Is Tony Garnier’s alleged vision of an “age of light” under President Obama coming true? Perhaps it’s worth regularly checking up on that in this space, just so we don’t run the risk of missing it.

Put aside for the moment what is going on domestically and with the economy. So many others are commenting on it, and, frankly, it leaves me kind of speechless at the present time.

How is President Obama’s chief of foreign policy matters, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, doing with spreading an age of light through the world as a whole?

There is this and similar stories on her recent visit to China: Activists shocked at Clinton stance on China rights.

Amnesty International and a pro-Tibet group voiced shock Friday after US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton vowed not to let human rights concerns hinder cooperation with China.

Paying her first visit to Asia as the top US diplomat, Clinton said the United States would continue to press China on long-standing US concerns over human rights such as its rule over Tibet.

“But our pressing on those issues can’t interfere on the global economic crisis, the global climate change crisis and the security crisis,” Clinton told reporters in Seoul just before leaving for Beijing.

This, I suppose, is what Hillary Clinton must have meant by “smart power.” Unfortunately, if predictably, it is unbelievably stupid. By explicitly stating that concerns over human rights will not be allowed to interfere with economic and other bilateral issues, Clinton has cut the legs out from under the current U.S. administration when it comes to applying any kind of leverage against China with regard to its persecution of dissidents, oppression of religious believers, and myriad other ongoing sins in the area of basic human rights. Defenders will object that President Bush never threatened anything like economic sanctions over China’s human rights violations, and that is true, but there is a huge difference between not threatening action — while at the same time criticizing China’s failings and talking up freedom at every opportunity — versus explicitly stating that no action will be taken no matter what the violation. It will not affect any other part of the relationship. And that is the message that Hillary Clinton’s words conveyed. Imagine how this must sound to people who are suffering in China for the sake of speaking their minds, or practicing their faith. It has to be utterly demoralizing. Words matter.

If this is the Obama administration’s idea of how America should lead by example, then the example is this: nothing matters but making a buck. Human rights warrant lip service, but let’s not get too serious about it and make anyone uncomfortable. Above all, please don’t worry that we might actually do something about it. Not just in China, but across the world, that message has now gone out. Words matter. That is what diplomacy is, after all.

It may be “a brand new time,” but the age of light doesn’t seem to have asserted itself as yet.

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