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Our One-Party Democracy (NY Times says America REALLY NEEDS a Chinese-style Autocracy)
The New York Times ^ | 9-9-09 | Thomas Friedman

Posted on 09/09/2009 11:26:52 AM PDT by TitansAFC

Watching both the health care and climate/energy debates in Congress, it is hard not to draw the following conclusion: There is only one thing worse than one-party autocracy, and that is one-party democracy, which is what we have in America today.

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...

(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Government; Miscellaneous; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: communism; democrats; elections; friedman; mao; redyorktimes; stalin; times
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Not Joking.

The New York Times says America REALLY NEEDS a Chinese-style Autocracy, so that they can impose "the politically difficult but critically important policies needed to move a society forward in the 21st century."

1 posted on 09/09/2009 11:26:53 AM PDT by TitansAFC
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To: TitansAFC

We need to thank the NY Times for finally showing us the democrat party agenda in full frontal view.


2 posted on 09/09/2009 11:29:19 AM PDT by FormerACLUmember (When the past no longer illuminates the future, the spirit walks in darkness.)
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To: TitansAFC

Game over.


3 posted on 09/09/2009 11:29:20 AM PDT by Dallas59
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To: TitansAFC
Little Tommie Friedman & New York Tmes proclaims "Obamah For Life!"

He knows what's best for Amerika!

4 posted on 09/09/2009 11:29:52 AM PDT by TexasCajun
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To: TitansAFC

The New York Times showing it’s colors. Chinese Communism. I guess it’s an improvement from their Stalinism of the 1930’s.


5 posted on 09/09/2009 11:30:17 AM PDT by SolidWood (Sarah Palin: "Only dead fish go with the flow!")
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To: TitansAFC

It’s Thomas Friedman...it would be very unwise to expect much from that guy. He’s always been one comma short of a semi-colon...


6 posted on 09/09/2009 11:30:43 AM PDT by snarks_when_bored
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To: TitansAFC

‘a Chinese-style Autocracy’

Lol. We already do. They are called the Republicans & Democrats.

There teamwork has been destroying our Republic for years.


7 posted on 09/09/2009 11:31:42 AM PDT by BGHater (Insanity is voting for Republicans and expecting Conservatism.)
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To: SolidWood

Chinese Communism also has only rarely had to deal with a mixed citizenry. The few times it has (e.g. Tibet) the non majority element definitely got the short end of the stick!


8 posted on 09/09/2009 11:33:09 AM PDT by HiTech RedNeck (Proud Sarah-Bot.)
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To: snarks_when_bored

I always think of him as a complete colon.


9 posted on 09/09/2009 11:33:25 AM PDT by Adder (Proudly ignoring Zero since 1-20-09!)
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To: TitansAFC
Not joking at all ~ makes me want to shout "Death to the New York Times and their running dog lackeys".

We really do need to move these pukes to the top of the "to be purged" list.

(Just giving the whole NYT thing a "Chinese-like" environment)

10 posted on 09/09/2009 11:33:44 AM PDT by muawiyah
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To: TitansAFC
There is only one thing worse than one-party autocracy, and that is one-party democracy

That is like saying that a bullet to the head is better than being burned at the stake because it gets it over faster. But if the result is not desirable, the speed at which it is arrived can never make it desirable. No matter how pleasant the ride to the concentration camp it is not someplace you want to go.
11 posted on 09/09/2009 11:34:15 AM PDT by GonzoGOP (There are millions of paranoid people in the world, and they are all out to get me.)
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To: TitansAFC
A wise man told me "Liberals are utopians who seek to reshape man into THEIR vision, instead of G-d's vision."

Hitler tried this.

The communists tried this.

Indeed, very tin-pot dictator tried to re-shape man in his image, thinking he could improve on Creation.

Obama follows in their footsteps. He defines sin as acts against his values. This is a great evil.

Only first in the USA did the founders recogonize that man is how G-d created it, with all (what we see as) flaws. We should not second guess the Creator, and leave people alone.
12 posted on 09/09/2009 11:34:54 AM PDT by Jewbacca (The residents of Iroquois territory may not determine whether Jews may live in Jerusalem.)
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To: Adder

(heh)


13 posted on 09/09/2009 11:35:38 AM PDT by snarks_when_bored
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To: TitansAFC

Thom Friedman+

Gimme Fascist Super-Romney Care

Gimme Fascist Cap and Trade

Damn the internet an’ stuff which make Republican and Democrat politician ashamed of their crookedness by exposing the bills they propose to the public.


