Yesterday, during remarks at Sichuan University yesterday, Joe Biden said:
Your policy has been one which I fully understand — I’m not second-guessing — of one child per family. The result being that you’re in a position where one wage earner will be taking care of four retired people. Not sustainable.
Forced abortion. Fully understandable, in the words of our Scranton-born, rosary-clutching vice president?
I am pretty sure Michigan Republican congressman Thad McCotter wouldn’t have minded if Biden had borrowed some of his words instead. McCotter spoke with urgent clarity on the issue at the Ames Straw Poll (the subject of my syndicated column this week). Biden also could have taken some leadership lessons from John Boehner, who brought the issue up with Chinese president Hu Jintao when he was in Washington earlier this year. Needless to say, the speaker of the House was not as understanding.
“It’s disappointing that Vice President Biden did not mention the severe women’s rights atrocities that are committed in the name of the One Child Policy — forced abortion, involuntary sterilization, and gendercide,” Reggie Littlejohn, president of Women’s Rights without Frontiers, says. “China’s One Child Policy causes more violence to women and girls than any other official policy on earth. To merely mention the economic consequences is to turn a blind eye to the terrible human suffering caused by forced abortion. Chinese women are literally dragged out of their homes, strapped to tables and forced to abort.”
The policy, as it happens, has been not only a moral but a demographic disaster. “The One Child Policy was instituted for economic reasons,” Littlejohn adds. “It’s ironic that through this very policy, China has written it’s own economic, demographic death sentence.”
Let’s make sure the next White House administration gets all this, instead of kowtowing to our creditor.
How dare you question the Sage of Wilmington. He's been on Charlie Rose like a zillion times.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseNow maybe he could comment on some unsustainable policies in this country?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWhat is it with these acronyms (or whatever you want to call them) like T-Paw & VPOTUS. As I mentioned in a previous comment, is Pawlenty so long that it needs abbreviation? Is he a hip-hop 'artist'?
Just as annoying are POTUS & VPOTUS. Especially since Obama has the same number of letters as POTUS and Biden is actually shorter than VPOTUS. What exactly is gained by using these pretentious acronyms? If people need something shorter than Obama, try Pres. For Biden, VP.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseRasputin, this is hardly the most important issue out there. However, we can't always talk about the most important issue. Sometimes we have to talk about the little annoyances. And I'm glad you did, because I agree with you. At least one NR writer (can't remember which one) made fun of it a while back, coining "FLOTUS" (first lady), "SLOTUS" (second lady, or VP's wife) and "DOTUS" (for the president's dog).
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseBiden's fine with the holocaust that has resulted from the one Child policy in China but is only concerned because of its effect on social services. Very nice. Maybe he should praise them for Tiananmen square where they killed a number of adults, thus relieving pressure on the entitlement system 20 some odd years later.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI think you're being a bit hard on Joe -- this time. He didn't say he approved of it, he said he understood it: one child per family. "Understanding" is not necessarily approving, or even tolerating. It's "having a complete grasp of the subject in question."
If FDR had confronted Hitler during WWII and said something like "I understand you're sending Jews, Gypsies and other minorities to concentration camps," I don't think anyone would have said Roosevelt approved of the policy.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse@JamesS,
Nope. Nice try but no cigar. "I understand" can indicate a certain level of approval and toleration.
If FDR had said, "I understand your desire to send Jews to the gas chamber," that would have indicated sympathy with the idea. It would not have meant that FDR had an intellectual understanding of Nazi ideology.
It would definitely be sympathy if he then added that "I'm not second guessing you."
In this case, Biden's remarks indicate tolerance and approval.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI'm not sure we're all tracking quite how Biden thinks. Try to consider the situation from the perspective of someone with a brain the size of a walnut:
1. All my smart guys tell me I should be talking about how China kills babies, because the polls say it's bad.
2. I thought Poland was way far away from China, but if the smart guys say so.
3. But the smart guys also say my job is to shake hands and smile and stuff!
Ummm... more than 3. I like my job. Maybe I'll tell them a story!
3 and a half? The smart guys said, no, no story, try to make it about economonic and social development. I like smiling and talking and stuff!
