Confronting Terrorism and Totalitarianism in Our Time
What you have in North Korea is a replay of the atrocities of Stalinist communist totalitarianism in Russia and Hitler’s Nazi totalitarianism in Germany. These each resulted in the lost of about 20 million lives and these tragedies were possibly exceeded by the loss of life under Mao’s communist totalitarian rule in China. It is China and Russia that have sponsored and supported a similar totalitarian rule in North Korea.
The United States has consistently unvalued the role of ideas in foreign policy. First, we have not conveyed that our primary moral concept is equality, understood as a respect for human dignity and our common humanity. We have certainly struggled to live up to this ideal, but Jefferson, Madison, Tocqueville, Lincoln, and the great reformers such as the women suffragettes and Martin Luther King, Jr. all considered equality be our primary moral concept. It is the concept of a respect for personal dignity our common humanity that would make possible the accommodation of diversity and a wide variety of attributes possible in a pluralistic global community without coercion or alienation.
The political tragedies of the 20th Century bore witness to the need for a respect for human dignity and our common humanity. In 1948, the United Nations, for example, thus passed The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Preamble begins, “Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.”
Second we have failed to effectively contrast the concepts of universal equality and human rights to even the most brutal tactics of ISIS and the totalitarian regime in North Korea. We have even been reluctant in these cases to even identify and condemn the extreme brutality of both terrorism and totalitarianism in our time. This ideological battle of ideas, however, should also be a foundational part of our foreign policy and our defense of civilization against both anarchy and totalitarianism.
Fox News -- Anne Pierce
Stress North Korean Atrocities and China’s Shameful Role
“Trump administration officials should more frequently condemn North Korea’s extreme human rights violations. It is the extremism of the regime that makes its nuclear weapons so dangerous.”
