China, Defense Policy, Foreign Policy, Nationalist Theory, New Nationalism News, Politics

The Debut of New Nationalism News

Today marks the beginning of a new feature of this website called New Nationalism News, which will curate stories from the last week that illustrate world nationalism and the strategies American nationalism should use in response.  To those of you who are familiar with the RealClearPolitics site (www.realclearpolitics.com), think of this as RealClearNationalism.  You can also follow these posts in real time by joining the associated Facebook and Twitter sites where they are also posted. Simply click on the buttons on the bottom and then follow my New American Nationalism Facebook page or join my Twitter feed.  Please feel free to suggest articles for the week as well.  

This weeks stories illustrate the increasing nationalism in Asia and especially in China.  I provide a short introduction to each for better reference and to give you my interpretation of their significance. 

While US and Western globalists tout international fraternity, Asia is requiring its citizens to reject transnational ties and choose the nationalism of their countries instead.

https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/asia-dual-citizenship-intl-hnk-dst/?utm_medium=40digest.7days3.20210315.rank&utm_source=email&utm_content=&utm_campaign=campaign

Meanwhile, China has built the largest navy in the world.  TR would understand the significance of this to our allies in Asia and have nothing but cutting insults for liberal globalists who suggest cutting the defense budget. https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/05/china/china-world-biggest-navy-intl-hnk-ml-dst/index.html

In contrast to the Biden Administration, China refuses to sacrifice its growth goals on the altar of the Paris Accord.  As the article points out, this will allow them to increase emissions through 2030 and practically prevent achievement of effective CO reductions.  Adaptation must become the most important element of our response.https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-06/china-s-top-leaders-leave-tough-climate-decisions-to-bureaucrats?srnd=premium

The final story for today is about how China is diversifying its imports of critical materials to allow it to use trade as a weapon.  In particular, it is concentrating on sourcing its imports from fellow autocratic regimes. The US needs to pay more attention to its supply chains of raw materials as well.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/18/china-is-building-up-its-ability-to-weaponize-trade-new-report-says.html?utm_medium=40digest.7days3.20210318.rank&utm_source=email&utm_content=&utm_campaign=campaign

China, Domestic Policy, Foreign Policy, General, Immigration, Politics

Obama Redux

On its face, this quotation from Theodore Roosevelt would seem rather obvious. Indeed, the legitimacy of American democracy rests on the theory that our elected leaders will pursue policies roughly matching their political rhetoric. This honesty requires not just avoiding outright lies, but also hypocrisy, i.e., saying one thing and doing the opposite.

In fact, our recent experience in America shows TR’s principle to be regrettably revolutionary in practice.  Donald Trump’s crude and divisive lies plumbed new depths of political dishonesty. However, the glib hypocrisy of the Obama Administration was the catalyst for the Trump revolution of 2016.   Obama was a master of the art of eloquently claiming one goal while pursuing manifestly contradictory and damaging policies at the same time.  The American people might not always have been able to put their finger on the lie itself but could see how the rhetoric clashed with the policy realities in their daily lives. It is why, contrary to media claims, Obama had the lowest average approval rating of any post- Cold War President prior to Trump.

Sadly, the Biden Administration is adopting the same strategy of dissemblance and hypocrisy. Like Obama in the middle of the 2008 Great Recession, Biden seeks to restructure the American economic system in a way that imposes sacrifices on average Americans but enables the globalist elite to escape similar sacrifices.  Its climate change policies would have the effect of not only eliminating thousands of jobs, but, as this article suggests, appeasing China. It makes the disturbing claim that Biden’s climate change ambassador Kerry is willing to compromise on American security and economic interests in exchange for unlikely and unenforceable carbon emission reductions by the Chinese.  When confronted with the effects of such policies on American workers, he showed his elitist callousness by claiming that oil & gas workers can simply build solar panels. He conveniently ignored the fact that solar industry jobs pay about 20% less than equivalent petroleum industry jobs.

