China: Where Everything Must Go Perfectly

World commodity prices increase as Chinese and Indian factories hum. 480,000 US tax returns were prepared in India this year. Venezuela signs an oil deal with China. China moves towards buying Noranda, Canada's largest mining company. Anti-Japanese riots spread through Chinese cities, probably instigated by the Chinese government, only to be suppressed by the same. China passes an "anti-secession law" aimed at Taiwan. Altogether each is, in and of itself, not a cause for alarm. Put together, they create a case for concern.

China's experiment is obviously very successful, for now. However, it carries with it the dangers inherent in any enterprise where everything must go perfectly. The Chinese experiment is notably un-Chinese in its approach. It is not cautious, it is a massive exercise in unchecked creative destruction. That's all well and good, but, given the methods by which it has been carried out, it also carries with it certain dangers.

The more I study the subject the more I am convinced that the position of China's rulers is a lot more fragile than it would seem before the world. Consider: China has at least 1.3 Billion people. How many of those people are enjoying the fruits of China's new prosperity?

How many truly "middle class" people are there in China? How many are there likely to be in a few years? A hundred million? Two hundred million?

The United States is a country of economic inequality, yes. Some inequality is good. But China is increasingly a country of gross economic inequality. China is a country divided between a small number of wealthy people and a significantly larger number of much poorer people.

Is China's boom sustainable? The Chinese boom is premised, in essence, upon the exploitation of ultra-cheap and hard-working laborers who move from the country-side into the cities. Some may talk about China's increasing levels of education and so on but, at its core, it remains based upon that inexorable fact.

In this China's boom differs from the Indian boom. India's boom, while it also features the use of low-wage labour, also features the export of knowledge and innovation jobs to India – something which, upon reflection, probably makes the Indians are more dangerous long-term economic competitor than the Chinese.

However, the flaws of the Chinese boom pose dangers which we haven't talked about very much. Let's look at what's really going on for a moment.

China has an economic boom which has exacerbated domestic political tensions at a time when modern communications result in a situation where dissent and protest can be more easily organized. The Chinese government is fully aware that, were they forced to put down protests by violence, it would destroy the international image that they've been working hard to foster. More importantly, it could well destroy major parts of their trade, especially as other competitors in the Developing World work to usurp their competitive advantage.

The Party seeks to redirect dissent against certain convenient targets: Japan and the United States. The Party seeks to sublimate dissenting urges into a form of hyper-nationalism.

In discussing high commodity prices, we don't consider a key point: they're likely to hurt the Chinese just as much as they're hurting us. The Chinese are, in proportion to their population and their production, short on resources: and they don't have much choice but to buy them where they can.

That's the point of China seeking to make deals with Venezuela and trying to buy Noranda. They need to secure access to resources which they might conceivably, though various means, have steady access to at preferential prices.

It is here that the dangers truly develop. We have a China which is dependent upon the massive import of commodities abroad in order to keep its economy expanding at the rate that it has to in order to accommodate the surging tides of humanity streaming from the farms to the cities. It has a population whose rebellious tendencies have been diverted into hyper-nationalism.

The Chinese experiment appears to be running in a fail-deadly mode. It takes only one thing to go truly wrong for everything to go wrong. A surge in world commodity prices (above the one we've already seen), particularly fuel prices, could make home production more economical than production abroad. An economic slowdown could lead to massive dissent, which could lead to violence, which would massively disrupt the world economy.

Of course, there's a worse danger. If China can't get resources, they might just decide to take them. For all that I wish the United States would, if necessary, do the same, I much doubt if the American people could, under any but the most extreme of circumstances, be convinced to accept the doctrines which I have earlier advocated. But the Chinese people, in their hyper-nationalist frenzy? Who knows?

I can easily envision a scenario whereby the Chinese, under increasing political pressure, with worsening economic conditions, and with a hyper-nationalist population, decide to roll the dice on the recovery of their "lost territories."

