Full Disclosure: I am in Hanoi, it is damn hot, I am cranky and have to write enough reports to overdose an 80 hour workaholic. But other than that I am in a great mood, I am in Hanoi after all.

Anyone who reads NRO knows who Meghan Cox Gurdon is. Hell, I hardly ever read her articles and I know the name. I find her prose difficult to read, mostly because I can never figure out what the article is about until the last paragraph. Recently however she wrote an article with a title that piqued my interest and actually indicated what was contained behind her link. I find it extremely frustrating to have to click on a link and have to start reading just to find the topic I am reading. It’s always a crapshoot with Mrs. Gurdon because sometimes you get a great article that really cuts up some cultural/political issue and sometimes you get a page full of quotes from five year olds that are somehow applied to the most unrelated things.

Example (please note this is a parody):

“Mommy I have mustard on my teddy bear,” Paris announces.

“I just wanted to give Mr. Cuddles some food,” protests Molly.

The geo-political dynamic at work between the two Koreas leaves much to be desired but I wonder if Kim Jong-Il has considered what a mustard stain on your teddy bear can do to harmony in a household.

Now I understand Mrs. Gurdon writes for a specific target audience: women who are common-sense conservatives who have children and are trying to relate their lives as housewives and mothers to the rest of the world. Since I am not a woman, have no children that I know of (just kidding Mom and Dad), and don’t run a household I also understand why Mrs. Gurdon’s writing and I have a hard time being friends. I understand why NRO has her, and I imagine that her work is very popular.

Ok, all that being said, she has just made a serious attempt at a more serious article . . . and then fumbled it. As you can imagine from the title her article was about China, and I have some issues with the Sino-related content.

Basically she has a moral problem with buying goods “made in China” for a variety of the usual reasons. Some she assuages but some still haunt her by the time she stops writing. At least it seems that way to me since she spends the latter half of her work pointing out why her fears of “made in China” are unfounded yet ends with the cryptic:

I hang up on the friendly S.G.O. with new resolve. I have to return a couple of impulse buys to Target (which is good) yet have stimulated the economy by keeping most of the items I bought (also good) and if I leave immediately, I can keep from spending more (very good). Right?

An hour later, I am walking down the gleaming aisle, my heart pounding, my morality once again swept away like a trans-Pacific cargo ship in a storm. And as I pause to pick up some inviting object, through my mind runs the refrain: “Stop me before I kill again…”

She mentions the morality of buying Chinese goods at the beginning of the article and once again throws out the term with a literary flourish at the end, a sweet little maneuver as it brings your mind back to the original point without actually contradicting all of what she just said vis a vis “made in China” not being that bad.

This is a fascinating insight into the typical American conundrum with “made in China” which I am now going to dissect, well-written-yet-flawed piece by piece.

“You’re kidding me,” the cashier says, dropping her jaw in theatrical amazement. “Never?”

“Never!” I reply giddily, slipping my credit card oh-so-easily into the metal mouth of a little machine. “Until now! But I’ll be back!” I have to force myself to calm down, stop being so chatty, but the fact is, the excitement of this morning’s outing has gone to my head. My eye has the glitter of the Ancient Mariner: I want to rush up to strangers and tell them about my wondrous discoveries.

“Man,” the cashier chuckles, shaking her head as she runs her hand-held laser across the bar codes of innumerable absurdly priced, brightly colored goodies. “I ain’t never heard of nobody who ain’t been to Target.”

“Target,” I correct her, like an idiot, using the Franco-phony pronunciation. She chuckles again.

Just then Paris and Molly come rushing back from a foray on the sales floor. “Mummy, racing cars!” one yelps, and the other holds up a rainbow-colored notebook with matching pens, and gasps, “Please may I get these?”

I liked this bit mostly because I agree with her here. Materialism, the buying of things we don’t need yet want (and I do realize need/want are both highly subjective terms), is a problem in our country and at the beginning it appears that this is her primary foil, but she rapidly shifts targets (and responsibility) to another, greater “problem”.

For a moment, I seem to catch a whiff of smelling salts and abruptly return to being the mother I have always been, whose answer to shop floor entreaties is generally, “No.” There is a fugitive return of the disquiet I felt earlier in the morning when I realized that almost every item on every shelf was Made in China. But two hopeful faces are shining up at me. The moment passes, and I hear myself say, “What the heck! How much are they?”

“$2.99!” Paris says.

“$4.99!” Molly says.

“Well, I suppose you can always use a notebook — “

The main culprit for her uneasy heart remains materialism and it’s shifting of her line in the sand, but she manages to slip China into the discourse in a casual, easy manner. For the moment it is a sideshow, yet the mere mention of China has the reader conjuring up their last visit to Wal-mart/Target/Costco and all of the emotional baggage that Americans associate with buying Chinese produced goods. Mrs. Gurdon really is quite a good writer, once you assimilate her style that is.

