Monday, January 04, 2010

Pay attention all you small-d democrats...

Daniel Gross, in SLATE, remarking on the comments of China's Xu Kuangdi, "a veteran apparatchik, engineer, manager, and leader...mayor of Shanghai from 1995 through 2001, vice chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and president of the Chinese Academy of Engineering Sciences"...Mr Xu was explaining why democracy doesn't work:
Democracy promotes the sort of arguing that hinders growth. The performance of other Asian countries seemed to have suffered when fractious democracies emerged from authoritarian or military rule. Xu added a new one: It would promote unhealthy class warfare. If elections were to be held in a large geographical area where gaps between the rich and poor are wide, and in which people have different educational backgrounds, "it might cause turbulences to society," he said. "If somebody just went out in the street and shouted, 'I will divide the property of rich people into poor people,' I think he would be elected. But it is useless, as parity will not solve the problem of economic development."
Mr Xu is, of course, correct.

Now, if leaders in China fer cryin' out loud have realized that "parity will not solve the problem of economic development", then even the "Marxists" must now know that the whole egalitarian-collectivist argument is dead, and that that whole body of theory doesn't work. And they've now also realized that democracy is nothing better or different than "two wolves and a sheep deciding what's for dinner".

That leaves only individualism (read: freedom) or totalitarianism.

And The West isn't exactly being the champion of individualism these days, what with Mr Obama (and he only for example and not just to single him out) doing his level best to emulate and put in place the worst of the old democratic-collectivist thinking.

No comments: