What color is your cat?

In the Datebook section of Thursday's San Francisco Chronicle, columnist John King remarks on "Lessons to be learned from London's mayor." London's mayor Ken Livingstone was in San Francisco for World Environment Day. Livingstone is a proud card-carrying socialist, but he praised Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger for working to reduce greenhouse gases, and also quoted former Chinese premier Deng Xiaoping.

Deng was a pretty scummy guy. He was the one who ordered the tanks in at Tiananmen Square to destroy the terrible threat posed by a papier-mâché statue inspired by the Statue of Liberty. However, he also said, "It doesn't matter if your cat is black or white, but does it catch the mice?"

The moral is, we should be less concerned with whether an idea is "left-wing" or "right-wing," and more concerned with whether the idea would effectively deal with the problems we face.

We should be able to respect wise words, even from the mouth of a brutally repressive murdering thug of a dictator. Hell, I'd even respect wise words from President Bush, were he ever to utter any.