Book 9 A Libertarian Paradise Read online

"It seems to be okay to shoot children and adults because of your passionate concern for gun ownership. It certainly is okay for your own young men and those of other countries to be killed in wars or police actions. I would assume that even if you believe that an embryo or fetus has an equal value to a child or an adult, an adult death would equal the death of an embryo. But taking it a step further, I can't understand why you would want unwanted children in your society. There is no question that there are more criminals, more disinterested students, and more prison inmates among those children who were not wanted. If nothing else, stopping abortions seems to increase your need for tax money, yet you want to reduce your taxes. Is my logic somehow faulty? Or is there another reason for having unwanted children? Is it so that you will have more hateful killers for your armies?

  RESPONSIBILITY

  "In our country we are only concerned with liberty. But we have a strong requirement for responsibility. You know the saying ‘your freedom ends where my nose starts.’ We have all the freedom we want for ourselves but if we interfere with another person’s freedom or safety we are curtailed from expressing ourselves. For example we are allowed to take drugs, drugs that would be illegal in your country, but if your drug taking somehow affects others, we stop you. So if a person has a traffic accident because of being under the influence of alcohol or another drug he is severely punished. In his own home or in another place where he does not negatively affect others, he can take all the drugs he wants. But I will get more into both the freedom and the responsibilities that we think are essential to our society as we progress in our discussions.

  "We don't have many laws telling people what they can't do. But we do have laws that keep our government running fairly smoothly and that require responsibility from our citizens. As you know we are a big business country, like Singapore, and our responsibility laws protect our customers internationally from being cheated.

  "What we are for is liberty and equality of opportunity. What we are against is a leveling of society where those who have underperformed are given things anyway. That's definitely a communistic idea, giving 'to each according to his needs.' I'll go into these in more detail as we move through our day. But suffice to say, the emerging idea of democracy has gone from the simple idea of giving an equal vote to each of the male citizens, as it was in ancient Greece, to an extremely complicated and costly idea of giving to everybody according to their needs. In fact it seems that the idea of democracy is now being equated with a society based on equality. The idea of freedom has been allowed in the economic realm in most countries, but equality has ruled the social realm. And since the neediest require finances to meet their needs, it is those at the high end of the scale who must pay.

  "I heard one of your venture capitalists say that 'I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.' I'm assuming he meant that freedom and equality or freedom and the social welfare state are no longer compatible. As I remember it was Peter Theil.

  "As I'm sure you can surmise, our nation is the exact opposite of a welfare state. The welfare state is actually a reasonably recent concept of governmental responsibility. If you are not aware of the rise of the welfare state, it was in Europe that it all seemed to start. In Germany it began when Bismarck decided to give pensions to older workers in the 19th century. This was just a few years later than the publication of Karl Marx's book Das Kapital. Eventually in Europe socialized medicine became the rule. Then there was pressure to take in people from other countries who were threatened by their regimes-- thinking that not only people in your society were equal but that people in other societies were equal to you. America followed the Europeans with Social Security during the Great Depression, and then later with Medicare.

  "Do you remember the old story about the ant and the grasshopper?"

  -"Ya. The ant worked hard all summer, he built his house and brought in food for the winter. Meanwhile the grasshopper played and had fun all summer. He vacationed all summer long. But when winter comes the ant is comfy and cozy but the grasshopper has no food or place to live so he freezes to death.”

  "The moral of course, is to be responsible for yourself. But in your socialist equalitarian countries the story is much more likely to end this way. When somebody reports that the grasshopper is shivering and dying in the cold, the news networks do a big story on him. The grasshopper has a press conference where he asks why should some people be warm and cozy while others are freezing to death. People in the Western world send money and food supplies to all the grasshoppers who are freezing. Kermit the Frog guests on Oprah's program and reminds the world that 'it isn't easy being green.' Miss Piggy is interviewed on 'Good Morning America' and reminds the world that 'all we animals are equal.' Demonstrations are televised in front of the ant's house. Politicians respond to the indignity of the situation. They raise the taxes on ants and any other animal that has prepared for the winter by working hard. The ant is fined for not having hired green bugs to build this house. He takes it to court but left-leaning judges find that he was not being democratic. The grasshopper sues the ant in civil court and wins because new laws have made the ant's actions undemocratic and prejudicial. The ant pleads that the new laws violate the ex post facto clause of the Constitution. But the judges rule that the Supreme Court in the 18th century had decided that James Madison's intent, that the clause should apply to civil cases, was not what Madison really meant. The ant loses again. The grasshopper takes over the ant's house and his food supplies. But he doesn't take care of the house, he eats all the food and as the warmth of summer entices him to play in the sunlight, he leaves the house which he had not maintained, and heads for another summer of fun. The ant's now rundown house is taken over by spiders that terrorize the neighborhood that was once a fine middle-ant neighborhood. The ant, deposed from his home, died in the snow that winter. The grasshopper died from a cocaine overdose at a 'rave.' I guess that the moral of the story is that when somebody different from you appears to be leading the good life, It definitely isn't fair and is t-ant-amount to a criminal act and demands a punishment."

