Cambria, CA -- Oops. Sorry. Wrong President. Wrong country.

Wrong decade. But right idea. It was perhaps too much to hope that the politician from Hope (Ark.) would match the Great Communicator’s ringing pronouncement of ten years ago in Berlin. But if President Clinton has not yet caught up to President Reagan’s point on the presidential learning curve, he nonetheless has shown a few signs of progress on his current trip to China. We give him a C- for his current efforts; up from a D- during Premier Jiang’s visit to the United States last year.

When discussing the issue of human rights with Jiang in Washington, Clinton said he thought China “was on the wrong side of history.” Jiang must have wondered what strange hall of mirrors he had stumbled into, for Clinton was making a Marxist argument to a nation that has been gradually eschewing Marxist economics (though not authoritarianism). Besides, as the “tide of history” is often determined by the nation with the biggest army, Jiang could retire comfortably with the view that the tide of history might just as likely leave Mr. Clinton stranded on a sandbar somewhere.

This week, Jiang is proving himself to be the perfect multiculturalist, stressing that “the two countries have different means and ways of realizing human rights and fundamental freedoms.” Chinese citizens, Jiang said, have the very same democratic rights as Americans. Clinton answered weakly that we believe that human rights are universal, and cited as his authority the United Nations! He then apologized for the “painful moments” in American history when we fell short of our ideals, as though he was afraid the Chinese might suggest that Kent State was the moral equivalent of Tiananmen Square. (Clinton ought to acquaint himself with Lincoln’s famous speech about the Dred Scott case before he tries this again.)

Clinton did mention the Declaration of Independence, but not the most important passage that is the ground of the proper understanding of human rights--the passage beginning with “We hold these truths to be self-evident…” Appealing instead to the authority of United Nations makes human rights simply a matter of will and majoritarianism. Various UN resolutions on rights have included such “rights” as vacations with pay, maternity leave, full employment, and free medical care. No doubt many liberals think these “rights” are indistinguishable from the right to free speech, the right to free exercise of religion, and other rights we hold against the government.

Precisely because Clinton is in fundamental agreement with the modern liberal confusion about rights, he is unable to make an unequivocal case to the Chinese. He made no reference to human nature. As Harry Jaffa reminds us: “To demand that foreign governments respect the rights of human beings--as distinct from fellow citizens, dogs, cats, proletarians, or the bourgeoisie--implies that there is a common human nature, in virtue of which there are rights shared by all men everywhere. Because the nature which is the cause of these rights is everywhere the same, the duties with respect to these rights are equally universal.” That’s more like what the Gipper would have said.

-- Steven Hayward