| Submit your comments on this article |
| Home Front: Culture Wars |
| Tom Friedman Certainly Has His Drawbacks |
| 2009-09-09 |
| While I've often thought that Tom Friedman's thinking is muddled, I have never before thought of it as depraved. But what other conclusion can one draw from this? 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. It is not an accident that China is committed to overtaking us in electric cars, solar power, energy efficiency, batteries, nuclear power and wind power. China's leaders understand that in a world of exploding populations and rising emerging-market middle classes, demand for clean power and energy efficiency is going to soar. Beijing wants to make sure that it owns that industry and is ordering the policies to do that, including boosting gasoline prices, from the top down. Our one-party democracy is worse. The fact is, on both the energy/climate legislation and health care legislation, only the Democrats are really playing. "One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks!" Just last week Xie Changfa was sentenced to 13 years in prison for the crime of attempting to organize a political meeting. Apparently, in Tom Friedman's mind, the "drawback" of Chinese democrats being treated like violent criminals is outweighed by the benefit of central-planning that serves ends Tom Friedman likes. Matt Welch is dumbfounded ("One almost doesn't know where to begin"), while Jonah Goldberg notes that Friedman's line of thinking has a long and unsavory pedigree. |
| Posted by:Beavis |
| #7 I invite Mr. Friedman to live in Beijing. He can write for the Beijing Times. Expats with parity lifestyle cost-of-living contracts can live very well in Beijing, Dr. Steve. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2009-09-09 23:51 |
| #6 Speaking of pollution, when Microsoft Xbox engineers from Redmond talk about visiting the manufacturing facility in China, they refer to it as "going to Mordor". Funny how "workers paradise" so frequently means "hell hole". |
| Posted by: DMFD 2009-09-09 19:45 |
| #5 But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages So, he's against all labor laws and any type of pollution controls. Interesting view for a lefty. |
| Posted by: DMFD 2009-09-09 19:43 |
| #4 I invite Mr. Friedman to live in Beijing. He can write for the Beijing Times. |
| Posted by: Steve White 2009-09-09 18:16 |
| #3 Who would have thought a New York Socia1ist plutocrat would have more in common with the Beijing Communist plutocracy than the proles under them? Really. |
| Posted by: ed 2009-09-09 17:28 |
| #2 Who among us knew? Certainly not the Chinese people. There are several hundred protests in China every day! These are generally protests against specific corrupt officials and criminal actors protected but the government. |
| Posted by: Frozen Al 2009-09-09 15:23 |
#1 Prof. Volokh:Let me just say for the record that this is a monstrous column. When faced with American public defection from elite-preferred 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? |
| Posted by: Mike 2009-09-09 15:01 |