We'll just have to wait and see, I suppose.

The Jihad Against Tom Delay (Part One)

In all of the bantering back and forth about the future of House Majority Leader Tom Delay one vital question seems to be increasingly forgotten: just what is the man accused of? The most you get from most Democrats is vague blather about Delay being "unethical" and, in general, you'll hear even less from the GOP.

The central accusation against Delay involves a political action Committee that he controls, the Texans for a Republican Majority. Under Texas law, corporate contributions to political candidates are banned. So far as I can tell, his PAC moved along the edge of the law, much like most of the Democratic 527's did in the last Presidential campaign. For example, fundraisers affiliated with TRM solicited money to be sent to specific candidates and so on.

It's all close to the line, and perhaps over it from time to time, but it's pretty standard stuff so far as political fundraising and spending goes. Most of it is tiny, in any case, and it's doubtful if any of it directly involved Delay. The whole amount spent by the PAC was reportedly $250,000. If we can believe that a certain Senator from New York didn't know anything about a fundraiser where literally millions were concealed, it's not a far stretch to believe that a few thousand dollars (with $1200 to pay for lawyers for one Texas State Representative, which isn't really a campaign contribution in any sense of the word, being the largest individual sum I've seen mentioned) might be spent somewhere without the direct knowledge of the House Majority Leader.

All of the "illegality" of this has come into public awareness mostly as a result of the actions of Travis County DA Ronnie Earle who is, so far as I can tell, something of a rogue prosecutor with a long habit of prosecuting Republicans under strange circumstances, most notably his strange attempt to prosecute Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson for, of all things, assault. Just coincidentally this occurred during the middle of her re-election campaign. Of course, as certain liberal Democrats are fond of pointing out, he's prosecuted many Democrats as well. But, of course, it'd probably be more helpful (in view of the organization of Texas politics until very recently) to have an ideological breakdown of those Democrats.

The rest of the charges against Delay are, if anything, even flimsier. The newest revelation is that he's employed his wife and daughter in various capacities on his campaign staff over the last four years totaling around $500,000. That's a lot of money until you recall that it involves two people stretched over four years. It comes, overall, to something like $60,000 per person per year. Not unreasonable for senior-level jobs at a Political Action Committee. And it's a common enough practice.

I know, I know, it's a horrible affront to democracy, nepotism is. I mean, imagine, if we let Delay get away with this the Senate Majority Leader might have his wife working as a lobbyist! It's not like Democratic Congressman Pete Stark started paying his wife $2400 a month for consulting right after she had twins, or Joe Lieberman had three different family members on his campaign payroll.

Other major complaints against Delay fall into the narrow range between the laughable and the moronic.

For example, Delay is accused of going on junkets overseas. I know, we're all shocked at the idea that a Congressman would go on a junket. In other news: there's gambling in casinos.

Most of the rest of the accusations against Delay seem to have been mostly pushed by defeated Texas Democratic Congressman Chris Bell, who field a series of ethics complaints against Delay last year, presumably as a result of redistricting rage. These included that Delay promised to endorse a Congressman's son for office if the Congressman voted for a bill (politicians trade votes for support! Unthinkable!) and that Delay asked the FAA to track a plane which was fleeing Texas with Democratic state legislators onboard.

So: why are the Democrats so determined to defeat Tom Delay?

It's simple: he gets things done. He's a fighter. He's the sort of man that the Republicans need.

Martin: Please, Don’t Kill Me

Frankly, it was only shocking in dullness. Paul Martin goes up before the nation and says to the opposition, in essence (and to quote a truly great leader), "please, don't kill me."

Thankfully, I doubt if the Canadian people are in a merciful mood towards the Liberal Party at this point. This stunt is only likely to worsen Liberal misfortunes, particularly since it ended up giving the opposition nearly half an hour of free time in prime-time to attack the government.

Dumb, dumb, dumb, on their part.

