Or alternatively, your “Obama’s truly a freaking wimp” post of the day. Apparently U.S. officials decided to sit down with Chinese representatives to discuss human rights. The American officials decided to equate our human rights situation with that of China.

Posner said in addition to talks on freedom of religion and expression, labor rights and rule of law, officials also discussed Chinese complaints about problems with U.S. human rights, which have included crime, poverty, homelessness and racial discrimination.

He said U.S. officials did not whitewash the American record and in fact raised on its [their?] own a new immigration law in Arizona that requires police to ask about a person’s immigration status if there is suspicion the person is in the country illegally.

Just in case that wasn’t abundantly clear, American officials decided to concede to their Chinese counter-parts that the United States has its own human rights problems. Like laws making sure people are in the country legally. And crime.

Jay Nordlinger:

I hope I have read that incorrectly, or am interpreting it incorrectly. Did we, the United States, talking to a government that maintains a gulag, that denies people their basic rights, that in all probability harvests organs, apologize for thenew immigration law in Arizona? Really, really?

Yes and yes. We live in a country governed by leftist community organizers who consider health insurance to be an essential human right. Many of them likely admire the spirit, if not execution, of China’s Communist policies. I mean, hey, health care and housing for all, right? Maybe one day, if Obama works hard enough and those nasty Republicans don’t get in the way, we can have a full-on statist system here, too.

On a more serious note, I’m not quite sure why “crime” belongs in a discussion about human rights. Is a crime-free nation now considered a human right, because if so I’m pretty sure every nation in existence is guilty of human rights violations. Same thing with homelessness and poverty. We’d all like to eliminate both tragedies, of course, but there’s a difference between undesirable conditions and actual human rights.