14 posted on 09/09/2009 11:37:27 AM PDT by Shermy (Space For Rent)
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To: muawiyah

Friedman is just another self-loather!


15 posted on 09/09/2009 11:37:31 AM PDT by Dr. Ursus
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To: TitansAFC
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.

This man is totally insane!

16 posted on 09/09/2009 11:37:32 AM PDT by frogjerk (Obama Administration: Security thru Absurdity)
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To: FormerACLUmember
-—”We need to thank the NY Times for finally showing us the democrat party agenda in full frontal view”-—

That's where I stand. The left has become too bold, without the careful strategizing that traditionally gave them plausible deniability. Now they are just thumping their chests in their calls for a liberal Plutocracy, which they have desired all along.

I have begun to believe lately that Obama’s fall in the polls is actually more of a negative reaction to the Democrats’ actions in general since attaining total control of government than of his personal job performance. In truth, Obama himself has actually done very little since gaining power. But the left has become emboldened, believing that they have fundamentally shifted the country not from center-right to center-left, but from center-right to liberal, with spatterings of dissenters.

They think they can safely remove the veil now, and show their true colors without concern about backlash. They are in for a surprise.

17 posted on 09/09/2009 11:37:44 AM PDT by TitansAFC (Socialism is a disease; Sarah Palin is the cure. Palin/Romney 2012 or Palin/Gingrich 2012!!)
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To: TitansAFC

“But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today”

The only thing “enlightened” that the Chinese autocrats share in common with this simpleton is hatred of America and the embrace of Communism..... how truly enlightened.

What next, how Stalin was just misunderstood and the Ukraine famine was just ‘growing pains’ of an enlightened form of governance?


18 posted on 09/09/2009 11:39:00 AM PDT by allmendream
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To: TitansAFC

Sure. That works for me. An “enlightened” one party.

And re-education camps for those who are not so enlightened.


19 posted on 09/09/2009 11:39:07 AM PDT by markomalley (Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus)
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To: TitansAFC

20 posted on 09/09/2009 11:41:21 AM PDT by Berlin_Freeper (To meet decent people these days you have to create them.)
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To: TitansAFC
From the article:

Mr. Obama is not a socialist; he’s a centrist.

This tells you all you need to know about Tom Friedman these days. He's very much in favor of statist solutions to problems which don't exist. He spent the early '00s marveling at globalization and cheering entrepreneurship and the economic liberation of countries like India, and yet managed to miss the obvious - statism stifles entrepreneurship and India's expansion resulted from reducing government involvement in their economy, not by inflicting inane cap-and-trade voodoo schemes on it.
21 posted on 09/09/2009 11:42:00 AM PDT by AnotherUnixGeek
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To: TitansAFC

I hope they try it. I really do. They want to find out the meaning of revolution. Then they should keep talking like this.


22 posted on 09/09/2009 11:42:23 AM PDT by Maelstorm (Party like it's 1776!)
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To: TitansAFC

oh, come on....you KNOW this is what they’ve been rooting for all along....Dictatorship of the Illuminati Who Know Better than You


23 posted on 09/09/2009 11:43:44 AM PDT by Buckeye McFrog
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To: TitansAFC

Friedman loves Red Chinese health care. Throw political opposition in jail. Sell their organs.

And he doesn’t even have to worry about free speech issues as he agrees with communism.


24 posted on 09/09/2009 11:44:40 AM PDT by y6162 (uish..)
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To: TitansAFC
The way the ‘Rats are running things is the way most parliamentary democracies are run. The party/group of parties in charge do what they want to do with a few “harrumph” of complaint from the minority party/parties. That continues until either the next scheduled election or until things start falling apart and the ruling coalition fails a vote of no confidence and a new election happens early.

How often does the Labour Party in the UK expect Conservatives to cross over to help them out?

If the NY Times knew anything about the world they would know those facts.

25 posted on 09/09/2009 11:45:02 AM PDT by KarlInOhio ("I can run wild for six months ...after that, I have no expectation of success" - Admiral Obama-moto)
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To: TitansAFC

How farking stupid does someone have to be to not realize that the fact that political speech and criticism of the government is not allowed in China makes them look better than us because it can lead retards to come to the conclusion that they never make mistakes?

That’s exactly what anti-free speech laws are used for. Retards like this columnist equate lawfully decreed absence of evidence for evidence of absence.


26 posted on 09/09/2009 11:45:26 AM PDT by evandi
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To: TitansAFC

At first I thought this had to be Scrappleface.


