Confronting China
 
The New York Times and the Washington Post have featured opinion pieces by Chinese dissidents warning that China under Xi Jinping must be confronted. The Post op-ed was published with this title:  "Trump Has The Right Strategy On Beijing."
 
The column was written by Chen Guangcheng, a blind human rights activist who spent years in prison for protesting China's human rights abuses, including its brutal one-child policy and forced abortions.  Here are some excerpts of his column:
 
"Trump is regularly criticized for being unpredictable and erratic . . . for ignoring diplomatic conventions, and for upending a tense but supposedly workable economic relationship.  But as someone who has spent years with the knife edge of the Chinese Communist Party bearing down on my throat. . . I know that the president is on to something. . .
 
"Presidents before Trump naively believed that China would abide by international standards of behavior if it were granted access to [global] institutions . . . and generally treated as a 'normal' country.  But that path proved mistaken, and Beijing ignored Western pressure on matters from human rights to the widespread theft of intellectual property.  Trump, whatever his flaws, grasps this reality. . .
 
"Trump is the first president in recent memory to seriously say to this communist dictatorship: If you want to keep doing business with us, you have to change."
 
Writing in the New York Times, pro-democracy leaders Joshua Wong and Alex Chow declared that the people of Hong Kong won't be cowed by China's Communist Party.  They wrote:
 
"World leaders cannot keep mistaking their wish for the peaceful rise of China . . . with the reality of the Chinese Communist dictatorship today.  Any act or policy that sustains the lifeblood of the Communist dictatorship in Beijing is an offense to the people whom that dictatorship persecutes and oppresses. . .
 
"We understand that some critics of American interventionism may be inclined to have sympathy for China as a still-developing country bullied by an over-dominant West. 
 
"But please listen to us here in Hong Kong:  Communist China is no alternative to the interventionism you hate or contest -- that is an inconvenient truth that the world must reckon with."
 
 
 
Dorian Peaks
 
Hurricane Dorian is ever-so-slowly beginning to move northeast, away from the Bahamas.  The devastation in the Bahamas is horrific. 
 
As of now, the storm appears to have peaked Saturday.  After thrashing the Bahamas for most of the holiday weekend, Dorian has been downgraded to a Category 2 storm. 
 
Fortunately, it appears as though South Florida has avoided a direct impact from a monster storm.  Most computer models predict that the hurricane will avoid landfall with the U.S., but the potential still exists. 
 
Please continue to pray for those impacted by Dorian and those along the coast who remain in danger.
 
 
 
Can We Stop Politicizing Hurricanes?
 
I have no doubt that some on the "woke" left are disappointed that Dorian is not the worst disaster ever to hit the mainland.  When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, the left was eager to racialize the storm.  George W. Bush was accused of ignoring New Orleans because it was a minority city. 
 
The left did the same thing when Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico.  The island was so devastated in part because years of corruption had left its infrastructure in tatters.  And corruption continues to plague recovery efforts.
 
Over the weekend, I heard one left-wing commentator say Dorian was the fourth Category 5 hurricane of Donald Trump's presidency.  The implication was that because Trump withdrew from the Paris Climate Accord, he's responsible for the severity of hurricanes. 
 
Ridiculous!  Politicians cannot control the weather.  Nor are they responsible for natural disasters. 
 
Elected officials are responsible for how the government conducts itself.  And in that regard, President Trump has been doing everything that could be reasonably expected.
 
He has been in constant contact with FEMA officials and governors along the east coast.  He cancelled a scheduled trip to Poland so he could be here in the event that the worst happened.  He has approved disaster declarations for Florida, Georgia and South Carolina so emergency aid and personnel could be pre-positioned.