NYT op-ed writer Tom Friedman bewails the state of modern American democracy, and compares it to disadvantage with the “enlightened leadership” of the Chinese Communist Party:
One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks. But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages. That one party can just impose the politically difficult but critically important policies needed to move a society forward in the 21st century. It is not an accident that China is committed to overtaking us in electric cars, solar power, energy efficiency, batteries, nuclear power and wind power. China’s leaders understand that in a world of exploding populations and rising emerging-market middle classes, demand for clean power and energy efficiency is going to soar. Beijing wants to make sure that it owns that industry and is ordering the policies to do that, including boosting gasoline prices, from the top down.
Our one-party democracy is worse.
Well.
China years ago overtook the US as a the world’s principal contributor to greenhouse gasses. Few people yearn for Chinese-style medical care, not even the New York Times. And the conjunction of the words “bureaucratic innovation” – driven top down by wise government servants – sounds jarringly oxymoronic, at least to me. Five year plans and production quotas left the Soviets with empty shelves, bread rations and products that no one would buy that didn’t have to.
Friedman seems upset that the minority party in both houses of Congress cannot be compelled to agree with his preferred solutions to the nation’s problems.
Which brings us to those autocratic “drawbacks” that Friedman delicately touches on.
Oh, to be able to crack some skulls!
Update: Iowahawk finds Friedman’s first draft, asking the crucial question, “What good is democracy if it doesn’t give us the stuff I want?”
Didn’t he believe the Saudi’s had a workable middle east peace plan?
He must love despots.
Yup, he was.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Peace_Initiative
“However, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Thomas Friedman met Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah in February 2002 and personally encouraged him to make the peace proposal.”
Does this guy hold a Deputy Assistant for Middle East Affairs slot over at State that I don’t know about?
Who the hell is he to just, amble on over to Saudi Arabia?
Friedman has become one of the privileged elite. I used to read him, or watch him on certain shows. Have not for some time as he became increasingly pompous, rich, arrogant, richer, pampered, ‘mo richer, more pompous and arrogant, and revered by the MSM.
He is now “Thomas Friedman”, quite important; if you do not believe so just ask him. When he is not in his Bill Gates like mansion.
He is a smart, intelligent, knowledgeable well-travelled person. Nothing against his financial success -it is the American Dream. Wish he would have done it in an honorable manner.
Holy Crap, the stupidity of some people will never cease to amaze me.
“led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today”
is he serious? He must be since he signed his name to the piece. I’ve said it before, if he thinks the situation there is so much better, then move there. And drive (if you can, or take a train) anywhere 100 klicks away from the coast and ask those people how well the “new leadership” is working out for them.
“demand for clean power and energy efficiency is going to soar” Yup, and the Chinese are doing so well at creating clean energy. Coal plants all over the place, and oh, hydroelectric power. Three Gorges Dam is a beauty unto itself. No matter the 1.25 million people displaced, plus the additional 4 million, thats right 4 million that will be “encouraged” to move in the next decade.
That one party system is just peachy
claudio
PS. Goint to commence banging my head against the wall now so I won’t think about the brainiacs/editors that actually approved this piece of drivel.
Claudio/
The left ALWAYS believes/loves that crap! That’s why FDR and all his advisers were so enamored with Benito Baby in the 30’s(“He made the train’s run on time!”) and why Jonah Goldberg’s book “Liberal Fascism” is such a jewel as a reference guide. It lays out all in one handy place and itemizes each instance of the fawning idiocy of the left’s publicly recorded yearning and admiration over the years for just such statist, authoritarian/totalitarian schemes.”To make an omelet one must break some eggs” V.I. Lenin is once supposedly to have famously said, to which someone recently whose name I don’t remember replied: “O.K., I’ll buy that. I see the broken eggs alright, but where’s the omelet?”
Yeah, yeah, heard that. Eggs and omelets, but it’s always someone elses eggs.
Claudio,
Indeed… it’s bad enough that lil’ Tommy believes this cr@p. Doesn’t that make his editors supporters by default for letting it post unchallenged?
Plato thought that a benevolent dictator probably was the best form of government. But I don’t think the Chinese leaders, essentially not different than organised crime in charge of a country instead of a mob, would qualify. Certainly NK’s “Kim Ill in the Head” wouldn’t. Tony Soprano, where are you when we need you?
The Chinese do have a few advantages in the area of government.
First of all, they’re trying to catch up to us. It’s much easier to go somewhere if somebody else has led the way.
Secondly, their government regulates much less and has much lower taxes.
We don’t want to have the first advantage. And we could get the second pretty easily without getting all those small autocratic disadvantages – like midnight knocks on doors of idiotic journalists who have ceased to be useful.
“like mid-night knocks on doors of idiotic journalists who have ceased to be useful”
Saaaaay, ‘ole Ray just might be on to something there…..
“Oh, to be able to crack some skulls!”
I know a few I’d like to crack. There is probably some coincidence between my list, and the lists of others who post here.
Oh, mos’ def, bro… mos’ def!
Ray, I hope that your tongue was planted firmly in your cheek; but, just in case it wasn’t: You don’t need to regulate someone when your boot is across the back of their neck; and, why tax things when you claim ownership of everything that is produced anyway.
Just saw the following item:
“A coal mine accident early on Tuesday killed 13 people and 66 others were missing in central China’s Henan Province, the Xinhua news agency reported, citing the state work safety watchdog.
China’s mines are the deadliest in the world, due to lax safety standards and a rush to feed demand from a robust economy. More than 3,000 people died in coal mine accidents in 2008 alone.”
Part of the reason for the dismal accident statistics in China is, of course, that they are at an earlier stage of economic development than we are. But a big part is due to the fact that the Chinese autocracy doesn’t have to care too much about casualties among the people that Obama likes to call “working families.”