27 posted on 09/09/2009 11:46:34 AM PDT by Paleo Conservative (I wonder why Solomon Ortiz (TX-27) is so afraid of talking with his constituents?)
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To: All

This man is in need of a punch to the face...


28 posted on 09/09/2009 11:46:46 AM PDT by Maverick68 (w)
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To: TitansAFC

I never thought that the Chinese politburo were enlightened.


29 posted on 09/09/2009 11:47:43 AM PDT by brooklyn dave (Where's the birth cert?)
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To: TitansAFC
But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today

Why is this man employed??? anywhere??

30 posted on 09/09/2009 11:48:23 AM PDT by GeronL (http://libertyfic.proboards.com ............. http://tyrannysentinel.blogspot.com)
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To: TitansAFC
but from center-right to liberal, with spatterings of dissenters.

Spattering of dissenters? Is that the leftist fantasy of giving the TEA parties and town hall protesters the full Tiananmen Square treatment? I hope the SEIU goons don't get tanks.

31 posted on 09/09/2009 11:48:51 AM PDT by KarlInOhio ("I can run wild for six months ...after that, I have no expectation of success" - Admiral Obama-moto)
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To: TitansAFC

I’ve got just the solution for Mr. Friedman — move to China. And take all your socialist, communist, marxist, fascist loving friends with you.


32 posted on 09/09/2009 11:49:45 AM PDT by Waryone (II Chronicles 7:14)
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To: TitansAFC; franksolich; Jeff Head; Travis McGee; abb

wow.


33 posted on 09/09/2009 11:52:46 AM PDT by GeronL (http://libertyfic.proboards.com ............. http://tyrannysentinel.blogspot.com)
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To: Maverick68

AND the Tonya Harding treatment ~


34 posted on 09/09/2009 11:54:04 AM PDT by muawiyah
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To: TitansAFC

‘A Monstrous Column’ [Jonah Goldberg]

Kenneth Anderson at Volokh:

It is characteristic of Thomas Friedman’s thought to move from particular issues of policy to sweeping conclusions about the Nature of Man and God and the Universe, typically based around some attractively packaged metaphor - flat earth, hot earth, etc. Rarely, however, has he been quite so clear about the directness of the connections he sees between his preferred set of substantive outcomes, his contempt for American democratic processes that have, despite all, managed to hang in there for, I don’t know, a few times the length of time between the Cultural Revolution and today, and his schoolgirl crush on autocratic elites because they are able to impose from above.

Let me just say for the record that this is a monstrous column. When faced with American public defection from elite preferences outcomes on certain policy issues that involve many difficult tradeoffs of the kind that democracies, with much jostling and argument, are supposed to work out among many different groups, Friedman extols the example of ... China’s political system, because it’s both enlightened and autocratic? Who among us knew?

Quotes for the Day [Jonah Goldberg]

A quote chain from LyfLines blog:

If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever.
- George Orwell

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.
- John Derbyshire


35 posted on 09/09/2009 11:55:18 AM PDT by roses of sharon (If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever. - Orwell)
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To: TitansAFC
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...

I'm amazed, not that Thomas Friedman believes what I've always assumed he was too clever to openly admit, but that he finally feels safe openly saying that he considers communists to be "more enlightened" than either democrats or republicans.

I am worried about our country. We have an extreme anti-American radical in the White House who has so many terrorist friends and appointees in his inner circle that it's hard to guess which one an article is about from the "terrorist" headline. We have extreme anti-Americans in what used to be the most respected publications of the news media. The only good news is that obama's popularity and the profits of the socialist news outlets are both dropping with equal rapidity.

36 posted on 09/09/2009 12:06:13 PM PDT by TurtleUp (I believe that America is good and that human life is good, so I'm a conservative.)
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To: TitansAFC
Mr. Obama is not a socialist; he’s a centrist.

LOL... This coming from a man calling for a one-party autocracy. You can't make this stuff up.
37 posted on 09/09/2009 12:09:29 PM PDT by nhwingut (The media's love affair with Obama reminds me of a dog humping a telephone pole.)
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To: TitansAFC

I suppose he thinks we need to “purge” all those inconvenient and obstructionist Republicans and Libertarians.


38 posted on 09/09/2009 12:13:38 PM PDT by Little Ray (Obama is a kamikaze president aimed at the heart of this Republic.)
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To: TitansAFC

I don’t think these idiots realize that if the Chinese were to take over, or a similar leadership, the press and the Hollywood celebs would be props for propaganda, not the co-rulers they envision themselves to be.

