Joseph Bottum has written a scathing criticism of Vice President Joe Biden’s recent remarks about China’s one-child policy. In a gaffe on August 21, Vice President Biden said that he didn’t want to “second-guess” China’s one-child policy—a policy that has led to countless forced sterilizations and forced abortions in China. Bottum responds:
In the days since Biden’s August 21 comments at Sichuan University, the White House has tried to walk it all back. “The Obama administration strongly opposes all aspects of China’s coercive birth limitation policies, including forced abortion and sterilization,” read a statement from Biden’s spokeswoman Kendra Barkoff. “The vice president believes such practices are repugnant.”
Indeed, his supporters argue, Biden was actually criticizing the one child policy by saying it was “not sustainable” financially. As, for instance, one might have criticized the Politburo’s 1930 decision to exterminate the middle-class kulaks as opponents of the Soviet regime by mentioning to Stalin that the policy seemed, well, a trifle counterproductive. Financially speaking.
Of course, if the vice president had actually wanted to talk about what he believes, he might have mentioned that the Catholic Church to which he belongs condemns, on what it claims are universal moral grounds, all deliberate destruction of the family—although that would have taken courage, at a moment when Chinese-Vatican relations are dangerously inflamed.
This is hard-hitting, and you can read the rest here.
One Comment
yankeegospelgirl
Funny. Bottum has always been a great writer.