with the exception of Vietnam, Britain has historically gone to war as an ally of the United States whether or not Britain had any national interest in the dispute. For Britain to refuse to get involved in Syria as it was becoming apparent that America probably would was a new direction in Britain’s foreign policy.

So what is this about? Up until 2009, when President Obama was sworn into office, American and Britain had a ‘special relationship.’ Britain joined us in Iraq and Afghanistan, even though they had no national security interest in either place.

The article at Fox News states:

For instance, although Britain recognized that Al-Qaeda posed a serious threat to the UK, we intervened in Afghanistan because, as Tony Blair succinctly stated at the time, an attack on America was seen as an attack on Britain, such was the strength of the Special Relationship.

With Iraq throughout the nineties and in 2003, America decided Hussein needed dealing with, Britain stepped up. When Clinton expressed broader foreign policy objectives and decided Milosevic needed taking care of in Serbia, Britain was there. There were other reasons too, but Britain’s attitude was “where our ally goes, we go.”

Let’s look at what has happened since 2009. One of President Obama’s first moves in office was to return the bust of Winston Churchill to the British. That bust had been presented to President Bush after 911 as a reminder that Britain stood with us. It was insulting to return it. President Obama declared that America has no stronger ally than France. France? Not a single senior member of the Obama administration attended the funeral of Margaret Thatcher. When Argentina started making noises about wanting to take over the Falkland Islands, the Obama administration, speaking through then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, sided against their best ally, and with Kirchner’s Argentina, demanding Britain sit down with Argentina and negotiate sovereignty of the British territory under the pretense of neutrality.

The Obama Administration has treated Britain shamefully. It is no wonder that he did not get the support for intervention in Syria from the British Parliament when he needed it. The President who came into office saying that he was going to ‘undo the damage George Bush had done to America’s image around the world’ has now succeeded in making even America’s friends dislike her.

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Our Special Relationship With Great Britain Takes Another Hit

Yesterday the U.K. Daily Mail reported that the Obama Administration will not send an official representative to Margaret Thatcher’s funeral.

The article reports:

The Queen’s decision to attend Lady Thatcher‘s funeral has effectively elevated it to a state occasion unprecedented for a political figure in Britain since the death of Sir Winston Churchill in 1965.

Other world leaders, including Canada’s Stephen Harper, Mario Monti of Italy and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, are attending the service in person.

The decision not to attend was made before the bombing in Boston yesterday. It had been assumed that although the President would not attend, he would send a representative. He has chosen not to do that. Some high ranking members of previous American administrations will be attending–two Reagan era secretaries of state: James Baker and George Shultz, former US vice president Dick Cheney and ex-secretary of state Henry Kissinger.

Margaret Thatcher was a pivotal figure of the Twentieth Century. It is simply bad form for the President not to send a representative. This is another misstep in our relationship with Great Britain.

An Interesting Story About Margaret Thatcher

Yesterday Tablet Magazine posted an article posted an article about an event in Margaret Thatcher’s childhood that made a lasting impression on her.

The article reports:

Johnson (Charles Johnson) starts with what Thatcher often said was her greatest accomplishment, which was not her work in helping to topple the Soviet Union or being the first British woman to hold the post of prime minister, but rather, was her work as a child to save a Jewish teenager in Austria from the grasp of Hitler’s terror.

The story begins in 1938 when Edith Muhlbauer, a 17-year-old Jewish girl, wrote a letter to Muriel Roberts, Edith’s pen pal and the future prime minister’s [Margaret Thatcher] older sister. The letter expressed fear that as Hitler began rounding up Jews in Austria that her family would be included in those round-ups. The Roberts family did not have the means to take Edith in, and Margaret, then 12, and Muriel, 17, set about raising funds and persuading the local Rotary club to help. Edith stayed with a number of Rotary families for about two years until she was able to go to South America to join relatives.

The article reports:

Had the Roberts family not intervened, Edith recalled years later, “I would have stayed in Vienna and they would have killed me.” Thatcher never forgot the lesson: “Never hesitate to do whatever you can, for you may save a life,” she told audiences in 1995 after Edith had been located, alive and well, in Brazil.

Prime Minister Thatcher showed courage and determination even as a young adult. It is no wonder that she grew up to be the “Iron Lady.”

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We Have Lost A Great Lady

The U.K. Mail is reporting today that Britain’s Iron Lady, Margaret Thatcher, died this morning. I am citing the U.K. Mail article because it includes a lot of pictures of Prime Minister Thatcher during her time as Prime Minister and after she left office. Lady Thatcher, along with President Reagan, stood up to the Soviet Union, and eventually the Soviet Union collapsed.

Lady Thatcher was Britain’s first and only woman prime minister. She won three consecutive general elections to that post. Please follow the link above to read the article in the U.K. Mail. It is an inspiring story of a lady who broke the mold when it came to British politics.

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