April 16, 2008

Responding to Comments on "Move 'Em Out - Lock 'Em Up"

Every so often, I start writing a comment, and it -- well, it just gets away from me. In this case, I believe what I wrote is different enough from the original post by Sachi that it makes sense simply to publish it here as a new post.

In this case, I will omit (as I generally do) specific names of those to whom I respond. You can find them out readily enough by just going to the original and reading the comments, looking for the quoted phrases.

The thesis of Move 'Em Out - Lock 'Em Up was the brutality of Red China even today, and especially in response to having won the 2008 Olympics. Sachi listed a number of examples of such oppression. A commenter responded:

Granting you all your points, won't you agree that the Communists built a China the Chinese people can be proud of? A China entirely different from the one that existed 70 years ago? A world economic and military power? A country which will not be conquered by a neighbor one-twentieth its size? Which will not have its face pushed into the mud by the French, the British or the Dutch for the benefit of their trading companies? Which will no longer be vulnerable to becoming a nation of opium addicts at the point of a gun? Which will not see the beheadings of 100,000 of its civilians in just one city by an occupying army?

This entire list of achievements of the Communist Party in China could equally well be said about the achievements of the Communist Party in Russia or the Nazi Party in Germany. The only thing the commenter missed praising them for is making the trains run on time.

These are simply elements of modernity; to ascribe them to Communism is to imply that the modern world can be entered only through the door of totalitarianism... which is nonsense, obviously, as modernity was invented by liberal democracies when socialism did not yet even exist.

I seem to be defending communism which is the last thing I want to do. But Hong Kong or Taiwan do not approach China's majesty in today's world.

Then why do it? By "majesty," all one means is a massive conscript army and a bunch of nuclear missiles -- that China simply stole from the West, just like the Soviets.

What other "majesty" could one be talking about? The majesty of gigantic, tomb-like public buildings? The majesty of pollution so great, it dries up rivers and kills people in foreign lands, due to food exports?

I expect that in one more generation China will be a much more free and open society and substantially, if not perfectly, democratic.

But the most likely way that this would happen is as a result of a catastrophic collapse of the entire vicious system, leading to mass starvation, epidemic disease, and the death of Chinese culture -- not to mention hundreds of millions of individuals. What a joyous future to look forward to!

NB: I originally wrote that "the commenter later explains" the above; the commenter now says that was not how he or she meant it; so I have changed the wording to the version above.

And even then, it may not work; such collapse is generally followed by tyranny, not liberty. And we have never before had to deal with a failed state of that size -- and with such an arsenal of nuclear missiles, biological, and chemical weapons, and with literally millions of conscripts with AK-47s, who would of course become mercenaries to feed themselves, killing being all the trade they know. How can anyone contemplate such a future so calmly?

Instead of watching from the sidelines as such apocalypse unfolds, then blaming the pre-modern occupied peoples for a flaw that is a fundamental part of the modernist conquering culture instead, why not work to avert such a hell on earth in the first place -- by doing everything possible to force the Communists from power in favor of those promoting liberty, individualism, and Capitalism?

China would just as readily have entered modernity -- which is all that the entire list above entails, anyway -- had Chiang Kai-Shek won that war, instead of Mao Tse-Tung. Taiwan did it, without Communism.

We are all aware that fascist and Communist movements are essentially modernist; but they are also essentially illiberal, undemocratic, contra-economic, non-integrating, brutal, murderous, expansionist, utterly unconcerned with the fate of individuals (only the State, the hive-collective) -- and they are fundamentally evil.

I marvel that some don't understand this; it should be imprinted on our social DNA.

Socialism is not the only way to enter the modern world; in fact, it's one of the worst ways, because by the very nature of such movements, they freeze at the moment of modernity at which they were born and never grow beyond that.

Red China does not innovate. It does not grow, except by imposing an early 20th-century worldview on those elements of the countryside that are still pre-modern; this will get you a high growth rate -- but a very low ceiling beyond which you cannot grow. (It also gets you poisoned water, poisoned food, and poisoned air when you combine stolen 20th-century manufacturing with a 19th-century attitude towards pollution.)

Without freedom and individualism, Communist China is forever cut off from entering the post-modern world; it will never rise beyond the level achieved by the Soviet Union. It's only still in existence because it steals innovations from the West.

And it's soul-killing, just as every other Communist utopian "movement," from the USSR to North Korea to Cuba to Venezuela.

I find it surreal that a post-modern person in 2008 -- writing on a post-modern, fundamentally individualist invention like a PC! -- can enthuse so ecstatically about the grand, new socialism of a century ago.

