Category Archives: morality

The Correct Way

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The People’s Republic of China demands that the Republic of China be referred to, exclusively, as Taiwan, Province of China.

A large number of institutions cravenly go along with that, solely for their personal political gain, including—especially shamefully—an American high school.

Colorado’s Regis Jesuit High School applied for credentials to attend the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women.

The purpose of attending was to give some students a taste of foreign affairs.

That’s when the PRC, a member of that commission, instructed the school to mend its ways. The PRC, through that commission, instructed the school to “fix” an obscure reference to the RoC on its Web site:

…modify[] it to “Taiwan, Province of China.”

Christina Vela, the Spanish teacher responsible for the application, meekly complied—and she got her school permitted to attend the commission. What a lesson in foreign affairs that process was.

Nor was this American high school alone in its obsequiousness.

China cited improper Taiwan terminology to stall applications from at least six other groups, including the World Bicycle Industry Association, a French nature society called the Association of 3 Hedgehogs and For All Moonkind, a volunteer team of space lawyers trying to preserve lunar landing sites so they don’t become tourist traps in the far-off future.

Iain Patton, Environmental Association for Universities and Colleges CEO, another organization seeking permission to attend the commission, added Province of China some of the group’s Web site references after being told to do so by the commission.

We did it because we’re intent on getting in and influencing that [UN] system from within.

Left entirely unaddressed is how Patton or his organization expect to influence “the system” from within when his first act is to timidly succumb to that system’s diktat.

On the other hand, the PRC’s UN representative Zhang Zhe, makes the case (albeit unintentionally) for not “correcting” references to the RoC.

“…sovereignty and territorial integrity of UN member states” is a core UN principle, so “using correct terminology is one of the most basic criteria for submitting applications.”

Indeed, and the logic applies, also, to nations not members of the UN, including nations like the Republic of China which was so shamefully and spinelessly expelled from the UN’s Security Council and then from the UN altogether.

Thus, the correct way to write the name of the nation that’s on the island of Taiwan is “Republic of China.”

Full stop.

“A Retreat on Racial Preferences”

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That’s the headline on a Tuesday editorial in The Wall Street Journal. The Editors opened with

The Biden Administration has been losing in court on its racially biased policies, and last week something remarkable happened. It gave up. Without explanation, the Justice Department declined to appeal a federal court injunction against a discriminatory loan-forgiveness program for farmers.

The decision not to defend appears to be widespread.

More than a dozen lawsuits have been filed challenging the USDA’s racial preferences, and three so far have resulted in preliminary injunctions by district courts in Florida, Wisconsin and Texas. Justice failed to appeal the Florida injunction before its 60-day deadline last week and hasn’t contested the others.

But maybe not. This collection of decisions only concerns the Ag Department, not other parts of the Biden-Harris (it’s Biden’s demand, after all, that the administration be termed Biden-Harris) Executive Branch.

Without explanation—without public explanation, perhaps. Another explanation might be that, sotto voce, President Joe Biden (D) and his co-President (co-Vice President?), Kamala Harris (D), fear that their Executive Branch’s racism is getting to be too obvious to too many average Americans.

It’s no retreat, actually, nor even a retrograde, but only a misdirection. This administration continues to push racist policies in Defense, with its critical race “theory” spew; in Justice, with its push for “diversity” for diversity’s sake; in Education, with its push to have critical race “theory” and its parallel and misnomered “anti-racism” taught in K-12.

In Which the Supreme Court Gets One Right, So Far

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Whole Woman’s Health et al v Austin Reeve Jackson, Judge, et al On Application for Injunctive Relief is a case brought to the Supreme Court by plaintiffs seeking injunction against a newly effective Texas law that bars abortions when a doctor can detect a fetal heartbeat and assigns to the citizens of Texas sole authority to enforce the law, through civil court action.

By a 5-4 vote, the Court declined to enter the matter at this stage of litigation, thereby permitting Texas’ law to remain in effect.

I have some thoughts on the matter.

Here’s the core of Chief Justice Roberts’ dissent from the Court’s decision to not interfere, at this time, with Texas’ heartbeat law:

I would grant preliminary relief to preserve the status quo ante—before the law went into effect—so that the courts may consider whether a state can avoid responsibility for its laws in such a manner.

