Hong Kong Protests Have a New Target—the Chinese Communist Party

Discussion in 'Asia' started by Mac-7, Sep 30, 2019.

  1. Ethereal

    Ethereal Well-Known Member

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    How about we solve America's problems first before we go around the world trying to solve everyone else's? How about we put America first, like Trump said he would?
     
  2. Starjet

    Starjet Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    So, you agree, at least these few words, with Ayn Rand?
     
  3. Starjet

    Starjet Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    And went to war again, 50 yrs later. Why? Britain again was threatening Liberty.
     
  4. Ethereal

    Ethereal Well-Known Member

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    Do you really want to persist with this fallacious comparison? Are you really insensible to the major differences between the two movements?

    I'm not sanctioning anything. I'm simply being realistic by recognizing that neutrality is usually the best policy FOR AMERICA - you know, the country I actually live in?
     
  5. Ethereal

    Ethereal Well-Known Member

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    Ayn Rand is just parroting what was already said by the superior intellectuals that preceded her.
     
  6. Starjet

    Starjet Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    If you needs to sacrifice the ideal to the practical, one should realize that it’s never practical to do so.
     
  7. Ethereal

    Ethereal Well-Known Member

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    1812 was only 36 years after the revolution.

    Anyway, the British were threatening the liberty OF AMERICA. Hence the need for the US government take action against the British.

    The US didn't wage war on Britain in 1812 because someone else's liberty was being threatened. Kind of an important distinction you keep glossing over. Tell me, are you a globalist? Do you not recognize the concept of national independence?
     
  8. Starjet

    Starjet Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Short-sightedness is not a path to prosperity or peace.
     
  9. Starjet

    Starjet Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Don’t get stuck in the concrete and miss the abstraction.
     
    Last edited: Oct 9, 2019
  10. Ethereal

    Ethereal Well-Known Member

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    My ideal is promoting prosperity, freedom, and happiness inside my own country first.
     
  11. Ethereal

    Ethereal Well-Known Member

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    Except you're the one who is being myopic by refusing to accept the virtually unassailable power of the Chinese state. The protesters have no chance of achieving true independence from China. Even a simpleton can see that.
     
  12. Ethereal

    Ethereal Well-Known Member

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    It's not a choice of one or the other. It's a balance between the two. The founders understood that.
     
  13. Starjet

    Starjet Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Why is it that the pragmatic requires the acceptance of slaughter and enslavement as practical necessities, but the ideal of life and liberty as idealistic delusions one needs to mature out of?

    Who wants that rotten world. Not I said, one voice:

    Ayn Rand: “The most timid, frightened, conservative defenders of the status quo—of the intellectual status quo—are today’s liberals (the leaders of the conservatives never ventured into the realm of the intellect). What they dread to discover is the fact that the intellectual status quo they inherited is bankrupt, that they have no ideological base to stand on and no capacity to construct one. Brought up on the philosophy of Pragmatism, they have been taught that principles are unprovable, impractical or non-existent—which has destroyed their ability to integrate ideas, to deal with abstractions, and to see beyond the range of the immediate moment. Abstractions, they claim, are “simplistic” (another anti-concept); myopia is sophisticated. “Don’t polarize!” and “Don’t rock the boat!” are expressions of the same kind of panic.”

    Don’t “rock the boat”, right? Rock the Casbah
     
  14. Starjet

    Starjet Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Tyranny has no power but that which the moral give it—it’s their greatest sin.
     
  15. Ethereal

    Ethereal Well-Known Member

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    Now you're reduced to putting words in my mouth. A sure sign that you cannot rebut my position.

    Perhaps you should worry about life and liberty in your own country before you try to save the rest of the world?
     
  16. Ethereal

    Ethereal Well-Known Member

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    So get on a plane and go fight the Chinese state. Let me know how that works out for you.
     
  17. Ethereal

    Ethereal Well-Known Member

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    Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations - entangling alliances with none.
    --Thomas Jefferson
     
    Last edited: Oct 9, 2019
  18. Starjet

    Starjet Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    One doesn’t make bargains with monsters; unless one is an idiot, corrupt or a both, like Trump—Starjet
     
    Last edited: Oct 10, 2019
  19. s002wjh

    s002wjh Well-Known Member

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    interesting fact on World Freedom index

    In 2018 HK freedom index is higher than US, HK freedom index is on par with Switzerland and is rank 3rd in the world. if China had encroach deeply into HK law/other stuff like ppl claimed, HK wont be able to keep that ranking for the past decade.

    https://www.cato.org/human-freedom-index-new
     
    Last edited: Oct 10, 2019
  20. Starjet

    Starjet Well-Known Member Past Donor

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  21. Starjet

    Starjet Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Describe that balance to me. Enlighten me as to what is the relationship of the "one" to the "many". Let's see your metaphysics and epistemology at work.
     
    Last edited: Oct 10, 2019
  22. Ethereal

    Ethereal Well-Known Member

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    Hey, take it up with Thomas Jefferson.
     
  23. Ethereal

    Ethereal Well-Known Member

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    ...Observe good faith and justice towards all nations; cultivate peace and harmony with all. Religion and morality enjoin this conduct; and can it be, that good policy does not equally enjoin it - It will be worthy of a free, enlightened, and at no distant period, a great nation, to give to mankind the magnanimous and too novel example of a people always guided by an exalted justice and benevolence. Who can doubt that, in the course of time and things, the fruits of such a plan would richly repay any temporary advantages which might be lost by a steady adherence to it ? Can it be that Providence has not connected the permanent felicity of a nation with its virtue ? The experiment, at least, is recommended by every sentiment which ennobles human nature. Alas! is it rendered impossible by its vices?

