I point out, to those who are befuddled by the Chinese criticizing America’s human rights record, that we are talking about one communist government criticizing another.
See? It makes perfect sense.
“Human rights” you see, means the right to be controlled by an all-knowing and all-powerful government.
Better now?
It amuses me that people still talk about ”communist” China like there is a vast difference between their crony capitalism, wealth redistribution and corruption and ours.
The difference is that the Chinese communists admit, or at least they admitted, that they are communist while we are still in denial (communism’s progress relies on subterfuge and mass denial is its finest creation). The history of “McCarthyism” has made it taboo to use the “C” word. That and we get distracted arguing over words– variations on communism like Progressivism, Fascism, et al.
Actually, communism is just a quaint word we use for evil. I’ll call it a euphemism. Evil was around long before Marx, who I will call just another useful idiot in a long line of useful idiots going back to proto-humans.
I came to the conclusion a while ago that there are only two approaches to government: Collectivism (where Society is more important than any individual) and Individualism (where individuals are as important as Society; indeed, Society cannot be important if the rights of the individuals that make up Society are violated).
Thus, while I wouldn’t call our society “Communist”, it is certainly largely “Collectivist”; and to the extent that we haven’t collapsed completely, it’s because we still have a good measure of respect for “Individualism”.