Larry Summers

I haven't really commented on the whole Larry Summers fight, but I was recently contacted by some people who are selling "Viva Larry Summers" t-shirts and asked me to mention them and their site.

I've done them one better, I've ordered one.

Of course, these shirts also offer a great chance to explain to people just what happened, seeing as the most common reaction to those who come up to you while you're wearing one is certian to be, "who's Larry Summers?"

In the Land of the Excitable and Irrational

I was reading a favorite message board the other day and, after reading for a while, I thought to myself, "If I were as jumpy as these people, I'd have had six heart attacks by now instead of four." The political internet is the land of the excitable, and I know that I'm as susceptible to it as anyone, it's a place where politicians careers are declared dead eight thousand times each day and where the smallest of incidents or the tiniest of setbacks can morph into the dawning of the End Times.

Take, for example, the drop in the Dow on Friday. Rational people, I think, understand that Stock Markets go both up and down. If they didn't, they wouldn't serve their purpose. Sane people, I think, realize that the Dow can be down a hundred on Friday and up two hundred on Monday or, well, whatever. But the internet is not conducive to sanity.

I couldn't count the number of times last yeah when I saw either Bush or Kerry proclaimed as "finished" (admittedly, several hundred of the times for the latter spewed from my own keyboard). I can't count the number of predictions of imminent disasters that have failed to materialize.

Speculation is wonderful. We all like to speculate. But irrational speculation is dangerous. One discussion of the Dow on Friday led to, within a few posts, one individual predicting the forthcoming onset of the next Great Depression and another member wandering off into speculation about "when Bush dissolves Congress" or some other such nonsense. Such nonsense. But it's potentially deadly nonsense.

It's all well and good for people to have a simplistic view of the world. It's altogether another for them to have an entirely irrational view of the world based upon conspiracy theories and obvious falsehoods. It's even worse when people are likely to jump to, and then have reinforced by others, those same bizarre conclusions.

My advice (which I often fail to follow) is to try to emotionally distance yourself from the news. A good general rule to recall is that nothing, almost nothing at least, is as bad as it sounds or as its presented. The media will hype anything and everything.

Whenever I watch and listen to predictions from the media, I recall an episode of the Simpsons where Springfield's local News Anchor, Kent Brockman, is reporting upon the launch of a Space Shuttle carrying "Average American Astronaut" Homer Simpson. Upon seeing an ant drift by a camera with is size magnified by its position, Brockman jumps to the conclusion that the spacecraft has been, "taken over, conquered if you will, by a giant race of space ants." Within moments he is declaring that, "I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords."

I doubt if I'm the only one who has had doubts about the viability of democracy in a world where at least half the people are apparently stupid, gullible, and crazy. The internet is great for many things, but it has not been a success in improving the degree to which the average person is informed politically.

Winston Churchill is famously quoted as saying that the best argument against democracy was a five minute conversation with the average voter. I've yet to see anything to convince me that that isn't fundamentally true. Whenever I think of the average voter, I recall the woman who, in 1964, said she was voting for Lyndon Johnson because, if Barry Goldwater was elected, he was going to take away her TV. When someone then explained to her that Senator Goldwater was against the Tennessee Valley Authority, not her Television, she responded, "Well, I'm not taking any chances."

As much as I admire the President and his team, even I have to admit that there's something disturbing about them standing in front of a banner with some simplistic regurgitation of their policy scrawled across it eight thousand times ("Defending America From Foreign Aggression", "Sound Energy and Whale Oil Policy", etc.).

More on this another night.

The Illusion of Permanence

I was having a conversation with a liberal friend the other day about the future. It was one of those free-ranging conversations which jump from topic to topic. At some point we drifted to the matter of social conservatism, and she asked me why I thought that people were social liberals and I responded, “They're under the sway of the illusion of the permanence of all things.”