It’s interesting that Roberts would so misconstrue the situation. Even at the State level, the citizens are sovereign, not the governments they hire/elect from time to time. Far from Texans’ government avoiding responsibility for its laws, it has put that responsibility in the present case, without filter, where responsibility originates: with the sovereign citizenry.

Here’s Justice Breyer, dissenting:

But a woman has a federal constitutional right to obtain an abortion during that first stage.

True enough, as far as it goes, but it, and Breyer, don’t go very far. The baby has a prior, unalienable right to its life.

Then Breyer raised a non sequitur, unusual for a Supreme Court Justice:

The very bringing into effect of Texas’s law may well threaten the applicants with imminent and serious harm. One of the clinic applicants has stated on its website that “[d]ue to Texas’ SB 8 law,” it is “unable to provide abortion procedures at this time.” Planned Parenthood South Texas [URL omitted] And the applicants, with supporting affidavits, claim that clinics will be unable to run the financial and other risks that come from waiting for a private person to sue them under the Texas law; they will simply close….

That’s purely speculative, however plausibly so, and so it’s beyond the scope of any American court’s reach. Aside from that, and more importantly, it may be unfortunate for Planned Parenthood South Texas, but that’s all it is. No business, no entity of any sort, has a Constitutional right to a particular business model. On the contrary, any business’ model must be designed to operate within the bounds of law.

Here’s Justice Sotomayor, dissenting:

The Act [SB8], which took effect statewide at midnight on September 1, makes it unlawful for physicians to perform abortions if they either detect cardiac activity in an embryo or fail to perform a test to detect such activity.

And yet the presence of cardiac activity—Sotomayor’s (cynical, I say) euphemism for a heartbeat—clearly shows that the baby is alive, and not just a cluster of cells (as many pro-abortionists assert babies to be). That brings us back to the part about the baby having a prior, unalienable right to its life.

The Court’s ruling can be read here.

An Example

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…of what an honorable government does. This is the Republic of Korea.

From Laura Bicker, @BBCLBicker, via Lyman Stone @lymanstoneky:

@BBCLBicker
380 Afghans who worked for the Korean government in Afghanistan will arrive in South Korea tomorrow according to MOFA [Republic of Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs]. They will not be entering as refugees, but as people of merit to the country says the Foreign Ministry.
9:20 PM · Aug 24, 2021

@BBCLBicker
The 380 are currently at Kabul Airport and will arrive in Incheon tomorrow by military plane. These are Afghans who have worked for years at the Embassy, KOICA, Bagram Korean Hospital, Bagram Korean Vocational Training centre, Chairkar Korean Provincial Reconstruction Team.

@BBCLBicker
The Afghan staff and families will go through the quarantine process as soon as they arrive in Incheon Airport and will then be moved to government owned temporary housing. All notes from MOFA briefing monitored by @HosuLakeLee

Unfortunately—dangerously—we have the Biden/Harris administration instead.

Two Congressmen Went on a Trip

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Congressmen Seth Moulton (D, MA) and Peter Meijer (R, MI) went to Kabul, Afghanistan to see for themselves the situation there. They didn’t want to rely solely on President Joe Biden’s (D) word, or those of SecDef Lloyd Austin or JCS Chairman General Mark Milley. Even worse, they didn’t say, “Mother, may I” before heading off.

What’s really bad, though, is that Biden, et al., weren’t interested in what Moulton and Meijer learned on their trip—it was the fact of the trip itself and that the travelers bypassed the Wonders of the Potomac in the going. In fact, the Biden/Harris administration quite angry about the Congressmen’s impudence.

Biden administration officials were furious about the trip, claiming that the arrival of the men caused a distraction for the personnel on the ground attempting to do a job amid chaos. One senior official told the Washington Post, “They’re taking seats away from Americans and at-risk Afghans—while putting our diplomats and service members at greater risk—so they can have a moment in front of the cameras.”

This isn’t just disingenuous, it’s utterly dishonest. No seats were taken away from at-risk Afghans, not when Biden has abandoned them completely in his panic to get our military out of Afghanistan by the end of the month, on Taliban orders.

Even worse is that lack of interest in what the two observed:

leaving on a passenger flight [but only if that ride had three empty seats] and being taken to an area where evacuees are being temporarily relocated will provide them with on-the-ground knowledge of what the rescue process looks like, and aid their ability to deliver oversight.

Biden, et al., already know all the answers; they have no interest in facts.