June 10, 2002
Indignity
At first this story struck me as just another example of wacky commies: Chinese officials ordered the crops of some local farmers destroyed in order to give higher ranking officials a better view of state infrastructure projects. It's easy to view such things with the detachment afforded by distance and security. But I started to think about what the farmers must have been thinking, as these bullies in cheap suits ordered their year's work negated. What shame they must have felt under the eyes of their children, who no doubt had worked the fields with them. Or perhaps they felt no shame at all, perhaps this terrible system of feudalism disguised as a worker's paradise has robbed them even of this vestige of humanity.
Then I think about the fact that indignities like this, and far worse, are visited upon millions trapped under oppressive regimes every day. I wonder why the same opprobrium reserved for neo-Nazis is not ladled out over the self-anointed heads of Western elites who advocate socialism. Both systems, fascism and socialism, have produced suffering and violations of human rights so numerous as to defy counting (though The Black Book of Communism makes a noble effort). Yet somehow while we rightly decry the advocates of the former, we extend every courtesy to people who advocate the latter, though they would, if given the opportunity, give themselves and their allies the same powers exercised by these Chinese thugs on some distant Henan field.
Of course they would do so under the illusion that they were making us all better off. I am reminded of a delightful observation by John Derbyshire: "Wherever there is a jackboot stomping on a human face there will be a well-heeled Western liberal to explain that the face does, after all, enjoy free health care and 100 percent literacy."
Regardless of their intentions, however, socialists and their close allies seek to advance a system that, once fully unleashed, inevitably kills, enslaves, or at the very least demeans human beings. The proper response to someone who looks to take your property and place you in handcuffs, I think, is a firm punch in the nose.
Posted by Woodlief on June 10, 2002 at 09:44 AM
>>Or perhaps they felt no shame at all, perhaps this terrible system of feudalism disguised as a worker's paradise has robbed them even of this vestige of humanity.
Not likely; Chinese culture has remained amazingly unaffected by Maoism.
But this got me to thinking: Do we really
have any room to complain about this?
Our government -- even under G.W. Gore --
has no compunctions about removing the
livelihood of farmers and loggers by
depriving them of access to water or
forests. Is "preserving a species"
(i.e. throwing a spanner in the works
of evolution) really a better cause
than "clearing off the landscape to
improve an official's view"?
Posted by: ockham at June 10, 2002 10:58 AM
Not only do we have room to complain, but we exercise it vociferously. Farmers and their supporters were screaming bloody murder right up to the point where the irrigation was cut off. They have lucked out, so far, but they still have the power of the vote, the right to free assembly, and the ability to lobby their representatives. In other words, they have recourse, and they aren't down for the count.
In China, any of these actions would be met with tanks, guns, imprisonment, and death.
Under the guise of "good social policy", the US govt and the states occasionally make dumb choices, but we, the voters, always have at hand the means to counter their actions. There is no such freedom or ability in totalitarian nations like China, Iraq, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Viet Nam, etc. ad nauseum.
Posted by: hbchrist at June 10, 2002 4:01 PM
Too bad "we, the voters" mostly believe the party line we read in our newspapers, and therefore vote for those who espouse collectivist "solutions".
Posted by: Anonymous at June 11, 2002 10:32 AM
Earlier today, one of my colleagues threw a copy of a free Maoist propaganda rag on my desk, just to get a rise out of me. The paper had quotes from Mao, accounts of the depradations of capitalism and Amerikka (these Maoists use two k's, just to show the intensity of their irrational hatred), and, just to show that they are up on current events, they also had articles on the oppressive colonial persecution visited upon the Palestinians by Israel.
As it happened, I was just reading a review in an old Times Literary Supplement of The Chinese by Jasper Becker. The review noted that Becker's earlier book, Hungry Ghosts, dealt with the deaths of over 30 million Chinese during the 1960s as a result of Maoist political and economic policies. This, of course, is the period when thousands of young American jackasses were hanging posters of the Great Helmsman on their dorm walls.
There is nothing even remotely comparable to the Maoist experience in American history, Amerikkan history, or even Amerikkkkkkkkkan history. A leftist would argue this point, and claim that America is the worse. This is not an alternative point of view, but rather a form of false consciousness that even Marx himself might have recoiled from.
Posted by: jim naso at June 11, 2002 9:39 PM
Did exactly as you asked, Tony. Was at a campus area bar last weekend, when a bunch of neo-lefties came in - you know the kid, white, upper-middle class kids, wearing Guatemalan shirts and batic sundresses, sporting blonde dreadlocks, stinky from not showering? Well, an argument ensued as we waited to watch the Tyson-Lewis fight, and our group was accused of being racist, sexist, heterosexist, homophobic, xenophobic imperialists!!! So, a fight broke out, and we had the distinct pleasure of punching and kicking the daylights out of a couple of the neo-lefties, till the bouncers came and stopped the fight. The neo-lefties, of course lost the fight. we told the neo-lefties, that we weren't being violent imperialists, we were just doing what one of their heros, the gay, black, French scholar Fanon advocated - we used violence only because he had said that violence was cathartic, and was good to cleanse one's soul. Seeing as how in a campus community, we, those who aren't ardent leftists, suffer from the tyranny of "the oppressed", we needed to take Fanon's advice to heart to cleanse our souls of the oppression we suffer everyday!!!
Posted by: Anonymous at June 11, 2002 10:27 PM
I think the reason it's been deemed OK to despise the Nazis (even though Nazis are SOCIALISTs, I mean, I wish somebody would translate the freaking thing before saying Nazis bad, socialists good next time) is because Nazis hurt people outside their party and the Communists only hurt people within their party. It's so much more acceptable to deny basic human rights to the people who you claim to represent than it is to perform those same actions on others.
(Trying to remember where I read recently an article discussing Nazisim's modern separation from socialism when really the Nazi's were one of the most successful socialist regimes. Want to link it, but can't remember. Darn.)
Posted by: Cis at June 12, 2002 7:51 PM