At its core, I think, that describes the fundamental problem of all modern liberalism: it assumes that we can sit here and now and build this utopian sort of society because we have nothing but time and we have no competitors. Despite the pretensions of the left to some sort of cosmopolitan internationalism, at their core most modern liberals are inward-looking and reactionary. They believe that we can go on living as we do now forever, regardless of information to the contrary.

I'm constantly amazed by the lack of concern displayed by people who will howl for hours about the Hubbert Peak over declining fertility rates in the West. Those who accept unquestionably crackpot theories about energy which deny the ability of humanity to innovate and explore seemingly refuse to consider the consequences of a case where we will actually bump up against the tyranny of fixed numbers.

The fact that X amount of oil is pumped today is almost entirely irrelevant to what our energy needs and sources will be in two decades. The same flexibility does not extend to matters of demographics. If there are one hundred babies born into a closed community, it is mathematically impossible for there to be more than one hundred twenty year olds in that community two decades later.

Modern liberalism's fundamental delusion is that we have no need to worry about the internal strength of our society (as in its ability to produce future armies and its ability to withstand future challenges) because there are no real threats to our future.

I view moral issues as national security issues. I'm not simply opposed to gay marriage because I believe that it's an abomination against God, I'm against it because I believe that it's a threat to our future security. The advance of homosexuality and other ideologies of personal indulgence threaten our security because they will surely weaken our resolve to resist future threats.

Similarly, I'm against abortion for national security reasons. More abortions means fewer people, which means a smaller economy and fewer potential soldiers (or, alternately, more immigrants, which is also not a sustainable solution).

Our old morality was not crafted because our ancestors were prudes or bigots. It was created by people more acquainted with the dangers of the world. There's a reason why every successful civilization developed moral codes that are broadly similar.

Think about it. From Europe to the Middle East to China to Japan, what do successful societies have in common? In general, they were are patriarchal and centered upon some form of traditional family. I can't name a single one which commonly accepted practices resembling modern homosexuality. All of them tended to be religious (in some form or another) and to emphasize duty and responsibility over personal pleasure. All of them recognized and defended the concept of private property.

Were there societies that thought otherwise? Of course there were. And what became of them?

They died. They disappeared. They're gone. They were conquered by better civilizations.

The evolution of man is a process of creative destruction. Civilizations, peoples, ideas, and religions are eradicated as better ones take their place. That is how man got to where he is today, and that is how we will move forward.

This is what truly scares me about the direction in which our society is headed. This is why I have nightmares about the era of China's ascendancy. The Chinese are better at classical capitalism than we are. They're work twelve hours a day for slave wages without unions and without real regulations to hold them back. They can throw up entire cities where there were none because they're not encumbered by municipal regulations and a thousand pathetic special interest groups.

The Chinese don't have (and aren't likely to have) any ACLU to bother them, nor any effective court for them to sue in. The Chinese are free to pursue the accumulation of their own wealth and power practically free of our self-imposed restraints.

Why do we restrain ourselves so? It's simple: we're deluded. We don't understand the challenge. We don't understand the threat. We believe that our world can continue forever.

But how can our world continue in the face of a billion and a half people in China and another billion in India who will demand the same access to resources as us, the same standard of living as us: the same rights over the planet as us? How can our world endure in the face of people who can make everything that we can for a tenth of the cost and who could, if allowed to do so, consume every resource on the planet and still have excess capacity?

Our world is not permanent. Our world is dying. Our past is dissolving before our very eyes. Because of our laziness, our stupidity, and our ignorance the world of the old West is becoming a faded memory. It's becoming a nostalgic memory of by-gone days of glory.

And so what is to be done?

I don't believe we can save most of Europe. They're a dead civilization. To our descendents, a hundred or so years from now, the idea of Europe as we have known it will be as foreign as the idea of the Aztecs is to us. Europe will be something entirely different. If things continue the odds seem high that Europe will probably be divided between Moslem states and occasional enclaves of surviving European strength. Or perhaps Europe will be entirely Moslem and the surviving Europeans resettled somewhere in the United States, welcomed and loved by the people they once hated so. I don't know. I don't have a crystal ball.

But I do know Europe is dead. The very feel of the continent is one of death. Their civilization will die but probably not before we, “like the Roman, see the River Tiber foaming with much blood.”

The question now is if we can, at least, save the best part of the West: the Anglosphere. For the moment, it's an open question. We're not as far gone as Europe, but we're all headed down the road to danger at various speeds.

Only radical action can now save us from Chinese domination.

Do you think that a world dominated by China would be a place any true Westerner would want to live in? If allowed to reach their full strength, the Chinese would be much more powerful than the United States. Not only because China has a much larger population and apparently a better ability to manage them, but also because China's policies will not be restrained by the same forces as those of the United States are. China won't have any problem with simply taking the resources that they need or want. China won't be restrained from simply ordering the murder of any foreign leader that gets in their way. China won't be above simply bribing and buying foreign governments to get the sort of trade concessions that they want. The Chinese won't have any lobby groups to stop them from conducting horrible genetic experiments to remake men as they desire them to be.

There's only one way to beat China: to fight back now, and to fight like hell. That means a lot of things. It means making our society harder and tougher. For example, I think that we'd be well-served by the institution of some form of universal military service. That, I believe, would be of help to virtually everyone (myself included). But, more than that, we need to leverage our advantages.

More than anything else, that means exploiting:

1) Our cultural influence.
2) Our technological power.
3) Our economic power.
4) Our military power.

We need to work to prepare people for a long struggle against China: one at least as long as the Cold War.

We need to work to secure military domination of space and to develop other advanced technologies which might be used to great effect against the Chinese, especially unmanned planes, ballistic missile defenses, ground-penetrating nukes, and combat robots. Once we secure space, we need to develop offensive weapons which can be dropped from orbit to destroy targets on the ground in seconds. Ideally we might even place kinetic energy weapons in geosynchronous orbit over China.

We cannot simply go on believing that peace and prosperity will continue forever. To get the future we want, we're going to have to fight for it.

Zogby Gets Something Right

What a different poll questions make.

Zogby (who we've all given a hard time) went back and asked some better Schaivo questions. The relevant numbers:

1) The Zogby poll found that, if a person becomes incapacitated and has not expressed their preference for medical treatment, as in Terri's case, 43 percent say "the law presume that the person wants to live, even if the person is receiving food and water through a tube" while just 30 percent disagree.

2) Another Zogby question his directly on Terri's circumstances.

"If a disabled person is not terminally ill, not in a coma, and not being kept alive on life support, and they have no written directive, should or should they not be denied food and water," the poll asked.

A whopping 79 percent said the patient should not have food and water taken away while just 9 percent said yes.

3) "When there is conflicting evidence on whether or not a patient would want to be on a feeding tube, should elected officials order that a feeding tube be removed or should they order that it remain in place," respondents were asked.

Some 18 percent said the feeding tube should be removed and 42 percent said it should remain in place.

4) When asked directly about Terri's case and told the her estranged husband Michael "has had a girlfriend for 10 years and has two children with her" 56 percent of Americans believed guardianship should have been turned over to Terri's parents while 37 percent disagreed.

A Chinese Pope?

Admittedly, I'm not a Catholic, so some may question my qualifications to comment on the subject of who ought to be the next Pope. Further, I would note, that technically my opinion ought to have no weight at all, for the "election" of the Pope is theoretically an act of apostolic succession and is therefore conducted entirely by the will of God.

That being said, I'm going to offer my own suggestion. I've heard people opine that the next Pope could be African, Latin American, Italian, Eastern European and even (God forbid!) American. But there's one nationality which hasn't been discussed which ought to be: Chinese.