  EQUALITY OF OPPORTUNITY

  -”But what about equality of opportunity? I thought you were against equality."

  "I'm sure you know enough about semantics to realize that using a term alone and using it in a phrase might alter its meaning somewhat. 'Equality before the law' or 'equality of educational opportunity' both use the word 'equality' but have quite different meanings when put into those two phrases. I'm sure we would agree that as desirable as 'equality before the law' may sound, it seldom actually happens. The financial ability of the litigant will affect the quality of the lawyers hired. Then the skills of the lawyers are not equal and the prejudices of the judges will probably sway the decision. We cannot have equality of opportunity in education because teachers and curricula vary. The best we can do is to try to equalize education. You want to have as close as possible an equal starting line.

  "In spite of these obstacles equality of opportunity in education is essential, so we must strive for it. But what happens when you have equality of opportunity--people achieve at different levels. This gives us exactly the inequality I have been talking about. And relative to semantics we realize that the meaning of a word can change depending on the speaker or the context.

  “Equality of opportunity means that you have an equal starting line. Both the liberals, who want equality throughout life, and conservatives, who recognize our inequality, want equality of opportunity. But like I said, when you have an equal starting line, at the end of the race the racers will be scattered. We recognize this inequality and give everyone the freedom to achieve as high as he or she can. This is diametrically opposed to the equalitarian ideas we have seen in Europe, and to a degree in the U.S. You may start the race with equal opportunity but if you don't finish in a dead heat the liberals want to equalize the participants. They try to equalize people at the finish line.

  "Here is an example. People in your cou
ntries are told repeatedly that smoking is bad for their health. That’s the equal starting line. But some people choose to smoke. Some of them get emphysema, heart attacks or lung cancer. Then socialized medicine, like Medicare, is required to try to save their lives--because they are all equal, according to your societies these people were equal all their lives no matter how many stupid things they have done. Let’s take it a step farther. Smokers are much more likely to be lower social class citizens. Because of this, they haven’t earned as much money or paid as much in taxes. So the non-smoking people, usually the higher earners and higher taxpayers, have to pay for the smokers.

  “The same is true of education. People who have more intellectual abilities or work harder to learn--are more likely to succeed in some field. They started with schooling as equal as possible. Obviously all teachers are not equal and not all parents spend an equal amount of time or an equal quality of time in helping their children learn. Not all parents have tried to enrich the education their children by bringing them to libraries, museums or by traveling. So opportunity is never equal, but we try.

  “But in any case, whether starting equally or unequally they finish unequally. In the various academic and vocational fields some will be superior in philosophy, some in physics, some in engineering, some in economics. But they will definitely not be equal. As they live their lives some will be creative, some hard working, some well-educated, some will make good decisions some will make stupid decisions. I'll get into our education system later. I think we need to look at how we have arrived at our national direction first."

  --"I would like to hear more about your equality of opportunity.”

  "We try to ensure that an outstanding education is available to all of our young people. As I mentioned, parents pay for the education of their children. Most are educated in our public schools, but private schools are available. As opposed to your country, all teachers in public or private schools must be certified by the state. We have a responsibility to the children that they are getting equivalent educations. In some schools one teacher teaches the same children from the first through the sixth grade. This is how they do it in Finland and have been very successful.

  "I might mention here that our only foreign aid goes to increasing equality of opportunity in different countries of the world. You probably know that in sub-Saharan Africa less than one in five girls make to secondary school. Nearly half are married by the time they are 18. One out of seven is married by 15. But girls under 15 are five times more likely to die in childbirth than are women over 20. So the young girls are being doubly endangered-- both their mental abilities and their physical health. As you know, there is much more prejudice against, and subjugation of, girls and women in our world. While it is worse in the Third World countries, it exists in all countries.