    In the execution of such a plan, nothing is more essential than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular nations, and passionate attachments for others, should be excluded; and that, in place of them, just and amicable feelings towards all should be cultivated. The nation which indulges towards another a habitual hatred or a habitual fondness is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest. Antipathy in one nation against another disposes each more readily to offer insult and injury, to lay hold of slight causes of umbrage, and to be haughty and intractable, when accidental or trifling occasions of dispute occur. Hence, frequent collisions, obstinate, envenomed, and bloody contests. The nation, prompted by ill-will and resentment, sometimes impels to war the government, contrary to the best calculations of policy. The government sometimes participates in the national propensity, and adopts through passion what reason would reject; at other times it makes the animosity of the nation subservient to projects of hostility instigated by pride, ambition, and other sinister and pernicious motives. The peace often, sometimes perhaps the liberty, of nations, has been the victim.

    So likewise, a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification. It leads also to concessions to the favorite nation of privileges denied to others which is apt doubly to injure the nation making the concessions; by unnecessarily parting with what ought to have been retained, and by exciting jealousy, ill-will, and a disposition to retaliate, in the parties from whom equal privileges are withheld. And it gives to ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens (who devote themselves to the favorite nation), facility to betray or sacrifice the interests of their own country, without odium, sometimes even with popularity; gilding, with the appearances of a virtuous sense of obligation, a commendable deference for public opinion, or a laudable zeal for public good, the base or foolish compliances of ambition, corruption, or infatuation.

    As avenues to foreign influence in innumerable ways, such attachments are particularly alarming to the truly enlightened and independent patriot. How many opportunities do they afford to tamper with domestic factions, to practice the arts of seduction, to mislead public opinion, to influence or awe the public councils. Such an attachment of a small or weak towards a great and powerful nation dooms the former to be the satellite of the latter.

    Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence (I conjure you to believe me, fellow-citizens) the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake, since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican government. But that jealousy to be useful must be impartial; else it becomes the instrument of the very influence to be avoided, instead of a defense against it. Excessive partiality for one foreign nation and excessive dislike of another cause those whom they actuate to see danger only on one side, and serve to veil and even second the arts of influence on the other. Real patriots who may resist the intrigues of the favorite are liable to become suspected and odious, while its tools and dupes usurp the applause and confidence of the people, to surrender their interests.

    The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible. So far as we have already formed engagements, let them be fulfilled with perfect good faith. Here let us stop. Europe has a set of primary interests which to us have none; or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves by artificial ties in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics, or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities.

    Our detached and distant situation invites and enables us to pursue a different course. If we remain one people under an efficient government. the period is not far off when we may defy material injury from external annoyance; when we may take such an attitude as will cause the neutrality we may at any time resolve upon to be scrupulously respected; when belligerent nations, under the impossibility of making acquisitions upon us, will not lightly hazard the giving us provocation; when we may choose peace or war, as our interest, guided by justice, shall counsel.

    Why forego the advantages of so peculiar a situation? Why quit our own to stand upon foreign ground? Why, by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, interest, humor or caprice?

    It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world; so far, I mean, as we are now at liberty to do it; for let me not be understood as capable of patronizing infidelity to existing engagements. I hold the maxim no less applicable to public than to private affairs, that honesty is always the best policy. I repeat it, therefore, let those engagements be observed in their genuine sense. But, in my opinion, it is unnecessary and would be unwise to extend them.

    Taking care always to keep ourselves by suitable establishments on a respectable defensive posture, we may safely trust to temporary alliances for extraordinary emergencies.

    Harmony, liberal intercourse with all nations, are recommended by policy, humanity, and interest. But even our commercial policy should hold an equal and impartial hand; neither seeking nor granting exclusive favors or preferences; consulting the natural course of things; diffusing and diversifying by gentle means the streams of commerce, but forcing nothing; establishing (with powers so disposed, in order to give trade a stable course, to define the rights of our merchants, and to enable the government to support them) conventional rules of intercourse, the best that present circumstances and mutual opinion will permit, but temporary, and liable to be from time to time abandoned or varied, as experience and circumstances shall dictate; constantly keeping in view that it is folly in one nation to look for disinterested favors from another; that it must pay with a portion of its independence for whatever it may accept under that character; that, by such acceptance, it may place itself in the condition of having given equivalents for nominal favors, and yet of being reproached with ingratitude for not giving more. There can be no greater error than to expect or calculate upon real favors from nation to nation. It is an illusion, which experience must cure, which a just pride ought to discard...
     
  24. Pycckia

    Pycckia Well-Known Member

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    FDR made a bargain with Stalin.
     
  25. s002wjh

    s002wjh Well-Known Member

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    even though prc and roc are still in a civil war, for all intended purpose taiwan is different country, its not like sweden just gonna join US when US say so. despite that, China has left HK along, which can be show from human freedom index.

    as for taiwan it depend which political party are in control, then the relationship will change due to that.
     
    Last edited: Oct 10, 2019

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