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI don't understand the excitement over the VP, Dem. Joe Bi......teme saying:
"Your policy has been one which I fully understand — I’m not second-guessing — of one child per family. "
Isn't that the policy of Planned Parenthood? Isn't Planned Parenthood one of the most steadfast supporters of the Democratic (sic) Party? Wasn't that the policy of Sanger, Progressive, Founder of Planned Parenthood? Isn't that the policy of the psychotic environmentalists "concerned" about the "carrying capacity" of the Earth, global warming, and our fellow animal sapiens? Isn't the Chicom government that made the policy the apotheosis of the form of government that Democrats and other thugs like Thomas Friedman want?
Where is the news in this?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseMaybe we're all looking at this through the wrong end of the glass.
What if sending Joe Biden to China was a clever way to insult the Chinese? Those people are all about status and saving face. What better way to stick it to them than by sending an inconsequential blabbermouth fool. Nobody takes him seriously they must realize that. And these things the press is reporting about him well they're not telling the whole story. I saw on the internet somewhere - so you know it's got to be true - that Biden at every meal pushes aside the chopsticks and pulls out a cellophane wrapped plastic fork out of his pocket. Also he stopped up a toilet in some People's Hall or something. The guy's an embarassment.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWhat was Joe Biden's law school graduation class ranking?
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuseit seems the only pro choice decision is to choose killing the babies...there is NO choice to have two children...
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuseso...pro-choice just means the right to choose to kill babies....NOT a right to choose to have two or three babies?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseMaybe he meant what he said, that he understands what the policy is. And that's that. Not that he agrees or disagrees, he's not there to second guess them, but he does understand what the policy is.
Maybe the problem here is with Biden's critics looking to make him seem stupid and say disagreeable things. They don't seem to understand that the word "understand" has many different connotations, with the main one being "I comprehend" rather than "I totally 100% agree with you killing children."
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"Biden's critics looking to make him seem stupid and say disagreeable things"-- it is entirely TOO easy to make good ole' Joe look stupid and disagreeable
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"They don't seem to understand that the word 'understand' has many different connotations, with the main one being 'I comprehend' rather than 'I totally 100% agree with you killing children.' "
Do you "comprehend" the killing of children, the forced sterilization of women, the forced abortions on women, or the gendercide occuring in China, Benny62? Because I cannot "comprehend" how our VP can go there and either "undertand" or "comprehend" it.
This is quite different than saying, "I understand why you believe it is necessary, but we believe there must be better ways to acheive it, with less human suffering..."
His comments instead were nothing short of a disgrace to our country, and any organization that aligns itself with "human rights" should be calling us on it, just as loudly as they should be calling China on it, right now.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseDoesn't Old Uncle Joe see the logical solution to the 4 to 1 ratio caused by the killing of the unborn... Simply kill the old and infirm when they become a burden to the state. When the state rules people, no person matters.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWhat else can one expect a borrower to do to the debtor except kowtowing? The only alternative is to cease to be a borrower anymore by bestirring oneself and straightening up oneself to regain one's honorable self-reliance and proud independence? But will American politicians avidly married to "economic globalism" and "free trade" with foreign countries change their mind and acknowledge the critical role of "economic nationalism" and "trade protectionism" instead of busily demonizing them and their honest advocates? I don't see any hope unless the whole American public awaken itself, scrap their harmful and chronically suicidal consumption habit and thoroughly end their addiction to Chinese goods one and forever. Again, I don't see much hope on that either. Alas...
As to the sentence "It's ironic that through this very policy, China has written it’s own economic, demographic death sentence." Not necessarily. I for one with years of China watching together with some gimlet-eyed pals don't believe a hoot that China would suffer the fate as written cocksure in this averment. China, with its world-defying, globe-trotting, US-overriding hyper-power status politically, economically, militarily and comprehensively, simply can resort to the most convenient and efficient method in getting women for its own men i.e. robbing and looting them from foreign lands with sheer force or some financial enticement, perhaps from the North American continent one day in a future not too faraway. If there is still any vestige of self-respect, dignity and national pride lingering in the heart of Americans, it is high time to rise up and change the course of this nation to restore, revive and reinvigorate her again to counter and thwart the coming Chinese onslaught and predictable ravage in its wake so as to prevent our women and girls from falling as booties in the hands of the communist and jingoist Chinese bandits and suffer similar fate of being trampled, mauled and devastated by the brutal savages.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse