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international affairs Internet controversy

Sit Back, America?

“America just needs to sit back,” insists Joseph Solis-​Mullen, author of The Fake China Threat and Its Very Real Dangers. This, he says, is the best reaction to an admittedly aggressive China.

On his podcast, Tom Woods asserted that a Chinese invasion of Taiwan would be “a net-​negative for the overall cause of human liberty” before asking Solis-​Mullen: “So is your position that that’s a very unfortunate thing but there is absolutely no way the United States is going to defeat China over Taiwan, so what’s the point in trying?”

Solis-​Mullen answered in the affirmative: “the U.S. would lose an attempt to block China from absorbing Taiwan.” 

To illustrate, he noted that “it’s 80 miles off the coast of China,” and said “imagine someone trying to invade Cuba, for example, and the United States was determined not to let them. Of course, they couldn’t.”

An unfortunate formulation, since the U.S. is not threatening to invade Taiwan; China is!

Better to have said, imagine an eastern hemisphere power trying to protect Cuba from an invasion by the U.S. Since to this day you can find American politicians advocating a conquest of Cuba, the analogy is more nearly exact.

And perhaps for similar reasons as to why Cuba remains unconquered, Taiwan is actually defensible — especially with U.S. naval and air support. 

While a recent CSIS war game showed massive death and destruction should China surprise Solis-​Mullen by launching an amphibious assault, it in turn found China’s navy devastated and the attack repelled. Ian Easton’s look at The Chinese Invasion Threat also concluded that Taiwan can defeat a PLA invasion force.

Today, treaty obligations require the U.S. to come to the military defense of Japan and the Philippines, both under threat from China. The Taiwan Relations Act mandates that we provide Taiwan (which lies between them) with the wherewithal to defend itself and President Biden has repeatedly pledged direct U.S. military assistance should China launch the unprovoked attack the CCP regularly threatens.

Solis-​Mullen advocates we abandon these obligations. He seems to recognize it means a complete U.S. withdrawal from Asia and Chinese Communist Party “domination,” but his notion that it “will not impact our prosperity at all” is naïve.

Sitting back to watch another evil empire gobble up free peoples would be, as Tom Woods put it, a huge blow “for the overall cause of human liberty.”

Seems like the wrong armchair position.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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general freedom international affairs

Mostly Peaceful Indo-Pacific

“Gentlemen may cry peace, peace, but there is no peace.”

— Patrick Henry

The 2023 Chicago Council Survey shows 58 percent of us view China as “a critical threat” and a “plurality of Americans (46%) say that US leaders are not paying enough attention to the issue of US competition with China.”

On the other hand, libertarian political scientist Joseph Solis-​Mullen pooh-​poohs these fears, which he sees as manufactured by the powers that be, the military-​industrial complex, the Deep State. Since our un-​beloved Deep State has been known to wander to and fro about the Earth manufacturing crises and conflicts, the case possesses a surface plausibility. 

Still, “The Fake China Threat,” an episode of The Tom Woods Show* from last month, failed to convince. See if you can detect the reason.

“This is something maybe we should mention,” Solis-​Mullen told Woods, before disclosing that China “fought a border war” with India in 2020 with “hundreds” dead.

“The Philippines is a big one,” he added, “because there’s also a lot of conflict over the South and East China Seas.”

“Conflict”? You don’t say. 

“So, it’s not just Taiwan,” explained this researcher and journalist. “There’s danger everywhere over there — because Washington really wants to be involved in these disputes.”

Wait a second … how many disputes? 

“There’s disputes with Japan, disputes with Korea, disputes with Vietnam, disputes with Philippines, India,” Solis-​Mullen recalled. “I think one or two more. I can’t remember off the top of my head.”

It does appear to be a lot to keep up with! 

Nor is the problem that “Washington really wants to be involved,” certainly not for Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, etc.… even Vietnam. Instead, every dispute, conflict, danger, and threat that Solis-​Mullen cites has a singular cause: China. 

Heck, someone might dedicate an entire website to “Tracking Chinese Communist Party Aggression Worldwide.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 


* The discussion centered on Solis-Mullen’s new book, The Fake China Threat and Its Very Real Dangers, published by the Libertarian Institute

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Accountability crime and punishment government transparency media and media people moral hazard national politics & policies Regulating Protest responsibility

The Deeply State

FBI agent Peter Strzok is offended. 

Deeply.

He takes pains to clarify: he sent emails during the last presidential campaign expressing a willingness and readiness and commitment to preventing a Trump Presidency because he, Agent Strzok, is patriotic. 

