North Korea’s new leadership has set some lofty New Year’s resolutions:
North Korea on Sunday vowed an “all-out drive” toward economic prosperity, setting a vision for a nation with fewer food shortages, a stronger military and a people who defend their new supreme leader with their lives.
“The whole Party, the entire army and all the people should possess a firm conviction that they will become human bulwarks and human shields in defending Kim Jong Eun unto death,” said an editorial carried in the country’s three major state-run publications.
Because mindless, self-abnegating sacrifice of individuality to the state, a stated goal of “fewer” food shortages, and continuing Pappa Kim’s policy of “military first” in line for resources is the path to prosperity.
They must be reading too much Thomas Friedman.
Akin to Woody Allen, certifiable.
Let them starve in the dark.
NK is a monument to those who think types of government does not matter. Same cultural start point, language, similar single-nucleotide polymorphisms in their DNA, but NK and SK have totally different outcomes. A teachable point for those that learn from others.
Any chance we can convince Kim Jong Eun to hire Krugman as his jobs czar? Or secretary of the treasury? You know, any job at all so long as it’s just *something* that a Nobel-winning economist could use as a platform?
North Korea not being part of the Real World, it’s the only place I think of where Krugman might actually be right.
– Max
Max, let’s send Janet Neopolitian (ice cream), Sonya Sotomeyer, Kagan, Holder, Raummy Emmanual, and heck – the entire obama cabinet and administration to N Korea on a one way ticket humanitarian mission to make things peachy over there. I’ll kick in some actual dollars for that.
I’ll chip in for that, Kid. Come to think of it, if the presidential re-election fund is deducted from your taxes I see no reason this effort in exporting inspired, effective leadership should not be as well. Congress ought to pass that part of the tax code immediately upon re-convening.
Give until it hurts, folks. Or give because it hurts. Whatever. Just, you know, give it away.
– Max
The Obots wouldn’t go to North Korea as there is no money to steal from the little guy and The New Dear Leader has the monopoly on all the things they hold dear, like putting non-belivers in concentration camps and taking away people’s freedom.
They are much happier trying to replicate the NORK’s MO here in our country. Change is coming in about 11 months and three days…not soon enough.
We are talking a “Ransom of Red Chief” scenario here…
They pay US to take them back…
The slap on Friedman was accurate and well deserved.
My take on CHina and its sycopatic water carriers is this:
They are heading for a fall that will shake the world.
Theircommand and control National Socialist type crony capitalisum has a fatal flaw like Hilter’s Germany and
Tojo’s Japan,heck, Mussolini’s Italy too.
Right now there ar whole cities build with no one in them yet peasants are freezing to death. The NorKs are abou to implode, or explode depending, and they have no way of dealing with it.
I have good friends who work in China. the see these horrendous flaws. Like Hitler’s own dependence of a plan.
like say, say the over use of the Stuka and He-111 and dumping better designs, China is not flexible. The cronies have the say of the economy not the enterpising.
The ruling class-the Han are hated. Have been for centuries.
and they are unbreeding themselves into a dempographic
corner with the abortion of girls…
Hang on…
North Korea is one thing, and I agree.
However linking to Jonah Goldberg’s petty personal protest – “Thomas Friedman is a Liberal Fascist” as if it were relevant… or even true, raises my ire!
Yes, Goldberg breaks out every scary boogie man of the last Century to support his unsupportable point – Mussolini, Castro, Chavez, Shaw on Hitler and Stalin, and even Stuart Chase and Herbert Croly (whoever they are? Yes, I know who they are, but Chase and Croly were not important enough to have been included in my old Econ or Poly Sci courses. So is Goldberg stretching? You betcha! And that is dishonest reporting!)
My goodness! If Friedman can be mentioned with such obvious and terrible tyrants, Jonah must be on to something. Who knew milquetoast Friedman could be so diabolical or feared as a Hitler? A ‘mass-murderer’ even? C’mon, duck-butt Jonah!
I am always amazed at how supposedly intelligent people confuse and conflate economic systems with various forms of government. While the government of China is still repressive, their economics is separate, different and in flux. More importantly, they are economically and relatively successful, albeit while their government remains repressive. In fact they are forecast to surpass us in GDP – despite our Laissez-faire economy democratic government – in the near future. How does that happen, Mr. Jonah Goldberg?
I don’t like it, China’s growth especially at our expense. But I am aware of it and not in denial. I do think Goldberg knows better too. He just does not want to p#ss off his readership by acknowledging the truth. Feed the fear and red meat. Otherwise It will cost him $$$ if he does not cater to the crowd.
I agree with you Flit. Friedman is not a Liberal Fascist. He’s a liberal moron.
The man has been shown, repeatedly, that he’s wrong, both intellectually and in actuality, but he learns absoultely nothing.
As for Goldberg’s book – About 9 years ago I swapped emails with Goldberg (this was the same period during which the paleos utterly disassembled the man) and am of the opinion that he may be degreed, but he is not educated. He’s like people such as Krugman. Credentialed, but stupid.
Having said that, much of his book is quite accurate. China, for example, is not communist. It’s Fascist to its core. Like it or not, the US government is the same way, it’s just a bit more gentle for now. Liberals really are Fscists. They are either to simple to see it, or too evil to admit it. Alas, most liberals are what the commies used to call useful idiots. Those were normally the first people taken to the wall as well.
flit/
You’re making the same mistake about China as did those who lionized (mistakenly–as all the production figures were a total fraud) the supposed economic “dynamism” of the old SU in the early 60s while ignoring the evils of the political system by treating the two (the economics and the political) as if they were two separate societies existing on two separate planets. Pretending that the economics and the politics of China are somehow “separate” may salve your conscious while you champion one even as you tish-tish the retrograde repressive activities of the other, but your dichotomy is purely academic & artificial–the real world doesn’t work that way…as millions of dead people have learned the hard way..
OH, despite our laissez faire economy yeah? That’s the one that just decided to implement the ban on incandescent light bulbs being all hands off and everything and the same one with the EPA that won’t drill, won’t allow you to drill, won’t allow me to drill, won’t tolerate fracking in New York or Alberta or anywhere but PA but does send half a billion $ of my and your tax money to Solyndra and supports crony capitalism on the vastest scale ever known in history? That laissez faire economy. Whatever will you write when you support SOPA? Freedom of speech if it’s to burn the flag but God help you if you want to remain on the innertubes.
Curtis – You are right of course. We fortunately do not have a laissez faire economy.
I perhaps should have said our relative, laissez faire-leaning economy compared to their state-controlled economy. Or better stated, our “mixed economy”… a Goldilocks economy; not too restrictive to stifle commerce, and yet not too free to encourage destructive imbalances and exploitation by fraud and greed.
We have crony capitalism that has the major beneficiaries of the Democrat party at its core. The Dems have no problem with Capitalists as long as they tow the line and give so the Dems can continue to increasingly oppress the country.
Crony Capitalism was at the heart of Hitler’s and Mussolini’s regimes.