It gets better:

In Victorian times, gin was known as Mothers’ Ruin. By the Seventies, uppers and downers were making mischief among mothers. Today, following in a long tradition of dangerous intoxicants consumed by housewives, we have cheap Chinese stuff. Happy Mother’s Day!

So now we are comparing as equals a desperate housewife (yes I just used that term) on Viccoden, an alcoholic English woman (never!), and my buying a new grill for $29.95 instead of $85.95. I am not taking this personally of course (nor should I) she is merely trying to make a cultural commentary on “cheap Chinese stuff” being like a mind altering substance (which it can be). While “stuff” is in italics the word Chinese seems out of place here. Does Mexican, Philippine, or Indian stuff corrupt any less than Chinese stuff? Of course not, but she makes clear later in the article that the source country, not just the products themselves are the problem.

On a sudden corrective impulse, I begin checking labels: Phew, the dress was made Cambodia, the nightgown in Guatemala; but — and my heart sinks — it seems the vast majority of the goods for sale here originated in the world’s last major Communist tyranny; a country where bishops are imprisoned, where convicts are made into involuntary organ donors, where open expression of political dissent brings a truncheon on the back of the neck; a country which furthermore is in the midst of one of the largest military build-ups in history and whose attitude towards America is nuanced, to say the least.

But soft — here’s a sleek pair of sunglasses, really rather stylish, and only $19.99. I find the label: Uh-oh. The trouble is, I need sunglasses. Guiltily, I slip them into my cart beside a little handbag for Molly (also made in China, but, consider, a mere $9.99!).

Wow, alot to take in. Cambodia and Guatemala being the bastions of human rights that they are, it is easy to see why China stands out in stark contrast with the rest of the countries we buy our junk from.

I mean Europe with all of its rabid anti-Americanism, lazy socialism, under the table deals to dictators of the worst sort, shabby Muslim ghettos that breed grade-A terrorists, boiling anti-Semitism, and alcoholic rot is a far far far better place to purchase goods (and from moral people too! Stop laughing).

Only one problem, their stuff is more expensive than our own stuff.

Maybe Latin America! It is famous for it’s peaceful transfers of power, its firm grip on the rule of law (well they have the firm grip part down at least), plus they already have lot’s of experience exporting cheap goods at high margins to eager American consumers. Surely these people could export materialism as cheaply as they export a hash brick or a kilo of coke.

But alas, they cannot. One thing Latin America does better than grow and sell drugs is create heaping mounds of steaming, mind-numbing corruption. Corruption south of the Rio Grande makes the Chinese look like amateurs and prices them out of the market.

Africa? Sorry, I made you laugh again. Haiti? If that island is populated by people who know what electricity is by the year 2100 it will be only through the grace of God. Russia? Sure, but just don’t make a bigger profit than Vladimir, or you might just discover that you owe 500 years of back-taxes to the state.

The fact is, there is a very short, and I want to emphasize short, list of countries that we can trade with and keep a clean conscience. Australia (when they aren’t electing some bastard from Labour), New Zealand (though they are about as supportive of the US war effort as a pair of boxers on a five mile run and our Navy is decidedly unwelcome), the UK helps us out on the international stage (sometimes, but they are hopeless socialists that grind their people under the boot of big government), Israel, ah a true American ally (when they aren’t selling American-gifted weapons technology to China and seeding more moles than actual bureaucrats throughout DC). Canada . . . enough said.

At the end of the day, we are a lonely nation, we have few friends, and ever fewer true friends. It is lonely at the top, that is just a fact of life and the moral man must often live in an immoral world (something reinforced time and again throughout the Old Testament). I won’t try and defend China (not because I can’t) but I will say that the choice is clear: you either engage the world or you don’t. There is no halfway. “What about Cuba?” the crowd roars. Given my druthers I would lift the embargo after Castro dies, as now it would not promote change. Change is happening in China, it would not happen in Castro’s Cuba.

You love your country, and hold freedom and human rights close to your heart? Then trade with the rest of the world; and do so morally I don’t endorse sweatshops or out-bribing the French for a contract. But please don’t see demons were there aren’t any, or more precisely, don’t see certain demons and ignore the others. It makes you look myopic or hypocritical, or just plain intellectually lazy.

Is China “good” like America? Nope. Who is? I am not really sure to be perfectly honest, maybe no one. Are we good when Bill Clinton sells missile technology to China for campaign contributions? How about when we drop thousands of pounds of live ordnance on Serbia to stop them from killing Kosovars but just stand-by and watch the Kosovars exact their revenge? Should we install Augusto Pinochet, knowing he will kill thousands of innocents, but also knowing our nation will be stronger against the Soviet threat in South America? Don’t get me wrong; America is the best country (morally and otherwise) in the entire history of human civilization, by far. We do ourselves no favors however, when we try and apply our ethics to the “barbarians beyond the pale”. They won’t take them, if they wanted them they would have them already, they are human after all.