Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

In North Korea the right is right

Nicholas Kristof:

Liberals took the lead in championing human rights abroad in the 1970's, while conservatives mocked the idea. But these days liberals should be embarrassed that it's the Christian Right that is taking the lead in spotlighting repression in North Korea.

Perhaps no country in human history has ever been as successful at totalitarianism as North Korea. Koreans sent back from China have been herded like beasts, with wires forced through their palms or under their collarbones. People who steal food have been burned at the stake, with their relatives recruited to light the match. Then there was the woman who was a true believer and suggested that the Dear Leader should stop womanizing: after she was ordered executed, her own husband volunteered to pull the trigger.

"The biggest scandal in progressive politics," Tony Blair told The New Yorker this year, "is that you do not have people with placards out in the street on North Korea. I mean, that is a disgusting regime. The people are kept in a form of slavery, 23 million of them, and no one protests!"

Actually, some people do protest. Conservative Christians have aggressively taken up the cause of North Korean human rights in the last few years, and the movement is gathering steam. A U.S.-government-financed conference on North Korean human rights convened in Washington last week, and President Bush is expected shortly to appoint Jay Lefkowitz to the new position of special envoy for North Korean human rights.

None of the solutions offered by the right or Kristof hold much promise. Actually the most positive deveolpment has come as a result of the six pary talks that liberals like Kristof reject in favor of unilateral talks with the Norks. Because South Korea is a party to the six party talks they have offered to supply electricity to the Norks in return for abandoning the nuclear program. If this works it could have several beneficial results beyond getting rid of the nukes. For one, if the Norks threaten a new invasion of the south they risk having their power cut off. It also should make the reunification of the country easier. The liberals irrational insistence on unilateral talks is still a puzzle, since experience has shown them to be unsuccessful with the Norks. However, many liberals still claim that the agreement the Norks admit they violated is some kind of exempler of what could be achieved.