The following is an excerpt from OpinionJournal.com’s “Best of the Web” written by the editor, James Taranto.
If We Can’t Impose Our Values, Whose Can We Impose?
President Obama “said Monday that the United States cannot impose its values on other countries,” Agence France-Presse reports. But what exactly this means isn’t terribly clear:
“The danger I think is when the United States or any country thinks that we can simply impose these values on another country with a different history and a different culture,” the president told the broadcaster.
But he stressed: “Democracy, rule of law, freedom of speech, freedom of religion–those are not simply principles of the West to be hoisted but rather what I believe to be universal principles that they can embrace and affirm as part of their national identity.”
He sounds a lot like George W. Bush, and not only because of the malapropism (he meant “foisted,” not “hoisted”). In his 2003 State of the Union Address, Bush declared, “The liberty we prize is not America’s gift to the world, it is God’s gift to humanity.” This was more poetic than Obama’s formulation, but substantively identical, except from the standpoint of a militant atheist who object to bringing God into it.
What exactly does Obama mean when he says America can’t impose his values? He didn’t say; the transcript shows he quickly changed the subject to closing Guantanamo. But another AFP dispatch may shed some light on the administration’s views:
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton vowed Monday to fight for gay rights, calling for all nations to stop violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation. . . .
While acknowledging that gays and lesbians still had a long path to equality in the United States, Clinton deplored that gays in some parts of the world live in constant fear of arrest or violence.
“The persecution of gays and lesbians is a violation of human rights and an affront to human decency, and it must end,” she said.
“As secretary of state, I will advance a comprehensive human rights agenda that includes the elimination of violence and discrimination against people based on sexual orientation or gender identity.”
We agree with Mrs. Clinton up to a point, but wouldn’t this be an example of trying to impose American values on other countries?
Maybe not. The Boston Globe reports that on the domestic front, Obama himself is hemming and hawing. The headline says it all: “Obama Calls for Equal Rights for Gays, but No Promises on Timetable.” In other words, Obama knows that a substantial portion of the American public disagrees with him on this matter, and for whatever reason, he does not see fit to take political risks to achieve his stated goals.
Given that, it seems accurate to say that America lacks a consensus on the subject of gay rights–that neither side can definitively claim its values are America’s. By that standard, then, Mrs. Clinton is acting in accord with the president’s instruction not to try to impose American values on other countries. Only if her side wins the debate at home would she be barred from trying to impose her values abroad.
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