If we had the leadership we need right now, 2/3 of Hollywood would be lined up and shot for treason while the press would have their family members hostages to ensure that they do not step out of line and print lies.

What would be considered lies would be entirely the purview of the leadership, not the press or Hollywood.


39 posted on 09/09/2009 12:25:09 PM PDT by Niuhuru (The internet is the digital AIDS; adapting and successfully destroying the MSM host.)
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To: TitansAFC

Post 17: excellent analysis.

The democrat party plans for a one-party tyranny are increasingly in “full frontal view.”

Hence the NY Times overt demands for a one party dictatorship, and Obama’s opposition to Honduras democracy/support for Chavez’ dictatorship.


40 posted on 09/09/2009 12:27:44 PM PDT by FormerACLUmember (When the past no longer illuminates the future, the spirit walks in darkness.)
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To: TitansAFC

“...But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today...”

Unfortunately, an enlighted autocracy can quickly change to an unenlightend autocracy, because there isn’t any opposition standing in the way. And when a one-party autocracy is led by a group that is not reasonably enlightened, it is open to the possibility of mass genocide, as happened on several occasions, including Pol Pot and his Killing Fields of Cambodia, the nazi regime and their annihilation of most the Jews of Europe, Stalinist Russians and their incarceration or execution of just about everyone they deemed to be undesireable, etc. No thank you Mr. Friedman, I’ll take my chances with a system that allows you to openly question authority.


41 posted on 09/09/2009 12:31:08 PM PDT by Texan Tory
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To: TitansAFC

"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..."

- Thomas Friedman, New York Times.

42 posted on 09/09/2009 12:34:03 PM PDT by andy58-in-nh (America does not need to be organized: it needs to be liberated.)
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To: TitansAFC
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

"The Party decided to elect a new people."--Bertolt Brecht

43 posted on 09/09/2009 12:34:28 PM PDT by denydenydeny ("I'm sure this goes against everything you've been taught, but right and wrong do exist"-Dr House)
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To: TitansAFC

Why doesn’t Friedman move to China if he likes it so well?


44 posted on 09/09/2009 12:35:33 PM PDT by PhiKapMom (Mary Fallin - OK Gov/Coburn - Senate 2010 ! Take Back the House/Senate! Stop ZERO!)
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To: TitansAFC

The MSM has really gone off the deep end. They are really in the tank for Obama. They must know deep down he is a disaster for America. Unbelievable.


45 posted on 09/09/2009 12:36:01 PM PDT by Uncle Hal
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To: TitansAFC
That one party can just impose the politically difficult but critically important policies needed to move a society forward in the 21st century...

Such as suppressing dissent, censoring the Internet, harvesting and marketing organs from executed prisoners, building a Potemkin facade over a seriously-fractured society, repressing native Tibetans, building towards an armed conflict and nuclear blackmail with the US over Taiwan, just to name a few...

46 posted on 09/09/2009 12:36:41 PM PDT by Zeppo (Save the cheerleader, save the world...)
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To: TitansAFC

Enacting Cap and Trade will make us more economically competitive? What is he smoking? His venerated Chinese would never hamper their economy with such nonsense.


47 posted on 09/09/2009 12:39:04 PM PDT by RightInEastLansing
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To: TitansAFC
"the politically difficult but critically important policies needed to move a society forward in the 21st century."

Critically important in whose opinion? The same scientists that brought us global warming hoaxes? The same politicians that brought us the health care "crisis" and unprotected borders?

The arbitrary turning of a page on the calendar does *not* signifiy a real change in human or societal needs in the flow of real life.

Human nature has remained the same for over 70,000 years. The Constitution, written only 200+ years ago, will suit us just fine for a very, very, very long time.

If we can keep it.

48 posted on 09/09/2009 12:42:16 PM PDT by paulycy (Screw the RACErs.)
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To: PhiKapMom

“Why doesn’t Friedman move to China if he likes it so well?”

Exactly. Tommy and all the other neo-communists are free to move to whatever leftist hell-hole they please, but instead, demand that we change the US to suit them.


49 posted on 09/09/2009 12:46:44 PM PDT by Hacklehead (Liberalism is the art of taking what works, breaking it, and then blaming conservatives.)
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To: Maverick68

You are much too kind.


50 posted on 09/09/2009 12:56:34 PM PDT by meatloaf (Obama, Obozo ... what's the difference?)
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