The situation of the Catholic Church in China is somewhat complex. There is both an "official" Church, sanctioned by the Chinese Government and an unofficial Church (which is recognized by the Vatican) which is persecuted by the state. The Pope has actually appointed a number of "Secret Cardinals" in China, using an obscure provision of Papal law.

If the Conclave is truly brave, they'll elevate one of those Cardinals to the Papacy. Can you imagine the reaction from the Chinese authorities to such a move?

Is the Hour Come at Last?

Well, there's no real need for me to risk prosecution under Canadian law, so I'm not going to post what I've heard about the testimony under publication ban from the Gomery Commission, but Captain's Quarters, being under no similar threat, has proven more than able in this regard.

What does all of this mean? Has the hour come around at last, for the deliverance of God's faithful subjects in the Northern land? Is the hour now upon us?

Let's talk in generalities.

1) Can the Martin Liberals wriggle out from under this information (whatever it is) on the grounds that "it was that other lot that did all of that"?

This, I think, simply doesn't fly up to a point. If the Sponsorship Scandal involved, as we were led to believe, corruption simply for the sake of helping a few friends of the government in ad agencies, with the total being diverted back into the hands of the party being counted in the thousands, it was remotely plausible that all of it could have gone on without the notice of the Finance Minister/Top Quebec Lieutenant of the Liberal Party. It wasn't likely, but it remained within the realm of possibility.

But let us speculate, hypothetically, that this information confirms what many of us have suspected for a long time: that the involvement of the Liberal Party itself was far deeper than originally revealed.

For example: it might be possible that someone like Martin could ignore or be kept ignorant of a small-scale scam. But it doesn't strike me as at all possible that even Paul Martin could remain unaware of corruption on a much-larger scale. It's one thing to remain blissfully unaware of where a petty amount of money like $250 million is going when it's going out from the taxpayers: it's another thing altogether to be a senior Quebec Liberal politician and not be aware of what was apparently happening to that money thereafter.

2) Is this bad enough to get people to vote for the Tories or the Bloc instead of the Liberals?

Yes, I think. But, then again, I thought that the original revelations were bad enough to get people to vote for the Tories or the Bloc over the Liberals. It may well be that, in the last election, the Liberals did about as badly as they can do in the hands of an electorate which, by all appearances, is made up of a gang of Stepford Liberals.

But, do think this is bad enough to hurt the Liberals more. In a fair world, this would be enough to earn them a 1993 PC-level destruction. I don't think it will do quite that. But it'll be bad. "Vote for the crooks, not for the fascists," only works for so long and, frankly, the Tories have spent most of the time since the last election carefully moving to the left (or, if you prefer "center") on just about everything. The delusive abilities of our national media only extend so far. It's going to be increasingly hard to convince the Canadian people that the Tory proposal for a 5% increase in spending is evil, as opposed to the Liberal proposal for a 7% increase in spending, which has the sanction of the risen Christ.

In truth, it's bad enough to give me a little fear. After all, I live in British Columbia, where the provincial Liberals are the "right-wing" party. The information is, in my view, bad enough to taint the Liberal name and it does look like we're going to have nearly-simultaneous Provincial and Federal elections.

If we have an election in the near future, I expect that the Liberals won't quite suffer the fate of the PC's of 1993. But I do think that the end result will call to mind two other words: John Turner.

Turner, as you will recall, was the much-heralded successor to Pierre Trudeau. The former Finance Minister, a "moderate" by reputation, was utterly destroyed after a short time in power, largely as a result of the people's exhaustion over Liberal corruption.

I think that, in an election today, we'd be looking at either a very slight Conservative majority or a large Conservative minority. Something like 150 Tory seats, 80 Liberal seats, 60 Bloc seats, and 20 NDP seats. An election now would be very bad for the Liberals.

That's why it needs to be brought on. We need an election now. There should be no chickening out to wait for the fall. This loses urgency and its "rage factor" if we wait.

We need to hit them now. If the Bloc move for no-confidence in the government tomorrow, we need to bring the government down and go to the polls.