That was basically my previous points, i.e. that China was selected by the IOC to hold the 2008 Olympics, and talk of a boycott immediately started. Now, with the Olympics almost ready to start, the anti-China frenzy is running overtime…in High Gear.

Politics need to stay out of the Olympics, and make no mistake; this anti-China frenzy is supported by political agendas from many sources and sides. So much for the "Olympic Spirit".

Except that the selection of the PRC by the International Olympic Committee was itself utterly political.

They were in no way ready to host an Olympic games, just as they were not in the least ready for WTO membership. The thoroughly political (and utopian) idea was that by giving them the benefits of post-modern society, they would somehow "see the light" and enter the twenty-first century themselves.

Instead, they act like the host of the 1936 Olympics -- and their trade policy more or less mimics that of the Soviet Union in the 1920s. Surprise, surprise, on the Jungle Cruise tonight.

As you [Sachi] have stated, this anti-China agenda started "years before the recent Tibetan problems began", and has forced China to respond.

Sachi never said the Chinese Communist Party was "forced... to respond." That's the argument of the oppressor on a nutshell... "Look what you made me do!"

The anti-Stalin agenda forced him to murder millions of people and throw an even larger number into the gulag. The anti-Khmer Rouge agenda forced Pol Pot to butcher "intellectuals" who were literate, or who knew another language, or who wore glasses.

Or for that matter, the anti-imperialis agenda forced the British Empire to make Hong Kong residents buy opium at gunpoint... it's an all-purpose justification for oppression.

My God; do people even even listen to what they are forced to say, just to excuse Red China's brutality? This one is particularly ripe. The commenter began by quoting from George Friedman at StratFor:

If China were to withdraw from Tibet, and there were no military hindrance to population movement, Beijing fears this population could migrate into Tibet. If there were such a migration, Tibet could turn into an extension of India and, over time, become a potential beachhead for Indian power. If that were to happen, India’s strategic frontier would directly abut Sichuan and Yunnan -- the Chinese heartland.

Yes; if one's goal is imperialist Chinese hegemony over the entire world, I can see why this would be an impediment to liberating Tibet. I'm sure Islamic caliphists feel the same pressure.

India is a capitalist democracy. Shouldn't we want a liberal democracy to abut the border of Red China? I understand why Communist dictatorship would fear democracy... but why do some commenters on this post?

The Chinese regard [the Dalai Lama] as an Indian puppet… their view is that the Indians could shut the Dalai Lama down if they wanted to, and that they don’t signals Indian complicity...

Yes -- Indian "complicity" in freedom of religion, a crime in China.

China won the 2008 Olympics…other countries were upset (in some cases upset that they didn’t win it). China has come a long way since the cold war, and that change was reflected in their winning of the 2008 Olympics.

I never cease to be amazed by the knots defenders of Red China will tie themselves into to try to make their case: Now they argue that we only support freedom of religion, speech, and the press in China because... we're in a snit that we didn't win the 2008 Olympics?

What does the StratFor argument demonstrate? That Red China is afraid to allow liberty in Tibet -- or indeed across its heartland -- because liberty threatens the despotic reign of the Chinese Communist Party. (Which is all that Friedman was saying, not that we in the West should applaud and support such imperialist thinking.)

There was a time when Americans and other Westerners would consider that a reason to support those calling for liberty... not a sufficient reason to imprison and execute them. I weep for America.

Rather than dig in one's heels to defend the monstrous crimes of the ChiComs, which surely must make China-defenders squirm -- and rather than blithely accept a future of unutterable misery, primitivism, and a mass die-off of literally hundreds of millions of people, as some appear to believe inevitable -- why not work to bring freedom, liberty, democracy, individualism, Judeo-Christian religion, and real Capitalism to China... and save that country from its hellish, 60-year nightmare?

That would be the right thing to do. What's more important, that is the American thing to do.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, April 16, 2008, at the time of 3:03 PM

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English version of this entry can be read at Biglizards.net/blog. 下記はカカシの英語版ブログに寄せられた親中共コメンターのコメントへのミスター苺による反論である。 ＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊ 中共人権迫害の実態の主題は今日起きているレッドチャイナの暴虐について、特に２００８年のオリンピック開催地に選ばれてからの中共の反応について述べることにあった。カカシはいくつもの例をあげて中共の悪行を暴露した。それに対してこのコメンターはこう書い... [Read More]

Tracked on April 20, 2008 10:01 PM

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The following hissed in response by: leftnomore

The above hissed in response by: leftnomore at April 16, 2008 3:49 PM

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The above hissed in response by: Dafydd ab Hugh at April 16, 2008 8:02 PM

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