Posted on 07/31/2002 11:48:38 PM PDT by maui_hawaii
No, you're ignorant because you know nothing about China, diplomacy or international relations. I have no idea why you can't speak English. No doubt a shining example of our public "skools."
"Do you always throw such unwarrented [sic] insults at everyone who hold differing view points [sic] than you?"
Nope. All my insults are warranted.
"Hey that'd be great if your [C]ommunist [C]hinese freinds [sic] would too."
They do.
This is as leat his third go-round here.
I forget his other names. Soccer8 above mentioned one of them.
The best evidence you and I or anyone else can present to prove our respective cases is what actually is going on in the real world. If it were true that democracy was the way to go for Third World nations with majority-poor populations and no middle-classes, I would have no argument at all with what you say. But one has to simply ask oneself, "If democracy is so great and conducive to capitalism and general societal progress, then why are all of today's Third World democracies such dysfunctional jokes?"
Historically, modern Western democracy only came into being after the "enlightened despots" of the 1700's used their authoritarian power to codify the laws and make other country-wide capitalist reforms, which allowed capitalism to flourish and a middle-class to develop. A middle-class is what set the stage for the American and French Revolutions and the introduction of modern democracy. The American middle-class and its "bourgeoisie" counterpart in France led these respective revolutions. They were particularly disturbed by high taxation on their commercial activities, which helped make them middle-class in the first place.
Similarly, the E. Asian one-party governments in Korea, Taiwan, etc. over the past 50 years pushed through economic reforms that allowed those countries to achieve First World status in a generation. Then, it was only after middle-classes had developed did they adopt democracy.
If you just put a democratic political structure on a developing Third World country, what do you get? You get corrupt Russia! Russia is democratic but in name only. People are still accustomed to disregarding completely whatever laws the Duma passes. Same with India.
But it's a middle-class culture which starts to convince people that following the laws is in their own interest. The laws were created to protect the interests of the growing middle-class anyway, especially their commercial activities (contract law, property rights, etc.) Regarding today's Third World democracies, even if you impose a democratic political structure on them, their peoples have not started to act like typical law-abiding, middle-class Americans!
The liberal intelligentsia is just infatuated with the idea that democracy is the one-size-fits-all panacea for every country in the world, regardless of its stage of development. Consequently, many Third World countries have been harangues into adopting democracy prematurely to their own detriment. Their majority-poor populations inevitably elect socialistic politicians who oppose capitalist reforms and want to maintain their big-government, socialist welfare state forever.
All this has just resulted in more and more foreign investors pouring less money into today's Third World democracies and more money into China. If you're a foreign investor, why in the world would you want to invest in a place like India when after 50 years of democracy, their gridlock-plagued legislature still hasn't enacted even the most basic of labor, land, and tariff capitalist reforms?
No?
Don't you wonder why I didn't use the term? Ever wonder why people on the forum here seldom use the term? Ever wonder why the term appears in the Chinese constitution but not in the US constitution?
Are you aware that the US is not a democracy, never has been, and was never intended to be a democracy, although God knows people keep trying to shove us in that direction?
Evidently not, but you're not alone- even the folks who demonstrated in Tianamen square didn't 'get it,' a fact which was obvious when they toted out the 'goddess of democracy,' a Statue of Liberty knock off. Liberty is not democracy nor is democracy liberty. Even US politicians get that one screwed up, and throw the term democracy around as if it is a good thing of which no one can get enough. That bad habit of misusing the term has everyone befuddled, and it has gotten to the point now that the word's meaning has become so arbitrary it may as well mean nothing.
Checks and balances - which I did refer to, are diametrically opposed to 'democracy,' which is one of the reasons they were created. You're in error when you assumed that checks and balances were synonymous with 'democracy,' and then paraded on with trying to equate totally different forms of government with ours under the broad heading of 'democracy,' as if this country fits under that label, which it does not.
You said something else which is quite disturbing, but I will address it later. Let's see if someone else notices what it was.
Now, back to the actual topic of the thread. Go back and read the article at the top of the thread, and realize that laying off workers isn't the central theme and is not what the author of the article was taking issue with. I am assuming you are Chinese because you seemed to be missing everything in the article which would be obvious to an American, whether liberal or conservative. You're Chinese, are you not? That's perfectly OK, I just want to clear the air so I know where you're coming from.
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