How many people died in the 2008 earthquake in central China? Not quite sure because the enlightened leaders can’t quite count, but somewhere around 80,000.
How many people were displaced when the enlightened leaders so swiftly and efficiently built the three gorges dam? 5.7 million by 2020.
How many girls have plain disappeared because of the enlightened one child policy? Estimates of 15 million.
By Friedman’s math, 21 million people don’t equate to the benefits of the Green Economy and universal health care.
Friedman’s bizarre positioning of China as “green” notwithstanding, the Chinese autocracy has been willing to ruthlessly brush aside the compaints of environmentalists and propery holders in order to expand enery supplies.
An American autocracy staffed by Friedman’s friends, on the other hand, would ruthlessly brush aside the complaints of productive enterprises in order to ensure that practical energy sources are never built.
We should always remember that wherever we are, this is our world and everyone is responsible for it. Thanks for sharing an interesting post. By the way, these best gifts that you could give your better-half might interest you too. Thanks and have a nice and fulfilling day.
Yeah, leftist feel-good drivel posting to cover your SPAM!
What a loser…..
Yep.
I long ago worked up a way to never forget an anniversary, birthday, or other important event, and to always have the perfect gift available.
I set my e-mail tool to send a one-line note to my cell phone three days in advance. It simply says, “Place chocolate in living room, do dishes.”
After a couple of years I added a second line, so I’d know what event I was buying the chocolate for.
– Max
Heh. Based on my suboptimal memory, I had to start using the following method: an entry in my PDA, on my work calendar, and on a hardcopy calendar at home. A bit of effort, but, oh so worth the effort.
Lessons Learned.
I just returned after spending two weeks in China. After dinner on 8/28 we headed to downtown Beijing for photo snaps. The army was brought in after we arrived, streets were taped off, with soldiers literally pushing us out of all roads that led to Tienemen square. Heck, we were just sightseeing but I forgot that this was the 20th anniversary year of the massacre. My Chinese host was plenty spooked and we made a hasty retreat. Went back to the hotel to google some info but all relevant sites were blocked. All blogs I checked were blocked too. My first reaction was “Hey! They can’t do this.”
…but they can.
The U.S., with all it’s flaws, is still the greatest nation on earth. Our bill of rights, freedom, is a big reason why.
Indeed. Despite the best efforts of the current administration.
I also happened to be visiting the PRC w/ my family during the last two weeks of August. I had to constantly correct myself whenever my kids asked if they could do one thing or another. Whereas my usual response back home would have been, “Hey, whatever you want/think, it’s a free country.”, that was soon appended with, “Oh, wait a minute, no, it isn’t.”
We had a hired driver transport us to one of the larger airports in southern china (Guangzhou). Every toll plaza had cameras taking pictures of the front of each vehicle, and for the 1.5 hour ride, we passed through 2 checkpoints that had PLA members checking vehicles. Kinda creepy if your not used to it.
Friedman has neither a sense of irony nor of history. It was a NYT reporter, after all, who went to Russia shortly after the revolution and cabled back: “I have seen the future–and it works!” But
he IS proving out that old adage that history is destined to repeat itself, however….
Praise of a country that still builds and uses steam locomotives? Wow!
Hard to believe the guy praises a country’s leadership that has 95% of its population living a life of serfdom and unbelievable poverty. Green? China has the worst ecological disasters on the planet. Government health care? You need a kidney? Wait right here while we go shoot some criminals and we’ll get you a kidney. How many you like? You want egg roll with dat? Immigration reform? Don’t think any of us have a problem with Dr Sikh who is here legally working at the local hospital. It is the 12 million illegals who suck the government services dry that we have a problem with. This reminds of that anti-drug ad: The mind is a terrible thing to waste.
I agree with Claudio. If people like Friedman think China is so much better and more enlightened that the U.S. is, then why doesn’t he live there? Renounce his U.S. citizenship and take up permanent residence in China. Then let’s see how rich he continues to be, how much freedom of expression he continues to enjoy.
For people like this – it should be a one-way ticket to the land they think is so much better, with no recourse for return. It would certainly clean up the moonbat pools in this country.
Like Ron Snyder [above], I used to enjoy reading Friedman’s columns and watching him on various news panels on Sunday mornings. He struck me has having a pretty good feel for how things worked (politically) in this sometimes crazy world.
Then he started believing his press clippings, and his pomposity reached levels that grated on me. Then he discovered that the Earth is flat and wrote a book about it, and I figured he’d fallen under the spell of Al Gore and gave up on him.
Claudio [above] mentions the Three Gorges Dam project. I wonder how swell Friedman would think the project was had he been one of those displaced by it. I did a brief search and found the following on a PBS[!] website concerning the dam:
_____
“When the dam is completed, 13 cities, 140 towns and over 1,300 villages will be submerged by the Three Gorges Reservoir.
To make way for the Three Gorges Dam, 1.5 million people will have to abandon their homes. More than 160,000 citizens have already been relocated.
Upon the dam’s completion, 1,300 known archeological sites will be lost forever under water.
Over 265 billion gallons of raw sewage are dumped into the Yangtze annually. Currently the river flushes this downstream and out into the ocean. Upon completion of the Three Gorges project, the sewage will back up in the reservoir.
Over 1,600 factories and abandoned mines will be submerged when the dam is completed. Environmentalists predict that toxins associated with industry and mining will create a hazard for the animals and people who depend on the river for survival.”
_____
Doesn’t sound all the “green” to me. Enlightened leadership, my ***.
Concur with Wilko, I’m staying here, Tom can move — the Earth being flat, it will be an easy walk.
”the Earth being flat, it will be an easy walk”
THE take-away line! Go Ahead Uncle Mike!