  "I recently saw an estimate that if the euro zone would merely close the gender gap and allow women into the areas where they were confident, their gross domestic product would rise by 13%. But look at Italy’s record. They are 87th in the world in terms of equal employment for women. There are 121st in wage parity, they are 97th in the world in terms of allowing women to take leadership positions. All in all, Italy ranked 74th in the world relative to its treatment of women. Of course it does allow men to hold their ‘rightful’ places as superior not only to women but to about everybody else in the world.

  "Even for the Italian women who work, they spend an additional 21 hours of work in the home. This is more than for any other Western European women. American women average only four hours a week of extra work in the home. Only 45% of Italian women work outside the home compared to 80% of Norwegian women and 72% of the women in UK.

  "Even in your country women are showing their superiority. Your college enrollment is 57% female. There are more of them in universities, and more getting graduate degrees. This is also true in northern Europe. Women are less likely to be unemployed. They are marrying later and having fewer children"

  -"Women are the hope of the world. They live longer--and seem to be smarter. I dare say that if women ran the world we would have a whole lot fewer wars.”

  "I would agree commander. Equality of opportunity has allowed women to achieve what they had not been allowed until fairly recently. But it is not just educational equality of opportunity that holds back countries, just about anything that limits people's freedom is a brake on progress. Just look at Russia. It is a country that wants to be accepted as an equal in the West. In properly rights it ranks 119th in the world, on judicial independence 116th, on the reliability of news services 112th, on professional management 77th. There is definitely a link between the Russian mafia, with its fingers in property pies around the world, and the Russian government. You can't progress in a country fueled by crime. And how can Russia become great when many of its most talented people leave?"

  -”If it weren't for their natural resources their country would be dying."

  "But back to equality of opportunity. We don't extend equality of opportunity to affirmative action. I know that recently Chinese were allowed to be classified as blacks in South Africa. This gave them special treatment such as getting business loans more easily. In your country women and ethnic minorities were given preferential treatment for many years through affirmative action laws. Our laws are designed to eliminate ridiculous prejudices and if they have occurred they can be taken to arbitration. But we don't try to somehow equalize things long after any equality of opportunity has been denied.

  "But not all rights or wishes fall under the guise of equality of opportunity. If we had any Muslim women wearing the full face-covering veil someone might object. But we have none. If someone wanted minarets by a mosque it might be OK because they are pretty. But if a muezzin mounted it and began calling the faithful to prayers with his chants, I'm afraid there would be lots of objections. And remember our principle of responsibility! When you interfere with another's liberty, like one's liberty to sleep, you've gone too far.

  -"The muezzin chant is rather romantic and colorful about noon, but at 5AM it really irritated me. It was bad enough when it was only his natural voice, but now so many mosques have those hyped up loudspeakers and you are called to prayer with a 500 decibel chant, I find that the sound is more than my tympanic membrane can handle. Heavy metal 'music' affects me the same way. I guess I just like my peace and quiet."

  "I agree with you Con, the way that the ideas of modern democracy have developed, so that every possible kind of freedom and equality can to be included in the idea, has bastardized a concept that really only means that the people can vote. In our country we laugh at what people are calling their 'rights.' Whatever they seem to want they think is a right. Another source of our merriment is when we see illegal immigrants and low-level workers claim that they are taxpayers when the only tax they pay is a bit of sales tax on their beer."

  -"Well, Tyler what do you think is the best kind of government?”

  WHAT IS THE BEST GOVERNMENT?

  "Well for one thing I would certainly not recommend your American style of government. For one thing, because of your extreme politics, in Washington half of your people want the executive to fail. Winning your political battles is far more important than winning for your country. Then you have the lobbyists advocating not only for the preservation of the existing corporations, but getting them unfair subsidies and tax breaks that make it difficult for newcomers to enter the scene. This is an affront to the equality of opportunity in the business world."

  SOCIETAL POSSIBILITIES

  -"So you think that yours is the best possible type of government. Can you give me some options that you thought about when coming up with your ideas for a government?"

   

  "There are so many options for a society, so it is highly unlikely that everyone will agree on one. You will always have an economic side of a society and a social-political side of a society. Each one has a possibility of behavior along a very long continuum. For example on t
he economic side you can have a range from totally free laissez-faire capitalism, or should I say ‘a free enterprise system,’ to a system that is totally communistic--'from each according to his ability to each according to his needs.' Along that range we have socialism, 'from each according to his ability to each according to his work.' That would come closer to the communist end. Further to the right we would have the union versus business possibility with negotiations, strikes, and lock-outs as part of the economic reality.

