Here’s going out on a limb, for you:
In the aftermath of recent terror attacks, Muslims in Mumbai are speaking out against the carnage that left more than 170 people dead and hundreds injured — including many Muslims.
Speaking out against carnage? That’s so absent of significance I’m not even sure it’s a valid use of verb and object. Doesn’t carnage almost contain within its definition the sense of something worth speaking out against? Maybe the Muslims in Mumbai should act out against Islamism. Here’s more:
“They (terrorists) claim to be doing this in the name of Islam. We have to tell them, ‘Not in our name,’” said writer and activist Javed Anand, a Muslim.
Does Anand expect the terrorists to coolly take such a declaration into consideration? The next bit is worthy of the Onion:
But in a show of solidarity against terrorism, many Muslims throughout India are organizing a silent rally for the near future — one of several ways Indian Muslims are trying to distance themselves from the attackers.
A silent rally? The collective silence of moderate Muslims is already well established as part of the problem. Muslim groups are often quick to condemn violence. And they’re just as quick to condemn the popular association of Islam and terrorism in the media. Yet, they seem to skirt right over the causal phenomenon linking the two: the reality of Islamic terrorism. But, fear not. A brave group of Muslims is preparing to meet the jihadists head-on: with silence.
The McJournalist strikes again.
I wonder why he didn’t work in the bit about the the Bangladeshi engineer telecommuting to his job in Silicon Valley . . . . .
Gordon,
I agree that it’s time for us to lead. Unfortunately, Obama is a go along guy and would in my opinion prefer to let the corrupt UN do it in a new spirit of American cooperation. I simply can’t see him investing any time or effort to pull nations that hate us into our sphere of influence other than making the occasional appearance on foreign TV channels.
Gordon,We can come back. The US needs to do for itself what we did for Germany and Japan after WW2. We brought them back from the dead. Physician Heal Thyself;our core problem is pride and denial. We need to use our knowledge of the Free Market System to heal ourselves. No gimmicks this time.
I can’t help but feel that in this most important of moments we have exactly the wrong person in office. Precisely when we need someone committed to the strength of the free market we have someone who wants to replace as much of the market as possible with government. Precisely when we need someone committed to low and lowering taxes we have someone who wants to take money away from the very people who invest, start businesses and employ other people. Precisely when we need the government to tighten its belt and contract its promises we have a President determined to spend otherworldly amounts of money and promise everything to everyone.
Barack Obama is the wrong man for the moment. It would have been unfortunate to have Obama as President when the economy was flourishing and the federal coffers were full. Having him as President when the economy is cratering and the federal coffers are beyond empty is proving absolutely disastrous. Last night was a time for modesty and humility, a moment to recognize that some of the grandiose changes he had envisioned would have to wait for another year. Instead he doubled down, committing us to a series of massive spending proposals and transformations that, if he actually attempts to do them, would break what we have left of an economy.
We had hoped Obama was intelligent enough to realize that you cannot raise taxes in a recession, you cannot reform health care in the midst of a crisis, and government needs to stimulate and not replace private sector investment and growth. It turns out that intelligence is no match for ideology. This man presented himself as a clear-sighted pragmatist; turns out he’s just another blind liberal.
Maine’s Michael, good question. Answer: That was so yesterday. He’s onto a whole new paradigm this week.
First thing we do, we kill all the lawyers. Who else could get the continents to start bargaining with each other? What an apt metaphor. We will unite against reality — against plate tectonics — and make the continents bargain, instead of drifting into and away from each other. What a beautiful encapsulation of the hubris of modern man.
Friedman is one of those pundits who can take one correct thought and completely ruin it with wrong extrapolations, so I’m not sanguine that he is gaining wisdom here. I’m sure he thinks that American leadership needs to take the form of programmatic officiousness. And he is dead wrong about that.
But yes, the world situation is crying out for leadership right now. It was in just such circumstances that Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, and Mao achieved power — that Spain fought a terrible civil war — Mussolini came to power in Italy — the Japanese invaded and occupied Manchuria — and all while the world busily made treaties and repudiated war and embraced pacifism and focused inward and held conferences and endlessly negotiated. In 1938, Neville Chamberlain proclaimed “Peace in our time.” It took 1939 to set us straight on that.
george, I worry about this too. Thanks for raising this.
