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 ...
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."
We need to thank the NY Times for finally showing us the democrat party agenda in full frontal view.
Game over.
He knows what's best for Amerika!
The New York Times showing it’s colors. Chinese Communism. I guess it’s an improvement from their Stalinism of the 1930’s.
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...
‘a Chinese-style Autocracy’
Lol. We already do. They are called the Republicans & Democrats.
There teamwork has been destroying our Republic for years.
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!
I always think of him as a complete colon.
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)
(heh)
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.
Friedman is just another self-loather!
This man is totally insane!
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.
“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?
Sure. That works for me. An “enlightened” one party.
And re-education camps for those who are not so enlightened.
I hope they try it. I really do. They want to find out the meaning of revolution. Then they should keep talking like this.
oh, come on....you KNOW this is what they’ve been rooting for all along....Dictatorship of the Illuminati Who Know Better than You
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.
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.
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.
At first I thought this had to be Scrappleface.
This man is in need of a punch to the face...
I never thought that the Chinese politburo were enlightened.
Why is this man employed??? anywhere??
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.
I’ve got just the solution for Mr. Friedman — move to China. And take all your socialist, communist, marxist, fascist loving friends with you.
wow.
AND the Tonya Harding treatment ~
‘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
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.
I suppose he thinks we need to “purge” all those inconvenient and obstructionist Republicans and Libertarians.
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.
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.
“...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.

"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.
"The Party decided to elect a new people."--Bertolt Brecht
Why doesn’t Friedman move to China if he likes it so well?
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.
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...
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.
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.
“Why doesnt 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.
You are much too kind.
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