  "On the social-political side, on the far right you could have an absolute monarch or a pope in total charge of the program. On the far left you would have anarchy. Somewhere in the middle we would have equalitarian democratic behavior and further to the right we would have representative government, a republic, where the more important people would be the rulers. They would probably be elected by the people or by power elites like business leaders or military commanders. A number of problems can pop up along these continua. For example we would have ultimate freedom or anarchy versus the constriction of freedom and possibly regression. We might have a feeling of loving humanity versus being uncaring. We can have the political question of whether we should be warlike or peaceful. And naturally we can have liberty, or possibly fascism, on one end and equality or communism on the other. There are so many psychological, political, economic and social possibilities that can be discussed or that may find their way onto one of these continua.

  "So we have at least two continua, one economic and one social-political, both of them with the left end based on equality and a right end based on the inequality and superiority of one or a few. In various societies these continua may intersect at different points and give that society the philosophical underpinnings to push it toward a specific reality. Here in our United Colonies the continua intersect on the right side. We believe that people are unequal based on intelligence or work effort or physical abilities. We believe that it is right and just that the more unequal can keep what they make. And the citizens of each generation must start anew to prove their worth. But I'll talk more about that later.

  “Other countries, notably those in Scandinavia but also those in the more developed states of the EU, emphasize equality as being the primary constituent of justice. Their taxes are very high and they, at least theoretically, treat their inhabitants equally. Their continua intersect on the left side of the middle.”

    -"I have my opinion about liberty being essential. I never really thought about it too much. What philosophical underpinnings does your nation use to come up with its libertarian values?"

  "I will try to indicate some of these values and our thinking about them, but tomorrow you will meet with Professor Kelsi Connor. She is the world's authority on the ideas of justice being based on either equality or liberty. We realize that you can't have both completely in one society. One has to be sacrificed for the other either in the economic or the social areas. To the degree that you have one or the other, those continua that I mentioned intersect at quite different spots. We like to talk about freedom and a free society, but depending on the concept of justice that your society has you will tend to find it 'just' if you are on the top, but unjust if you are on the bottom. There is no way that everyone can be happy.

  “People like to talk about civil rights or human rights but those rights come from the society in which they live. The United Nations would like to think of us all in the same society. They make their pronouncements about human rights that nations can accept or reject. Most accept them legislatively but ignore them in practice. So the citizens don't have as many rights as they're told they have. I laugh at you Americans criticizing the Chinese government for not allowing more freedom of speech. Certainly freedom of speech has been listed as a human right by the United Nations--but so has the right to a job. China has done a better job than you have in getting people employed and increasing their wages. Based on what your politicians say in America, your people are most concerned about having a job. I daresay that if you take some of your unemployed Americans, and last I heard that was about 9%, and asked them whether they would rather have a job or free speech-- they would choose the job.

  "I remember hearing about a group of lawyers from America going to China to try to increase their human rights. I was thinking at the time that if China were to use the American common law system they would have to take about half of their people out of the science universities and put them into law schools. Then they would need jobs for the lawyers, so those who could not be elected to run the government could work as lobbyists to influence the government. And because of their free-speech, lawyers could enact more pro-lawyer laws like they have in the US so that they could sue for medical malpractice, smoking illnesses, and all the other evils that their society might have. But China was already making great strides in eliminating corruption and making their society run smoothly. So they didn't really need your American lawyers!

  "But enough about rights, let's talk about politics. Pundits and politicians tell the people what they want to hear. Some will talk about 'liberal.' Some will talk about 'conservative.' But they can't include all social and economic factors in the single term. For example Norway offers very conservative treatment towards ship owners. Their taxes are low. Their state regulation is low. But on the other side of the economic spectrum, the farmers, the government gives a great deal of money to them because they have only about one growing season in a year. So economically the treatment of farmers is quite liberal.

  "In the US gun sales and manufacture are given a great deal of freedom, so this is conservative. But teachers, with their unions, are given a great deal of equality. So their economic treatment is quite liberal. On the social side, all of your students are entitled to a free education. Theoretically this starts them equally. But in actuality the rich people send their children to high-level private schools or they live in rich areas where the public schools pay more for teachers and get better teachers. The richer parents are also more likely to be pretty concerned with their children's educational progress and their entrance into the better colleges.

