This one has me on the verge of rethinking or actually rethinking my tendency in recent years to lean away from "liberal democracy" and towards "illiberalism," even if having public order and public safety (things we are losing in the U.S.) might mean inconveniencing people (like me, for example). So I say let's go ahead and have "liberal democracy" American-style, as if there were a choice, but let's also get serious about public order and public safety. Too many people are not flourishing; indeed too many people, daily, are victims of violence..... And if it is true, as I heard an American journalist (WP) say on TV recently, that in China there are "concentration camps," even a "genocide," then of course the "China Model" of public order and public safety might be too strict. It was said that Berlin did not really grasp the Holocaust till 1944. That may have been because he did not trust the media or the "rumors." And indeed I myself find it hard to believe that in the 21st Century, we again have "concentration camps" and "genocide" going on anywhere, especially in a society that has done so much in the last forty years to eliminate poverty. As for China's apparent insistence that the people of Tibet learn Chinese, not exclusively Chinese, but that they become full Chinese citizens, that at first glance sounds reasonable. We are at a time though when what actually develops in China, during the next thirty years, is going to be very interesting. There is a great deal to be said for this 5000 years old civilization that has overcome so much, in spite of its current difficulties, of which no country is immune.
start at around 9:00
This one has me on the verge of rethinking or actually rethinking my tendency in recent years to lean away from "liberal democracy" and towards "illiberalism," even if having public order and public safety (things we are losing in the U.S.) might mean inconveniencing people (like me, for example). So I say let's go ahead and have "liberal democracy" American-style, as if there were a choice, but let's also get serious about public order and public safety. Too many people are not flourishing; indeed too many people, daily, are victims of violence..... And if it is true, as I heard an American journalist (WP) say on TV recently, that in China there are "concentration camps," even a "genocide," then of course the "China Model" of public order and public safety might be too strict. It was said that Berlin did not really grasp the Holocaust till 1944. That may have been because he did not trust the media or the "rumors." And indeed I myself find it hard to believe that in the 21st Century, we again have "concentration camps" and "genocide" going on anywhere, especially in a society that has done so much in the last forty years to eliminate poverty. As for China's apparent insistence that the people of Tibet learn Chinese, not exclusively Chinese, but that they become full Chinese citizens, that at first glance sounds reasonable. We are at a time though when what actually develops in China, during the next thirty years, is going to be very interesting. There is a great deal to be said for this 5000 years old civilization that has overcome so much, in spite of its current difficulties, of which no country is immune.