Deeply.

During yesterday’s contentious congressional interrogation, fielding questions regarding just how anti-​Trump he was during the last presidential campaign, Peter Strzok denied that his obvious and admitted political bias affected his professional conduct.

“Like many people, I had and expressed personal political opinions during an extraordinary presidential election,” said Agent Strzok. “My opinions were expressed out of deep patriotism.”

But it wasn’t just a matter of expression, was it? One text message was an assurance that he would “stop” Trump’s election. When challenged on this, Strzok admitted that his memory was faulty.

Deeply?

“At no time, in any text,” Strzok said, decisively, “did those personal beliefs enter into the realm of any action I took.”

When a citizen expresses a credible threat to a president, federal agents investigate. His exchange with his “girlfriend,” Lisa Page, was not what we now call an “existential threat,” of course. Ms. Page had texted her worry about a Trump win: the man was “not ever going to become president, right? Right?!” Strzok’s reply was not vague: “No. No he won’t. We’ll stop it.” The threat is, at most, covert-​political, back-​room. FBI-​ish. The couple were, after all, a part of an investigation into Donald Trump’s alleged Russian connection.

Though one could easily understand a married man assuring his inamorata simply to puff himself up in her eyes, this assurance sure looks different to our eyes — it cannot help but make us suspicious.

Deeply.  

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 


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Accountability folly general freedom government transparency ideological culture media and media people moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies too much government

Threat Assessment

Don’t drink transmission fluid. Or perform a swan dive off the Empire State Building. Or munch on a Tide Pod.

Be cautious, in other words, of the advice offered in “Boycott the Republican Party,” the Atlantic opinion piece authored by Jonathan Rauch and Benjamin Wittes, both scholars at the Brookings Institution. Their erudite suggestion? Conservatives should “vote mindlessly and mechanically against Republicans at every opportunity, until the party either rights itself or implodes (very preferably the former).”

My Sunday column at Townhall​.com, “Friendly Suicide Advice for the GOP,” reviewed their proposal and analysis. “[H]orrified” by President Trump, they see congressional Republicans as enablers of his “existential” threat “to American democracy.”

Big government has long frightened me, so I’m certainly not suggesting anyone relax just now. I do wonder, however, why these writers and others in the media have been so blasé to past presidential usurpations (noted in the column) with life-​and-​death implications.

Rauch and Wittes go so far as to reassuringly explain that “the Democratic Party is not a threat to our democratic order.”

Really?

In 2016, every single Democratic Party U.S. Senator voted to partially repeal the First Amendment of the Constitution. The Democrats’ proposal would have largely ended the prohibition that “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech,” replacing it with “Congress and the States may regulate and set reasonable limits on the raising and spending of money by candidates and others to influence elections.”

In our present “democratic order,” the Constitution recognizes the primary importance of walling off political speech from regulation by these very politicians. The Democrats seek to repeal that order … that freedom … that criticism.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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Common Sense First Amendment rights folly national politics & policies political challengers

Trump Speech

What is free speech? Is it what presidential candidate Donald Trump is trying to squelch?

Last week Trump’s lawyers sent a cease-​and-​desist letter to the Club for Growth. The Club, a well-​known 501©4 limited government advocacy group, has put out a number of public service messages (“ads” as they witlessly call them in the politics biz — they are in truth anti-advertisements) criticizing Trump for past high-​tax/​tax-​hike stances.

“Rest assured,” the lawyers wrote,

we will not sit idly by and allow special interest groups and political action committees like yours to defame Mr. Trump and cause damage to his reputation and business interests by intentionally disseminating libelous statements you fully know to be untrue and, even worse, continue to purposely mislead the American people for your own financial gain. Toward that end, Mr. Trump has authorized our legal team to take all necessary and appropriate actions to bring an immediate halt to your defamatory Attack Ads.

The lawyers, like Trump himself, must know that the case has zero merit. As Jonathan Adler explained in his coverage, what we have here “is commonly known as a SLAPP suit — a suit that’s designed to shut people up. ‘SLAPP’ stands for Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation and the idea is that well-​financed plaintiffs can use lawsuits, and the threat of suits, to discourage speech that they don’t like.”

These days, abridgments of free speech typically come from government coercively stamping out peaceful speech.

Meritless lawsuits, and their threat, are another and quite distinct anti-​free-​speech affront.

Would you trust anyone who employs such a method?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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