  "The result of the reality of parents' wealth on the one hand and the increasing poverty on the other, means that we can't categorize the US as either liberal or conservative economically. In the great recession of 2008 the government bailed out the big banks and industries. This could be seen as the government aiding the economic conservatives. At the same time it extended unemployment compensation to the unemployed at the bottom of the society. This was definitely economically liberal.


  "So the economic and social continua, that I mentioned, can intersect at an infinite number of points along the two continua. We might have a society that is economically conservative but socially liberal. Or we might have an intersection that is economically conservative and socially conservative. The other options are being economically liberal and socially liberal or being economically liberal and socially conservative. Let me briefly look at each of these possibilities, realizing that each of my illustrations can be widened or narrowed at any point along the intersection.

  "Let me start where we are in the Colonies. We are economically conservative and socially liberal. This is a libertarian viewpoint. Economically you're on your own. It's sink or swim. No one has responsibility for another person's welfare. If a person made the wrong choices in life that person suffers from them. We keep the government minimal and keep the taxes low. If you have a baby you pay, you even pay for your child's education. You have freedom to choose, but you have the responsibility for your choices. Freedom and responsibility go hand in hand.

  "The second option is being economically conservative and socially conservative. In this approach you have the freedom to achieve economically but the values of society, commonly religious values, keep the people in line. It may be to a reward of heaven or the pains of hell. It may be the social rewards of recognition versus the social denigration of criticism. The social conservatism might reduce drunkenness an
d promiscuity, and possibly corruption in business. The costs to government for a legal system and jails is reduced because of the 'ideal' behavior of the people. I remember reading some years ago that your libertarian congressman, Rand Paul, was against abortion while being very economically conservative. This illustrates the point I'm trying to make relative to being a libertarian in an economic sense but conservative in social terms. Your former president George W. Bush was also in this mold. He thought that abstinence education would curb illegitimacy. It didn't. But the scientific facts don't usually change people's philosophical beliefs.

  "Another option would be being both economically and socially liberal. Here people would have the freedom to do what they want and society would still take care of them. They can have children without being able to care for them. Society would give them money or will take the children into foster care. The people can become alcoholics or heroin addicts and society will provide for their treatment and care. Everyone is equal so everyone is entitled to be taken care of, even if they don't take care of themselves. You might imagine that some people who are paying most of the bills for those who don't take responsibility for themselves may get a little upset. Recently this has become more true in our world and conservatives have been moving up in the political minds of the people.

  "The last of these four options would be the economic liberal but socially conservative approach. In this model the people should behave in a certain way in the society, and if they do this society will take care of them. Here again there is the assumption that people are equal and should be taken care of. But they also are not capable of determining their lives. The smarter or holier people must do that for them. Some totalitarian ideas fit this model. Soviet communism and the Catholic Church are both examples of organizations that require strong commitment to the ideals of those in power while recognizing that those on the bottom of society need to be taken care of.

   "These four models illustrate four intersection points along these continua that I mentioned. One question is which is the most just. But another question is who is to decide what justice is? If we leave that up to the people we might very well have 7 billion different ideas of what is just. But like I said, Dr. Connor will take you on the intellectual voyage looking at whether or not we are actually equal. And if we are not actually equal, should we be treated equally? I remember what Milton Friedman wrote 'A society that puts equality before freedom will get neither. A society that puts freedom before equality will get a high degree of both.'”(3)

  “All right let's get back to political science. What is the best government?”

  “I don't think there is any best government for everybody. We humans have so many varied potentials and interests that there is no way that we can all be content with our government. Probably the best proposal, at least the one that I like, was that of Plato in his Republic. The rule by an educated oligarchy, the rule of the best educated thinkers, seems to me to be the best. It seems to me that China, and probably Singapore, come closest to that today with its elites from its one-party or an intelligent Prime Minister doing the ruling. The worst governments seem to be those dictatorships in Africa. There is no concern at all for the people other than to rape them financially. I think that the multiparty approach in the Scandinavian countries is a pretty good approach. But even there you see every few years the swing toward liberalism or toward conservatism. So there seems to be no path that keeps the whole electorate happy. And I'm not sure that keeping the whole electorate happy is necessarily the best government. Possibly the best government is the one that advances the society the fastest economically and educationally. I would have to say that I'm not so excited about your approach to democracy in America either. So many of your legislators are really uneducated and don't seem to be capable of thinking. They seem to be stuck at the level of 10-year-olds.

