“Trump Speaks With Taiwan’s President, Risking China Tensions,” reads a headline. So what? A free country does not need to please an authoritarian country. Not only does a freer country have the higher moral ground; it also has more prosperity and consequently a better capacity for defending itself.
Granted, the United States has drifted away from being a free country, as well as having a strong military, in recent years, particularly under Obama. But the principle remains: If the United States seeks to liberalize its economy, and therefore start growing again, as well as strengthen its military, then embracing Taiwan over China represents a healthy direction.
The political leader of a country seeking to distinguish itself as free should strengthen ties with freer countries, and show no concern about offending dictators and tyrants. China is a nationalist-Communist country. It’s a one-party government where individuals have no individual rights to self-defense, freedom of speech or even private property to the extent which the United States still does.
Granted, if the United States were an economically freer country there would be less to fear from offending a country like China. But China has no respect for the sovereignty of individual citizens over their own lives. The economic “liberalization” that took place in China in recent decades was devised to serve the interests of the government, not to uphold the private property and other rights of individual citizens. Unless or until a country’s government upholds individualism and individual rights, it will never enjoy the moral stature making it worthy of not being offended.
Donald Trump is right to place Taiwan above China. Just as non-Obama supporting American citizens were pushed around by Obama for the last eight years, Taiwan — a relatively free country when compared to Communist China — has been pushed around by China for much longer. Calling up the president of Taiwan is actually what I expected Donald Trump to do, and I’m very glad he did.
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