Meanwhile, Biden’s immigration proposal would legalize our de facto policy of unrestricted immigration at the expense of low-income and technical workers, who are disproportionately women and minorities. Many of those are the same heroes and heroines who kept our nation going during the coronavirus pandemic. Nevertheless, the Administration is pursuing a policy that would continue the kind of wage slavery and economic inequality Biden campaigned against (see this previous article). His only response is to invoke the divisive rhetoric of woke politics and income redistribution.  Even longtime liberals are questioning the honesty of these policies in light of the inequality crisis in California.

Loyal readers of this blog will quickly recall my vote for Biden expressed last year and ask if it was worth it. I still believe he was the best of a painful choice, which was confirmed by the Capitol riot and Trump’s petty sabotage of the Republican campaign in the Georgia runoff elections. The Democrats’ narrow control of Congress still gives nationalists a realistic chance to highlight Biden Administration hypocrisies so the American people can weigh in and decide if this is really what they voted for.  This site will try to help by analyzing and publicizing the contradictions and hypocrisies, concentrating on three areas – infrastructure, especially related to climate adaptation, immigration and political reform.  Please let me know of any other issues you would like to see covered as well. 

China, Foreign Policy

A Coming American Century of Shame?

19th century Chinese Opium Den
Chinese Opium Den

It is always better to be an original than an imitation, even when the imitation is of something better than their own; but what shall we say of the fool who is content to be an imitation of something worse? Even if the weaklings who seek to be other than Americans were right in deeming other nations to be better than our own, the fact yet remains that to be a first-class American is fifty-fold better than to be a second -class imitation of a Frenchman or Englishman.

Theodore Roosevelt, True Americanism, The Forum Magazine, April 1894

Chinese Communist leaders constantly justify the legitimacy of the rule by claiming to have reversed China’s “century of shame”. This refers to the 19th century colonial exploitation by the European powers and Japan that carved up much of the country into “spheres of influence”. The most ruthless and shameful episode of this era occurred in the beginning, when Britain fought two wars to force China to accept the importation of opium. This enriched the British at the expense of the misery of millions of Chinese addicts and the Chinese economy as a whole.

Fast forward to the 21st century. Hong Kong residents carry American flags while insisting that the city’s leaders and China honor their previous commitments to expand democracy in the territory. This call to our conscience is then rejected by Apple and other American tech companies, who bow to demands to remove apps that the Chinese government believe aid the democracy movement. Meanwhile, the National Basketball Association apologizes for a tweet of support for the demonstrators by General Manager Daryl Morey of the Houston Rockets after Chinese government protests.

Why such craven subservience? The reason is simple – money. Many Fortune 500 companies earn millions selling their products in China and utilizing cheaper and more compliant Chinese labor to manufacture them. They are thus willing to be co-opted by the Chinese Communist party and thus sacrifice the values of their American employees and customers simply because it preserves those profits

Like the Europeans reduced China to vassalage with the drug of opium, China now seeks to bring America to heel with the new opiate of money. The willingness of American companies to submit to this addiction puts the lie to Fortune 500 CEOs plea to “trust us” to responsibly balance social obligations with shareholder profits (more on this later). It shows that, far from being a benign new entrant on the world stage, China is on the offensive to create its own semi-colonial empire. Indeed, as this excerpt from an National Public Radio feature showed, they may be ruthless enough to use essentially the same opiates forced on them in the 19th century to control poor Americans in the 21st.

This is not an argument for any kind of American intervention. We should remain the advocates of liberty everywhere, but the guarantor only of our own. However, the endurance of this guarantee at home and the future of liberty abroad will depend on whether Americans let the new opiates of money and despair cause our nation to sink into its own century of shame. Or will we hark to TR’s call that it is better to be a first-class American than a second-class Chinese?

https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2019/10/china-has-begun-shape-and-manage-us-not-other-way-around/160646/?oref=defenseone_today_nl