RCAR, yes, yes, yes.
Ahithophel, that’s really well said. Thanks.
Interesting post – and I wonder how it squares with Kagan’s latest essay. Will the economic crisis discredit the authoritarian regimes by revealing their inability to react to changed circumstances or their ultimate dependence on liberal democracies? Or, will it discredit liberal democracies, by showing them to react in overly hasty or simply over reaching ways, or because they’re unable to execute their policies?
You right, Obama is the wrong man to lead. You noticed Pelosi was flipping her paper looking bored while Obama trying hard to make history selling crappy hope and change.
J.E. Dyer, let’s get rid of all the actively practicing lawyers. I still have my bar admissions.
eddie, good question. I think they will be discredited because their economic models, based on exporting commodities or products, will not be able to cope with the swift deterioration of global economic conditions. The authoritarian states can react quickly, but there is little they can do little in these “fat tail” circumstances. China, for instance, cannot develop a consumer society in a few months. It will take a decade, and by then it will be too late to save the political system.
#13, China, for instance, cannot develop a consumer society in a few months.
But they could recreate a cultural revolution pretty quickly.
On another note, three cheers for Gordon Chang for being the most interactive author at Contentions!
RCAR, or a nasty squabble with a neighbor, such as Japan.
Ahithophel, and three cheers for commenters, who teach me a lot.
It will be very difficult for China’s nominally communist oligarchy to crack down on currency flight or to handle economic dislocations given that their sons and nephews are the big “capitalists” who own or control the businesses.
Creative destruction may become very tragic over there.
I’ll see Ahithophel’s three cheers, and raise him a Bravissimo!
Sully, yes, the sons and daughters of the powerful are the biggest criminals. And because China’s people know that, “Princeling” corruption destablizes the regime.
J.E. Dyer, thanks for the encouragement and the great comments that enlighten this forum.
Nigel Calder, on the sinking of the Blanche in Barfleur Race, the English Channel, in 1120:
. . . think of it as a shipload of young Sicilian mafiosi going down in the Messina Strait. The self-appointed nobility of feudal Europe carried on a wholesale protection racket. They aquired territory where they could extort labour from the serfs and taxes from free men. The racketeers were styled dukes or barons or knights. They had metal suits and armoured horses in place of bulletproof vests and cars, and troops of archers served them instead of machine guns. Powerful lords ran extended households as if they were godfathers to their hoodlums. They were keen that their own families should inherit their territories, but siblings and children kept demanding larger pieces of the action.
For the medieval bullies on horseback, treason was a fine art. Support the right boss and there might be plenty of loot; change sides and your reward could be a county. But if you backed the wrong king-killer you were liable to die in battle or on a scaffold. Half of France or England could change hands and it would be a matter for only a passing comment. To peasants and sailors it made little difference who was collecting the taxes or demanding military service. They died in battle by land and sea with little notion of what they were fighting for.
Calder, Nigel, “The English Channel”, Penguin Books, 1987
Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose.
Gordon -”global’ in the heading does not attract that pic of the very pretty russian girl in a blue bikini & navel jewellery . Anything “China” gets a parade of Sino beauties (including their height & weight) -but they seem a little heavier than usual (must be for the American market).
“Global ” got “Financial Meltdown -Seven ticking bombs” & a guy in a suit. NOT attractive at all.
Please consider your faithful audience.
Unamerican, I must be a little slow today. What Russian girl? Guy in a suit?
Gordon — click on your last post with the word “Russia” in the title, and do the same for “China.” The auto-ads down the left column of the webpage are what Unamerican is talking about.
It’s actually pretty funny sometimes, when a contentions pundit has an earnest piece about the social ramifications of gay marriage, and there’s an ad for gay dating or vacations or whatever running to the left of it. The ads are automatically associated with the pieces by title, apparently. Other pieces about Muslim mistreatment of women generate ads for Muslim dating services.
All part of the fun in this wonderful, wacky world of the Web.
To Gordon, J.E and Ahithophel; well done. I read and learn from all. Most contributors to this informative post are securely lassoed to reality.
Read Dr. Sowell’s missive this AM on NR for his take on the rapid diminisment of pessimism into despair. I pray he is overreading the tea leaves, but often he is more prescient than any writer I can find.
