An article by Bill Kristol has garnered attention, and rightly so. Called “Stand for Freedom,” it concerns Egypt, and the response of American conservatives to the upheaval there. The concluding words of the article are, “The Egyptian people want to exercise their capacity for self-government. American conservatives, heirs to our own bold and far-sighted revolutionaries, should help them.”
Allow me to do a speck of quoting from a column of mine last week. (I know you’re shocked by the idea that not every person reads every column of mine, faithfully.) “The cynical position is the easiest one: ‘Oh, nothing good will come of the unrest in Egypt. It all leads straight down the tubes’ -- which it may. But maybe not. And can’t any pleasure be taken in the fact that millions of people have at last lost their fear? Are publicly expressing, for the first time in their lives, that they wish a better, freer, more decent life?” Etc.
#ad#We are all skeptical, of course -- skepticism is called for, in matters Middle Eastern, and in other matters as well. But there is a difference between skepticism and cynicism. I have seen a lot of cynicism about. And it is most unattractive (in addition to other things, none of them good). Particularly vexing is that the cynical position is taken, by some, to be the sophisticated one. Which ought to give sophistication a bad name.
More than once in this column, I have quoted Joyce Rumsfeld, wife of the former secretary of defense. This was in 2003, I think, and we were talking about Maureen Dowd, of the New York Times. At the time, she was very popular, the “it” columnist in the country. Mrs. Rumsfeld said, “There is nothing I like less in a person than cynicism.” Many can sympathize with that.
#*#For years, people said that Asians had no aptitude for democracy. Democracy was just a Western notion, alien to Asia, which had its own history, ways, and aspirations. Then it was said that the Latin Americans could never have democracy. They loved their caudillos, and simply lacked the temperament for parliaments and such.
In due course, the Arabs will democratize. They are straining to do so in Iraq right now. They are straining to do so elsewhere. What will be the next people who are unfit or undestined for democracy? Who will be the very last people? Certain Africans under the blazing sun? Certain Eskimos in the freezing cold?
#*#I have mentioned Mrs. Rumsfeld. I might as well discuss her husband too. He has a book out, and a website: www.Rumsfeld.com, of course. As I understand it, some 2,000 documents are available on this site, with thousands more to come. These are “raw materials.” Some of these materials have to do with Rumsfeld’s days in Congress: when he dealt with Vietnam, civil rights, the space race, and other pressing issues. Some of them have to do with his time as President Ford’s chief of staff.
And then there are snowflakes. I think there are about a thousand available now. And that’s just a small sample. Apparently, Rumsfeld created 25,000 snowflakes during his tenure as secretary of defense: his second tenure, I mean, during the administration of George W. Bush. (Rumsfeld was also SecDef for a while under Ford.) What are snowflakes? They are Rumsfeld’s memos, jottings, on any number of matters, to any number of people, including himself.
On September 5, 2001, he wrote a memo to secretary of state Colin Powell, cc’ing Vice President Cheney and Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser. “We simply must get a policy for Iraq settled fast. Thank you.”
A friend of mine who has looked over these snowflakes -- a blizzard of them (yuk, yuk) -- says they are not merely disparate bits. Read together, read by the hundreds or thousands, they constitute a kind of narrative. Same with the memos from the Ford White House. Those interested in recent American history will have a feast, I suspect.
I cherish something Rumsfeld said, and said more than once: “America is not what’s wrong with the world.” And may I say that Rumsfeld is not what’s wrong with America? That’s for damn sure.
#*#For many, many years, people who are either ignorant or deceptive have tried to tell you something: The source of Arab grievance is Israel. Those of us with experience in the Middle East (if I may) know that this is nonsense. All you have to do is get out a little. Many without such experience are taken in.
Israel has not kept the Arab world back; Arab misrule has.
I wish to quote to you from a column by David Horovitz, the editor of the Jerusalem Post. He is an English-born Israeli who is one of the best students of the Middle East I know of.
It is tempting to be smug. [Oh, go ahead.] Egypt’s blink-of-an-eye descent into instability underlines afresh the uniqueness of Israel, that embattled sliver of enlightened land in a largely dictatorial region. Those who like to characterise it as the root of all the Middle East’s problems look particularly foolish: the people on the streets aren’t enraged by Israel, but because their countries are so unlike Israel, so lacking in the freedoms and economic opportunities that both Israeli Jews and Israeli Arabs take for granted.
Yes.
Then we have the assertion that is either ignorant or deceptive. You might also say, more charitably, that it is misguided. “The main stumbling block is Israel.” Who said that? George Soros, here. The Soroses, we will always have with us. Not all of them are billionaires. In fact, just a handful are . . .
#page##*#Lately, I have been talking more than usual with Chinese exiles. We have been stirred up by the recent state visit of CCP boss Hu Jintao, complete with piano performance by Lang Lang at the White House. Yesterday, I sat down with an exile journalist for an interview. (For once, the shoe was on the other foot: I was the interviewee.) I related some ABCs, and I would like to relate them here -- in briefest form.
