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It’s Hard To Be An Isolationist
Susan Quinn’s post about the Little League World Series is an example of a point I’ve occasionally made here on Ricochet: It’s hard for loss of freedom in another country not to diminish our own freedom. I doubt that a single person on Ricochet has agreed with me, partly because it isn’t self-explanatory. But here’s an example.
In the comments of Susan’s post I posted a link to Matt Antonelli’s take on the game, in which he started out by saying it’s a game of Chinese Taipei against Florida. When I first heard that and heard “Taipei,” I immediately translated it: “Oh, yeah. Taiwan!”
China puts a lot of pressure on the West to not refer to Taiwan as a separate country, even though we know it is. But China makes it hard for others to do business with China without adopting some of their restrictions on speech. Since 1979 our athletic organizations have been placating China by not saying “Taiwan.”
Some hardline isolationists among us might say the solution to that is simple. We should have no relations with China in sports or anything else. But that means having no trade with China or with countries that do business with China, once all of those other countries adopt China’s hardline policy on not saying “Taiwan.” Some isolationists might say that’s the way it should be. But our country has always had trade relations with other countries. We fought a war to become independent in good part because we wanted no British restrictions on our foreign trade. America became great and mighty by having trade relations with other countries. We can’t become great again in any sense of the word by becoming isolated.
When other countries become less free, there are always accommodations we have to make to cooperate with their lack of freedom. Those acts of cooperation may not be all that onerous, but they tend to become habit-forming. We may not object too strongly the first time, because it’s “not the hill to die on.” Soon we don’t even think about how we moderate our language and become a little less free when others become less free.
It may not just be restrictions on speech. We may also cooperate in sending asylum-seekers back to the lands of the unfree. There will be those among us who say, “Well, when in other countries we have to obey their laws.” Sometimes we end up obeying their laws even in our own country, and doing it all too easily.
Sometimes we just have to be practical. It can’t always be helped. Should we go to war over it? It’s hard to imagine how that could be justified. But a real insult to our own freedom is when we pretend that the loss of freedom elsewhere does not diminish our own.
In this case of the Little League World Series, the ESPN announcers didn’t always follow the rules. A couple of the announcers said the forbidden word, “Taiwan,” as explained in this article: China Probably Wants A Word With ESPN/Disney After Little League World Series. One of them may have done it intentionally.
ESPN does a lot of business with China. Wanna place any bets on whether it happens again?
Published in Foreign Policy
I’m even worse. I always immediately say, “Formosa!” :) :)
Great post.
You make an excellent point. I also wonder if China would actually cut off relations with us if we just started using “Taiwan.”
I was working graphics in the ESPN truck the first year they did 1st and 2nd Round coverage of the U.S. Women’s Open. Yani Tseng is one of the top athletes on the tour, so naturally, she gets her share of coverage.
As it was originally created in Bristol the graphics package included the Taiwanese flag. When officials of the USGA saw it they had a fit. Within an hour we had to replace it with this:
I don’t disagree with your underlying point, but I think it’s important to note that in fact, we remain free to ignore China’s (or any other foreign government’s) wishes. As individuals, you and I remain free to refer to Taiwan as Taiwan, and even to call it a country. ESPN, or any other corporate entity, is free to make the same choice.
But we all have to assess the costs associated with such choices. As individuals, it doesn’t really cost us anything to refer to Taiwan as a country, which is why all of us do so. But corporations must police what they say to avoid repercussions that affect their bottom lines. China is just one of many entities they must be careful not to offend. It must be very stressful to be the social-media manager for any large company, because anytime you say anything publicly, you might step on a land mine.
The problem with China is that we have allowed ourselves to become so dependent on them that we can’t afford to tick them off. By contrast, consider North Korea, arguably the least free country on the planet; their lack of freedom has little effect on us, because we have no dependence on them and couldn’t care less what they think.
This is true. Even in Stalin’s USSR, people were free to say anything they wanted. But there were costs associated with such choices.
My favorite Southpark clip involves Disney and China.
the old joke about the USSR:
In the USSR we have freedom of speech, in the USA you have freedom after speech.
Reminds me of Rodney Dangerfield’s line-“at my house we said grace after eating”
I think a fundamental problem in diplomacy is the multi-cultural pretense that other countries/governments are just a variation of national identity rather than (in many cases) a pathological cesspool. The UN is founded on this delusion.
I have always advocated replacing the UN with a League of Nations that Don’t Suck, countries that share some basic principles on human rights, economic and poltical freedoms, and a willingness to share a common defense. Like NATO but broader. The LNTDS would also be its own trade zone. Nations that want to join or (even do business) must shed several degrees of [REDACTED].
We would be less tempted to deploy military assets to intervene in battles between nations that do suck and provide aid with more strings.
Vlad Vexler has been saying some silly, superficial things about Kamala Harris and Joe Biden lately, but he was back to Wise Mode when he said this:
That’s what’s going on here, too: A “negotiation of shared coexistence.”
This looks like, at its root, the everlasting conflict between individual sovereignty and government. Money is the enabler that advantages government by fostering bigness. This post has laid out an excellent example of how this works.
People who want to control people go in one direction and those who oppose this control go in another and wealth (money) favors the control approach.
What makes so many people want to emigrate to America?
There’s probably a reason why the Bill of Rights says, “Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech,” rather than, “Freedom of speech is guaranteed.”
The 2nd is impossible to define.So, Really Want to Talk About Foreign Intervention?
Very good!
This makes me think of the old Jack Benny routine. A robber points a gun at him and says “Your money or your life!” After a long pause, Benny says “I’m thinking!”
It’s actually an interesting point that has always fascinated me. If you want to be very literal about it, it is impossible to force another person to do anything. You can make the cost of noncompliance intolerably high, but even then, the “victim” (for lack of a better word) makes a free choice. And while the First Amendment says that the government is not allowed to threaten us with punishment based on what we say, it doesn’t prevent us from entering into private agreements that might similarly constrain us.
I think this is a more important issue today than it has ever been. Today, most of us are utterly dependent on big tech companies in one way or another; you can’t even meaningfully participate in public discourse without using them. And each of those companies is free to impose upon us their terms of service, which can include any kind of constraints they want to place on our freedom of expression. Facebook or Twitter or YouTube — or, for that matter, Ricochet — could say that we are not allowed to refer to Taiwan as a country. And then each of us would have to decide: do we go along with that, or do we pay the cost of noncompliance (giving up our ability to participate in the community)?
I have always firmly believed that the First Amendment does not apply to private entities, and that there is no requirement that any publication or communication channel allow “free expression.” In theory, I still believe that, but I’m troubled by the fact that if we adhere to that principle in the 21st century, the First Amendment starts to become irrelevant. My freedom to print newsletters in my basement doesn’t mean a whole lot when the rest of the world is conversing online.
I honestly don’t know what the solution is.
Well summarized.
Reminds me of the Cold War era joke about an American in Moscow’s Red Square criticizing the repression and bragging to a local: “In my country, I am free to criticize my government.”
To which the Muscovite replies, “Same here. In my country, I too am free to criticize your government.”
I wish it would be that easy.
Maybe once they get to a certain size, they become treated as a kind of “public forum” or “public utility.” If they agree. If they don’t agree, they get broken up as an “illegal monopoly.”
I’m not a fan of an idea that success should be punished. If I build something that is so useful that everyone ends up depending on it, why should that mean it should be taken away from me?
It wouldn’t be taken away, I’m talking about following rules. Utility companies can be private too, but they’re not allowed to deny service – water, power, etc – on the same bases that other private business can “reserve the right to refuse service to anyone.”
I have thought of that, too, but one big problem with that idea is it puts a lot of arbitrary power into the hands of a powerful monopolist, namely the FTC, which is now run by J.D. Vance’s hugbuddy, Lina Khan. That power can easily be used to protect political allies and punish political opponents. If you could come up with some workable objective criteria it would remove some of the arbitrariness, but it’s hard to come up with criteria that can’t be gamed. I’ve never heard of anything remotely workable.
As I’ve mentioned recently elsewhere, “rule of law” is essentially meaningless if those laws are not being properly enforced by good people.