I have hope for the 2010 midterms. Santelli’s rant has struck a very raw nerve in the administration and the talk of a “Chicago Tea Party” is growing real legs.
Michael Steele needs to find and promote real candidates for House seats ASAP. The GOP also has to learn to jetison dead weight such as Specter, Collins and Snowe. Yes this may look like cutting off ones nose, but the damaged tissue has to be removed lest it spread.
J.E. Dyer, I see, now. Thanks for the education.
Unamerican, I will try to keep “Global” out of future titles. So do you prefer Russians or Chinese?
Scott, thanks for alerting me to Sowell. And hold in there until 2010.
A naïve innocent question which maybe quite a few people would like to see answered. Not to prove a point in the asking. But to ask just because many people find the often asked question not easy to answer, just as it also seems so important.
People look at the present human population of China, maybe 1.3 or 1.5 billion, and they wonder: Given that almost everyone in China is now so fixated on improving economic status, to the extent that working under slave conditions just to accomplish an ever minimally increasing economic well-being for ones family, or for oneself, and denying short term happiness for doubtful future economic-lifestyle gains is the norm, what happens should easy-to-come-by resources become very constrained, when the world economy again takes off, at rocket like pace, as surely it will, if just to provide for many people that want to do anything to better their lot?
It is so obvious that young people in other countries, such as India and Indonesia, for example, who see the high-life depicted by the Oscar franchise, including India’s recent participation this year with Slumdog, also seek the same financial and lifestyle betterment, year on year, as do those in China.
Prognosticators of limits to growth, their resource fears unequivocally stated in the past, have always seen their fears proved unfounded, to date. Most economists seem to believe that fear of future lack of resources is immutable illogical myopic thinking. But what if this faith proves unfounded? And what happens if China should run into a resource wall, despite China’s recent very aggressive search around the globe to sign long-term contracts for the resources it needs now and in the near term?
If, resources were to be not so abundant in the near future as they are now, due to collective sharing around the world between rapidly expanding economies, or to double/triple in price, then how would China change to accommodate its society to adjust to these new physical constraints? Could it adjust to a different form of growth? One which is more based on quality of life for the individual, the family? One which is based on (lost) tried and true good enduring Chinese traditional values? Would this not lead to a more stable Chinese society and a different form of government which might better value the individual?
“Communist” China is central to the world’s wellbeing. If it rises in the best way, at least, the world may not fall, perhaps. But, how much more resources are required to help China, and India, rise to a good level? Are there enough resources? And when this “good” level is achieved, will people in China be satiated after achieving their good fortune? Or, will they ever want more, after watching ever more Madison Avenue Ads?
Easy questions to ask. Everyone is asking them. But who has the answers? So far, no one it seems.
How could China change to become a much more equitable society, with not much more increased resources coming in from outside China, such as those from Brazil, and STILL improve, year on year, a better lifestyle for everyone in China? This is my humble question. Tks.
PS: My apology for asking these questions, if they are stupid simply because they are not answerable. Still, it would really be nice to receive some opinions, especially about China/India population’s gong-ho aspirations and REALITY. Thank you very much. Tks!
EcoDominoes, these are critical questions, so thanks for asking them. China’s growth is just beginning to run up against an environmental wall, as the ongoing drought in North China shows. In the last few years it has enduring the worst environmental disasters in the history of the People’s Republic, and no one thinks this string will end soon.
China cannot change its economic model because it is constrained by its political system. China’s communism–or perhaps I should say China’s brand of Leninism–cannot easily coexist with a consumer-based economy. It’s ultimately one or the other.
Very sorry to ask another question. But, does anyone think that the “Charter 08″ might ‘blossom’ into something more substantial?
And, if not, then why would people go out on a limb to sign this document, anyway?
It seems hopeless, from the beginning. So, why would people sign their names on this document? Knowing that they would be so significantly stigmatized by doing so?
Signing this document, does not seem to makes sense? Or, are people just becoming so exasperated that they are just about willing to do anything, even making this seemingly futile gesture?
Gordon:
We can lead again provided we can borrow more money from aboard.
Dear Mr. Chang, please come back! So much is happening in the world and we are all missing your commentary!
guanaco, thank you. I am no longer blogging here.
The Coming Collapse of China leaves a joke to us. The best storyteller award goes to….Gordon Chang.