  “For an advanced group of educated people, I think our approach is pretty good in today's world. I certainly don't see any society that is working too hard to hold down the financially elite. Socialistic China certainly has allowed the birth of billionaires. The ever backward Russia seems to cater to the rich criminal elements. India certainly encourages the competent, as does your country. So freedom, at least economic freedom, is certainly a reality in today's governments-- even those that support the equalitarian welfare state.

  ECONOMIC SUCCESS

  "At least in today's world, economics seems to rule supreme. The financially successful are looked up to more than any other group. I don't know if riches will always be the jeweled crowns of our societies. Maybe someday intellectual achievement will be looked upon as supreme. Maybe we will go back to the days when our race looked up to warriors as the fittest of rulers--and the heroes to emulate. We might even revert to the days when professed holiness was the highest of callings. But today success is related primarily to accumulating wealth through some special kind of talent.

  “We have to be aware of the continual changes in the economic realm. When jobs are no longer needed they need to be eliminated. At the same time we need to look into the future and see where the opportunities for employment will be. For a number of years the opportunities have been in internet technology, robotics, nanotechnology and the environmental fields. These, of course, require high levels of education.

  “I remember a number of years ago when the British railroads were running on electricity but were still required to have firemen whose only job was to put coal into the boiler. Of course there was no boiler. Unions had, as usual, held back progress while keeping useless jobs. Then there was the conservative government that moved into power back in about 2010. They found many useless jobs that required elimination. I remember one that paid a person $60,000 a year to encourage people to play musical instruments. Then there was the guy who was paid $25,000 a year in a part-time job where he had to carry the sword in the processions for the Lord Mayor of Newcastle. There have al ways been these highly paid political appointments that drain a government's finances.”

  - “We've had those kinds of political jobs in the state of California for eons. Retired politicians were put on committees that met a few times a year and were paid very high salaries."

  -"But I think our major problem is in keeping employment high. We sure had a worldwide recession about 15 years ago, about 2010. But how do you keep the excess capacity of a producing country to not feel an economic downturn? How can the workers avoid being laid off and the machines idle while prices are dropping and there are few buyers. It appears to me that the world has far too many unskilled or low skilled workers. There is not room on the assembly lines for all of them. So commonly workers are treated very poorly. I think of the Burmese refugees in Thailand packing fish for only a few pennies a day and living in what most of us would consider unlivable conditions. Sweat houses not only exist in third world countries but we find them in our own country.

  ECONOMY AND GLOBALIZATION

  "Meanwhile the rich keep getting richer. In the US recently the average worker’s pay went up 2% while the average CEO salary rent up 23%.Moreover the average CEO pay for the top 200 firms in the US was $11.4 million a year.(3a)

  “Farm subsidies for not growing food or cotton, government subsidies to produce ethanol and to search for more oil, tax breaks for businesses for employment no matter where in the world they employ people. I don't want to appear antibusiness or anti-globalization but there is this moral streak in me that sees injustice and seethes. I know that our government pushed for globalization, thinking we would profit more than anyone. But 'lo and behold' the Chinese and Koreans outsmarted us. The Germans outsmarted us. The Norwegians outsmarted us. Even the Somalian pirates had done better than we had during the recession.

  “But I see other social factors that have oozed into our world as we have forgotten our individual wellbeing and joined the pack of treasure hunters seeking our fortunes. As the world becomes more globalized people tend to identify themselves with racial, ethn
ic, religious or to causes rather than identifying themselves by the political boundaries in which they live. So being Muslim, Catholic, black, Hispanic, Pakistani, Somalian, a Tea Party member, a Greenpeace adherent, a PETA member and so forth become more important than being Americans, Swedes or Spaniards. National identities have been losing ground as more asylum-seekers and manual laborers immigrated into the once ‘pure blooded’ nations. Is this a better way of framing our world? Certainly we need some kind of identity, but must these identities be so divisive?"

  -"People criticize China because it does not ‘democratize’ quickly enough. If democratize means free speech no matter how inflammatory, they are right. If it means giving the people a better life quickly, no country has done a better job in this short period of time than China. Of course, for Americans who had been traditionally the major world power, China is a real threat to our national and individual power drives. So it is natural, psychologically, to criticize them in whatever way possible. It is the only way to try to keep our superiority feelings once our actual superiority is crumbling."

  -"The Chinese are becoming even more successful because they are highly educated and don’t have the welfare state burden anchoring them economically." (3)

  THE TEA