The CCP, the Chinese Communist Party, wants you to believe that the CCP equals China, period. The dictatorship wants you to believe that there is no difference between China and the party. They are one, according to these ideologues and propagandists.
#ad#Those loyal to the party, the dictatorship calls “patriots,” or “patriotic Chinese.” Those disloyal are -- well, anti-Chinese. In my view, the real patriots are the dissidents and democrats: the likes of Gao Zhisheng, Liu Xiaobo, Wei Jingsheng, Wang Dan, and so on. If patriotism means loving your country -- loving it enough to wish it free of oppression -- they are the patriots.
The CCP wishes you to believe that the only good Chinese, the only real Chinese, is a Chinese Communist -- or at least a Chinese who will keep his mouth shut. I quote Solzhenitsyn: “‘Soviet’ is to ‘Russian’ what ‘disease’ is to ‘human.’”
It is sometimes claimed that the CCP commands majority support in China. Great. Let them hold free, multiparty elections and prove it. Don’t wait up nights.
It’s bad enough that the Chinese Communists bully and control Chinese people on Chinese soil. But they do the same, or try to do so, on foreign soil. For instance, a Chinese human-rights group will want to hold a dinner at a restaurant in New York’s Chinatown. The dinner is scheduled. Then the Chinese consulate threatens the restaurant. This is as common as dirt. I have personal experience of it. The Cuban Communists do the same thing: try to bully and control Cubans, or former Cubans, on foreign soil. I have written about many instances of this.
Free World governments, and Free World societies, ought to protect people from bullying. What’s the point of escaping a tyrannized land if not to be free of these jackals?
The Chinese Communists have a relatively recent trick: They holler “Falun Gong!” and expect foreigners to wet their pants. The Communists have done everything they can to get the world to fear Falun Gong. Apologists for the Communists -- and they are legion -- have done the same. I have a feeling that, by and large, it’s not working. Falun Gong people are a threat to no one. The Chinese Communists are a threat to many people -- in China, mainly, but also in Tibet and elsewhere.
As this article tells you, the Chinese consulate in Auckland sent a letter to the city council: The letter warned councilmen to stay away from a performance honoring traditional Chinese culture. A councilwoman named Dr. Cathy Casey -- bless the name -- told the ChiComs to stuff it. “I was quite outraged” by the letter, she said. “I’m really upset that the consulate should think it can influence elected members in a host country, where they’re our guest.”
Bless the name of Keith Locke, too. He’s the foreign-affairs spokesman of New Zealand’s Green party. He said, “It’s unacceptable that Chinese government representatives in New Zealand put pressure on people, particularly elected politicians, not to attend a cultural performance. It’s the sort of censorship that goes on in China but it’s not the sort of censorship we should have in New Zealand, and I strongly object to it.”
The Chinese Communists think it’s up to them to decide what Chinese culture is and isn’t. They have the arrogance, and presumption, of all dictatorships. In reality, culture belongs to people. I know many Chinese who think that Marxism-Leninism has nothing to do with China, properly understood. They think it’s an imposition on the country, a disease imported from the West, taking the life out of the Chinese. The ChiComs think they’re big Chinese patriots. They’re certainly imposers of a foreign ideology: an ideology that has ruined people and nations in the four corners of the earth.
We in free countries should take care to distinguish between the Chinese people and the dictatorship. And the dictatorship wants nothing more than to be taken as synonymous with China. I saw Lincoln Diaz-Balart, then a congressman, incensed when President Obama referred to the dictatorship in Havana as “Cuba.” It is not Cuba. It is a Marxist-Leninist dictatorship with its boot stomping on the Cuban face.
The Chinese dictatorship, like dictatorships at large, depends very much on lies. Lies are its bread and butter, its oxygen. Most fatal to dictatorships is the truth. As far as I’m concerned, some of the most valuable people in the world are those telling the truth about China -- and telling it full-time. “Live not by lies!” said Solzhenitsyn. I look forward to the day when the Chinese dictatorship collapses of its own lies, overwhelmed by the truth.
Is that too Pollyanna for you? Well, remember the downfall of dictatorships past: including between the years 1989 and 1991.
#*#Recently, I walked by Town Hall in New York. On the façade was a scripture, and not just any scripture: “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” I went, “Yowzer. They allow this?” The hall was built in 1921. I’m surprised that the ACLU and the Democratic party haven’t firebombed it. It’s kind of amazing that that façade remains unscrubbed, un-airbrushed.
Has Justice Sotomayor heard about this?
#*#I’ve just read through what I’ve written, as I sometimes do, in my extreme punctiliousness. Above, I said that I “sat down” for an interview with a journalist. For the sake of strict accuracy, I should tell you I was speaking kind of metaphorically: I actually talked to her on my cellphone, while walking.
This hasn’t been a very fun Impromptus, has it? I owe you a funner one. Soon. Thanks, and see you.
#JAYBOOK#
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