Q&A.

Q:

The administration's note of disapproval on the upcoming Taiwan referendum and subsequent trade agreements with China struck me as decidedly odd. I thought that for sure that issue would be a no-brainer, on pure ideology... My thoughts on this matter were crystallized by a passage in a column by John Patrick Diggins:

...The American presidency remained almost as indifferent as the public when, in Hungary in 1956, the Red Army turned the Budapest uprising into a bloodbath, and when, in China in 1989, a young man stood alone and defiantly halted a tank in Tiananmen Square...

..., if we are truly interested in bringing democracy to those who want it, then why haven't we been applying that standard across the board, and stand with those opposed to communist tyranny?

A: Money.

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