Tag Archives: politics

Ben Franklin and the Republic of China

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The good citizens of the Republic of China are watching the barbarian invasion of Ukraine, the so far successful attempt by the Ukrainians to beat back the barbarian, and the destruction the barbarian is inflicting on Ukrainian cities and its atrocities perpetrated on Ukrainian women, children, civilian men, and prisoners, and some of those RoC citizens are drawing the wrong conclusion.

Others draw the opposite lesson from the images of smoldering Ukrainian cities. Anything is better than war, they say, and Taiwan should do all it can to avoid provoking Beijing’s wrath, even if that means painful compromises.

Those painful compromises would accumulate to nothing other than preemptive surrender. These…compromisers…choose to ignore the lesson of an old dead guy who was part of an earlier generation that, in another part of the world, successfully resisted a conqueror—and that conqueror began the struggle with its army already in place among the colonies. That old dead guy’s lesson:

They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

More than that, they will have neither, and the RoC compromisers, instead, would exist—not live—under PLA jackboots, and as the citizens of Hong Kong are learning, that existence would be an uncertain one.

The Peoples Republic of China’s goal is the complete erasure of the RoC as a nation, as a polity, even as a people, and the slavery that a successfully conquering PRC would inflict on the citizens of the RoC would be nothing more than a living death.

Of course, the RoC’s ability successfully to resist a PRC invasion would be enormously enhanced if President Joe Biden (D) would get out of the metaphorical White House basement and quickly transfer modern arms to the RoC—beginning, but not stopping, with the weapons systems the RoC already has bought and paid for but are not yet delivered.

Misguided

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A Federal judge has issued a preliminary injunction (meaning the matter must still go through the courts before anything becomes final) barring the Federal government from communicating with social-media companies with a view to influencing what those companies post or allow to be posted on their sites.

Some on the Left are objecting.

Some legal scholars have been skeptical that…courts could intervene without chilling legitimate government speech about controversial matters of public interest.

“Some legal scholars” are cynically distorting the situation. There is nothing in the judge’s ruling that bars government speech about controversial matters of public interest. The “government”—i.e., the men and women in government—remains entirely free to speak on any matters it wishes, and in any venue it wishes. The “government,” however, may not seek to tell—or even to try to influence—private enterprises what they might post or not post, or allow or not allow to be posted, on their sites.

The government has a plethora of outlets of its own: the White House, for instance, the Senate, and the House all have their own Web sites, as do each of the several Federal Departments and agencies, and every Congressman in the Congress. And many of those Congressmen hold aperiodic town halls to talk directly with their constituents—all of them should, and those meetings should occur more frequently—but that’s the Congressmen’s choice. Nothing bars any Congressman from doing any of those direct-to-constituents conversations as often as a Congressman might wish.

Furthermore, the judge noted in his injunction that

The Court finds…that a preliminary injunction here would not prohibit government speech.

And

A government entity has the right to speak for itself and is entitled to say what it wishes and express the views it wishes to express. The Free Speech Clause restricts government regulation of private speech; it does not regulate government speech.

At bottom, and especially in light of that last—and the plethora of legitimate government outlets for its own speech—the answer to speech with which government disagrees is not to bar the speech (outside of deliberate and overt incitement to riot), but to answer it with their own speech.

The judge’s preliminary injunction ruling can be read here.

Useful, but Insufficient

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The Biden administration is looking to restrict—but not block—Peoples Republic of China companies from accessing American cloud-computing services.

That’s a useful move, to the extent it actually comes to fruition and to any meaningful extent, but it’s not enough by itself, or even against the backdrop of existing restrictions on technology exports to the PRC.

Some are concerned, though, that this could further strain relations between the world’s economic superpowers.

[The Peoples Republic of China] set export restrictions on two minerals the US says are critical to the production of semiconductors, missile systems and solar cells….
The minerals—gallium and germanium—and more than three dozen related metals and other materials will be subject to unspecified export controls starting August 1, Beijing’s Ministry of Commerce said Monday.

The particular PRC response just shows the importance of us moving our supply chains completely out of the PRC, and it emphasizes the shamefulness of American company managers for their slowness in making the necessary adjustments in their businesses.

Beyond that, we need to stop this foolish call and response method of restrictions on technology exports to the PRC. We need to apply the restrictions faster and deeper than they can respond. Simply doing tit-for-tat moves lets the PRC adapt and respond, especially to respond with more pain inflicted on us than would be the case if we stayed solidly inside their Do Loop.

The PRC’s response looks more like escalation than tit-for-tat. They’re already moving to get inside our Do Loop while the Biden administration tiptoes around.

Those concerned need to identify the war—and the PRC is inflicting war on us, even if it’s not, yet, kinetic—in which one side suffers no consequences during the war. Of course friendly-side damage needs to be minimized, but wars are won by inflicting more pain on the other side than that other side is willing to suffer than that other side can inflict on the one compared to the one’s pain tolerance.

Nor is it enough simply to restrict our technology exports/transfers to the PRC to tech that’s our second tier/prior generation technology. Our exports/transfers—to the extent we make any at all—needs to limited to what would constitute the PRC’s second tier/prior generation technology. If our own such tech is ahead of the PRC’s, those exports still would enable the PRC’s catchup and gaining superiority.

“I Don’t Understand”

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Andy Kessler’s op-ed in Sunday’s Wall Street Journal centers on New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v Bruen, Kessler’s putzing around with a variety of firearms at a Nevada firing range, and his assessment of the effect of Supreme Court’s ruling in favor of an individual’s right to keep and bear any of a variety of Arms on the national firearm debate.

The importance of that debate is summarized in Kessler’s statement about having an AR-15, but which he implied was about a much broader matter:

…I still don’t understand why you would want to own one.

It doesn’t matter a whit that Kessler doesn’t understand. He’s only a journalist, though, and his level of understanding also is not all that important.

Far more importantly, is the fact that it’s the individual’s right to keep and bear; us American citizens, individually or as groups, do not require a government permission slip to do so, and that makes a government man’s level of understanding of the matter irrelevant, except to the extent that man attempts to act on his level and therewith move to restrict our individual right.

The 2nd Amendment of our Constitution, along with recent Supreme Court acknowledgments, make all of this crystalline, and they make the government man’s move to act on his level of understanding unconstitutional.

“Not a Normal Court”

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With the Supreme Court having struck down affirmative action as unconstitutional, a reporter asked President Joe Biden (D), on his way out from his Friday press conference in which he objected to the ruling, a reporter asked him whether he thought the Court was now a “rogue court.”

Biden answered:

This is not a normal court[.]

It’s not normal for Justices of the Supreme Court to adhere to the text of our Constitution. It’s not normal for Justices to adhere to their oaths of office in which they swear to support and defend our Constitution rather than amend it from the bench.

This is the view of Progressive-Democratic Party politicians: our Constitution is merely suggestive, and should be ignored at convenience.