The Biden administration has just endorsed one of China’s most vicious attack lines against the United States.
The new administration’s actions look as if they are setting a pattern for its responses to Beijing on the disease and other matters.
On January 26, Biden signed his executive order titled “Memorandum Condemning and Combating Racism, Xenophobia, and Intolerance Against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in the United States.”
The order states that during the coronavirus pandemic “inflammatory and xenophobic rhetoric has put Asian American and Pacific Islander persons, families, communities, and businesses at risk.”
There is nothing wrong with protecting minorities from racism, but racism is not the problem. “Political correctness presages policy incorrectness,” writes the Claremont Institute’s Ben Weingarten on the Newsweek site, commenting on Biden’s executive order. “And when it comes to matters of life and limb, political correctness can kill.”
Weingarten is correct.
“Xenophobia” has been a constant Biden theme. On January 31 of last year, President Trump announced the “travel ban,” prohibitions and restrictions on arrivals from China.
Within moments of the announcement, Biden went on the attack. “This is no time for Donald Trump’s record of hysterical xenophobia and fear mongering to lead the way instead of science,” he said.
Biden’s campaign said the attack was not in response to the travel ban, yet on the following day the candidate expressed the same thoughts in a tweet: “We need to lead the way with science—not Donald Trump’s record of hysteria, xenophobia, and fear-mongering.”