But seems like there are already some measures in place. Which, yes, do rely on being enforced by decent/reasonable people. But so do all the other laws we have!
Size of market/share, other options available for the same purpose – which probably means it’s not credible for Facebook to claim they should be treated the same as Ricochet, for example – and so forth. Pretty sure many of these have already been worked out, in terms of what becomes a “public forum” versus what isn’t, etc. Also the whole Section 230 thing – which still isn’t being properly addressed by the “good people” responsible for such things, despite having existed for some time – might deal with most of it. Make them decide if they want to be a publisher, or a platform. They’ve been getting away with “both!” for too long.
I don’t find it difficult at all to be an isolationist. Not at all. It’s very simple. Mind our own business.
Your argument is incorrect on many particulars, I think.
For starters, I think that you caricature the viewpoint of the people that you criticize. For example:
I don’t know anyone who thinks this. I’m pretty close to an isolationist myself, and this is not what I think. What I do think is that we shouldn’t expect China, or any other country, to do things our way.
Then there’s this assertion, which is simply incorrect:
I don’t think that even Taiwan considers itself to be a separate country.
What you’re doing is quite outrageous here, in my view. You’re denying the territorial integrity of a nuclear superpower, in defiance of the position taken by our own country for about 45 years. Imagine if some Chinese guy claimed that my home state of Arizona is really part of Mexico. That would be a hostile opinion toward the US.
Then there’s this radical notion:
This is nonsense, first of all. We don’t have to obey their laws in our country. But the basic idea of recognizing national sovereignty means that we do agree that people in their country have to obey their laws. The radical part, though, is your immigration policy, which apparently holds that we have to accept “asylum-seekers” from any country that you don’t like.
We don’t have enough space for that. It’s not our job to rescue everyone on the planet. If people in other countries have bad government, they can try to fix that.
Perhaps most importantly, I think that our country has pretty darned bad government. Let’s focus on fixing that.
So the rule of law is meaningless if it is being properly enforced by bad people who do it because we’ve arranged for it to be in their own best interests to do so?
Is Donald Trump going to enforce laws because he is a good person? Or is he a crappy person who will enforce laws because it’s to his political advantage to do so, and he has little choice because he has made enemies of even crappier persons with whom he can never become reconciled?
No, they don’t rely on being enforced by decent/reasonable people. There are plenty of indecent/unreasonable people who enforce laws because it’s in their interest to do so.
There’s a problem right there in the first sentence. You have to define the market. That’s a rather arbitrary thing, that has already been much contested in courts and on editorial pages. There’s no common agreement on what somebody’s market is. It’s an exercise in arbitrary power for a bureaucrat to do that.
And, anyhow, under capitalism one of the good things is that companies can redefine their markets as they go along. That’s one of the reasons they hire marketers (which some people tend to confuse with sales people).
This is probably where your theory collapses, right here. How do you arrange laws to be in BEST or even BETTER interests of people to enforce them, versus NOT enforce them? In theory I suppose that might be possible if you’ve got a relative minority of bad people in power; but what happens if it’s not just a minority, or if even the majority of good people are unwilling to enforce the good laws because they’ll be called racist or something?
Face it, you need to have good people in power. All the talk in the world of having “bad people do the right thing because it’s in their interest to do so,” is a very thin razor-edge possibility that quickly fails if conditions aren’t basically ideal.
Was it Thomas Sowell who suggested the “made it profitable for bad people to do good things” but I suspect he would agree that can still only work if you have MOSTLY good people running things. I don’t think he would believe for a second that it works with mostly bad people. Or even a small portion of bad people. Especially when you’ve got good people afraid to stand up for being good.
The few people I know in Taiwan DO consider it a distinct, separate nation from China.
Thank you. Formosa (Taiwan) was never part of China. At some point, China’s military had a two-minute presence on the island, but that was about it.
The Communists want Taiwan’s money. That’s what’s driving this.
If that doesn’t work, we could go back to calling Taiwan by its official name: the Republic of China.
You could make that a new joke but replace USSR with England.
I neglected to say thanks for referencing my post!