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general freedom ideological culture international affairs

‘Ideological Prejudices’

“‘One country two systems’ has been tested and proved time and again,” Chinese ruler Xi Jinping told his hand-​picked Hong Kong audience last week, “and there is no reason to change such a good system.”

Twenty-​five years into that “good system” — created when the United Kingdom signed it over to the Chinese Communist Party with the proviso it would recognize basic civil liberties in Hong Kong until 2047 — Xi was taking a victory lap. 

He had successfully squelched freedom of speech and of the press.

“China’s government is,” Ian Easton writes in The Final Struggle: Inside China’s Global Strategy, “far more powerful and sophisticated than any that came before. Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, the Soviet Union, and Putin’s Russia all pale in comparison.”

Easton, who studies defense and security issues involving the U.S., China, Japan, and Taiwan at the Project 2049 Institute, also pointedly suggests that it is “of national importance that Hollywood begins to make movies about China that are not censored.”

Censored by Beijing, he means

China’s long list of tyrannies has gotten so bad that even NATO — yes, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization — has recognized the threat posed by the totalitarian country engaged in the largest military build-​up in human history. 

“NATO has listed China as one of its strategic priorities for the first time,” Al Jazeera reported weeks ago, “saying Beijing’s ambitions and its ‘coercive policies’ challenge the Western bloc’s ‘interests, security and values.’”

To which the Chinese objected, arguing the NATO statement “vilifies China’s foreign policy” and “China’s natural military development” and was “filled with … ideological prejudices.”

They have a point. It’s about time the West shows a bit of “bias” against totalitarianism and genocide.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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ideological culture initiative, referendum, and recall

Best Indicator

The pollsters were way off. Again.

Sure, there were a couple outfits that, prior to Election Day, said the race between Trump and Biden was going to be close, but most portrayed Biden as way ahead.

Instead, it’s a squeaker.

Still, Biden’s pulling ahead — Michigan was declared for the Democrat as I type this.

Before we blame the pollsters for drawing the wrong conclusions from their data, let’s not draw the wrong conclusions from the most important data of all: Tuesday’s actual votes.

We must remember: people vote for and against candidates for a variety of reasons — personal, tribal, single-​issue, broad-​spectrum, you-​name-​it. But how do we determine their actual political values?

Here’s one good indicator, voting … on ballot measures.

From Tuesday’s elections we learn, at the very least, that the American people are not foursquare behind the socialistic pandering of Kamala Harris.

Just before Election Day, the Democratic Vice Presidential candidate explained why equality of treatment wasn’t enough: people must be compensated for their past disadvantages, to make outcomes equal. She was pushing a recent meme common on the left, framed as “equality” versus “equity.”

Mrs. Harris may be on her way to Number One Observatory Circle (the vice president’s residence) and then the White House, but Americans aren’t onboard her socialistic egalitarianism. On Tuesday, her home-​state Californians repealed Proposition 16, which would have stricken down an equal rights measure of the 1990s in favor of a compensatory hiring and firing scheme based on racial qualifications. 

Woke socialists really like this sort of thing. Yet supposedly ultra-​blue (pink?) Californians defeated it 56/​44.

Once the politics of personality and party are put aside, Americans are not as divided as the political class wishes we were. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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ideological culture international affairs too much government

All the Tyranny in China

Are you going to make a big fuss?

I mean, about China — dominated by the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Because some people get all bent out of shape over their totalitarian government placing a million or two Muslim Uighurs into re-​education camps surrounded by high walls and razor wire in order to browbeat, brainwash and torture away their ethnic heritage, language, and religious beliefs

Folks also complain about the insidious social credit system and the massive surveillance state, both of which would make Orwell blush; the ugly history of Chinese repression in Tibet; threats to invade peaceful neighboring Taiwan and snuff out their budding democratic experiment; not to mention Tiananmen Square. 

Some cannot get over the estimated 400 million babies murdered by the CCP against the will and amidst the anguished cries of their loving parents. Of course, that old “One Child Policy” has been “liberalized” … now permitting two children. 

Moreover, the CCP’s assault on free inquiry and public dialogue is no longer limited to just silencing their own citizens — as infamous attempts to squelch criticism from universities in Australia and here in America, as well as basketball players, show.

Presidential candidate and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said months ago that Chinese President Xi Jinping was “not a dictator” and “has a constituency to answer to.” At Wednesday night’s debate, he was asked about those remarks.

“In terms of whether he’s a dictator,” Bloomberg explained, “he does serve at the behest of the Politburo, of their group of people, but there’s no question he has an enormous amount of power.”

“But he does play to his constituency,” he reiterated. Sure, all 25 unelected communist insiders (ruling over 1.4 billion disenfranchised Chinese).

Acknowledging that their human rights record is “abominable,” Bloomberg agreed that “we should make a fuss, which we have been doing, I suppose.” 

But … “make no mistake about it, we have to deal with China if we’re ever going to solve the climate crisis. We have to deal with them because our economies are inextricably linked.”

Yes, indeed … with eyes wide open to the totalitarian brutality of the CCP’s Xi Jinping-​led, 25-​person dictatorship. 

We need a lot bigger fuss.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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general freedom nannyism privacy

One, Two or Free?

The vast majority of Chinese people are celebrating. Last week, the 18th Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party decreed that it will cease enforcing the one-​child-​only policy this coming March — after 35 years — as part of its 13th Five Year Plan.

Just speaking for myself, infanticide, coerced abortions and forced sterilizations seem … well, not good. Bad, even. Really bad. Or more precisely, evil, tyrannical and totalitarian … you know, if we want to use such “extreme” language.

But not everyone sees it my way.

Back in 1990, Molly Yard claimed that “[t]he Chinese government doesn’t coerce people.” Why, according to this former head of the National Organization of Women, “the only responsible policy [China] can have is to control family planning.” She went all the way: “I consider the Chinese government’s policy among the most intelligent in the world.”

The Los Angeles Times reported in 2012 that China’s “population control efforts have helped lift hundreds of millions of people out of poverty and contributed to China’s spectacular economic growth.”

That has not only been disputed — many economists point to policy changes that allowed entrepreneurship and private property — but overturned by reality. The one-​child policy has been a disaster. There are now 117 young men for every 100 young women in China, and an aging population without enough youngsters to provide for them.

Alas, the one child policy is not being replaced with reproductive freedom. The government will still limit couples to two kids. That’s better than one, sure. But I have three children. If I were Chinese, I wouldn’t want to give up one of them.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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one child policy, china, family planning, communist, five year plan