> One of the most negative longterm consequence of the G. W. Bush era is the erosion of high moral ground in human rights. One of the most negative longterm co

> One of the most negative longterm consequence of the G. W. Bush era is the erosion of high moral ground in human rights. One of the most negative longterm consequences is also the fact that HN seems unable to discuss Chinese human rights violations, and instead must derail all such threads into discussions about the US. Almost none of the comments here actually discuss topic of the OP. > The US, and consequently the western democracies, lost the ability to genuinely criticize the bad guys for doing bad things like torture or kidnapping. Of course, the situation in China is not comparable to US, but we lost the argument. This is absolutely not true. The US and Western democracies very much have the ability to criticize human rights abuses just with the caveats that 1) one doesn't have to be guiltless to criticize or call out bad behavior, 2) the US is not a unitary political entity [1], and 3) a hypocrite is not wrong, she's merely guilty as well. [1] let alone the union of US and Western democracies