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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
Not only didn’t they have indoor plumbing, but they didn’t have electronic keyboards in those days. It’s amazing that anyone could think that matters, though.
Benedict Arnold was willing to change sides in exchange for greater positions and honor, which usually would have been accompanied by higher pay, too, though if you think the main type of corruption is the misdirection of funds to one’s personal interests, you have not begun to understand the corruption that plagues our government.
During the Revolutionary War and during George Washington’s Indian wars, military procurements were a big source of corruption. Military contractors sold inferior goods and sometimes skimped on quantity, too. Rooting out that corruption through careful oversight was one of the major activities of General Von Steuben. In the Indian wars, in which the first two campaigns ended in disaster for the U.S. Army, it was not just General Anthony Wayne’s fighting spirit that turned things around, but also his improvements in procurements, which kept so much from being lost to waste and corruption.
Here on planet earth, we have denizens who don’t just try to get more money for themselves, though that does matter. They also are after prestige and status, which usually means power. Who needs money when you have all that?
Things may work differently on sci fi planets.
And yet, as has been pointed out many times, poor people today live better than rich people did back then.
wut
A lot of Chinese people have moved to the U.S. I wonder if preserving China’s territorial integrity requires it to take over the U.S. as well. It wouldn’t be the first time such justifications for aggression have been used.
And that notion has been debunked many times, too. Clue: It depends on what you mean by “live better.” If you define it in terms of creature comforts, yeah, probably. But for a lot of people, that’s not really living.
But in this post you’re minding China’s business when you refer to its “territorial integrity.” And some people’s business involves trading with China, and that can involve them in obeying China’s laws on our territory, which can hardly be done without the involvement of governments in settling contract disputes, etc., and which sometimes make them less free to express their political opinions of those of their employees.
If isolationism consists of minding our own business, that means minding China’s business, too. Doesn’t sound very isolated.
It’s interesting that you thought I was criticizing people.
Of course it considers itself to be its own country, and it has all the characteristics of a separate country.
And we would demand that China take action against that guy and suppress his speech? I doubt it.
Apparently? Where did you get that idea?
Hey, we agree on something! It’s irrelevant to the conversation, of course.
Maybe it would be good if our government didn’t take part in suppressing legal speech, and refused to involve itself in enforcing business contracts that do. That would improve our government, don’t you think?
How many people do you think would give up indoor plumbing, to have President Trump rather than President Harris?
And I don’t mean just for 4 years, or whatever. I mean FOREVER. At the time of Washington and Franklin etc, they never expected to have indoor plumbing, EVER.
Yes? So do you think Washington and Franklin would have given up American independence in exchange for indoor plumbing, if it had been offered to them?
I wasn’t referring to those people individually, and even in the 1770s the US was not made up of copies of Washington and Franklin. Remember that only an actual minority of people at that time actively supported the Revolution. And it’s also different to have the threat of losing something that’s been around for a long time, versus a promise of something new and unknown that hasn’t been relied upon for decades or perhaps even centuries. Multiple generations, for sure. Just 100 years ago, the son of a President died from an infection that now could be treated with something you could get in a trip to 7-11 or Walmart. How many people do you think would give up things like that, as well as indoor plumbing, and electric lighting etc, to restore the original meaning of the Electoral College etc?
And remember, again, the people of that time couldn’t even CONCEIVE of what exists now, so the idea that you could somehow travel back in time and ask them if they would rather have those, or the Electoral College etc, is silly.
I suppose you could say that such people who wouldn’t give up the quality of life we have now, are just “weaklings” or something. But at least it should be considered. If only because those people vote too, and there are a lot of them.
Whatever. I can make no sense of why you think it’s relevant. But if you think corruption was invented only after life got more comfortable, you are 101 percent wrong. Maybe you should have paid more attention in Sunday School or something. Or read a few history books.
No, that wasn’t my point at all. It was mostly that options for corruption/bribery are far more numerous now. People like Washington and Franklin could not even have DREAMED of the relative (to them and their time) luxuries available now, even to people of modest means.
Nobody could have even OFFERED THEM a luxury car, for example, or airline trips to exotic locales, because such luxuries DID. NOT. EXIST.
Even if they had been given piles of money to pay for them. THEY. DID. NOT. EXIST.
All they could have bought with piles of money is more horses, more wagons, perhaps more slaves… They couldn’t have purchased modern dentures, or even modern dental care for their own teeth, because… THEY. DID. NOT. EXIST.
NOBODY could have acquired them, for ANY amount of money, or gold, or jewels…
You can’t imagine people trading their vote to not have constant pain in their mouth, or elsewhere? I can. Perhaps even Washington and Franklin, if it hurt enough.
It’s still a mystery why you think there are more options for corruption now than before.
It’s not mysterious. Prosperity places more people in the corruption opportunity space with a wider range of enticements. Survival requires single-minded effort. There’s been a big change in this distribution over time so it is actually corruption that now prospers.
Indeed. I thought I had made that pretty clear.
Yes, you did.
TR didn’t seem to think so. Unless maybe he was just goofin’, as the kids used to say.
That’s a good point about survival. It’s true. Priorities tend to be different in those communities where hunter/gatherers keep each other in check and any cheating is quickly punished or the community will cease to exist. But we’ve been beyond that for a long time now.
I thought that implication was clear in my comments, but maybe not.
I put more emphasis on how much larger and more widespread, are the options for graft that can be offered today. Especially in areas that simply were not available in the past, no matter how wealthy someone might have been. They couldn’t offer anything that simply did not exist at that time. Not even dental care.
That doesn’t mean there wasn’t as much corruption as now. The people of the Revolutionary era were thousands of years past their neolithic days when there was no such thing as government officeholders.
Still not the point. Washington, Franklin, etc, couldn’t have been tempted by the comforts of an easy life etc, because that was simply not possible at the time. They didn’t exist. And nobody could purchase them, either for themselves or in attempting to bribe someone else, no matter how much money they had.
It’s been said that “people are only as faithful as their options.” And perhaps the same could be said of historical figures.
As a somewhat related example, I never thought that Mahatma Ghandi was an especially courageous person, because he was dealing with a power that was too civilized to simply run him over with a tank the way the Chinese did. And he knew it.
So … there was no such thing as corruption until we had flat screen TVs. Because even the King of France didn’t have a flatscreen TV!
The corrupt did it for power, for status, for influence, for love … or they did it for a big pile of gold, since you can always rent the rest.
No, but I just don’t think it’s an even comparison because the methods of corruption available now were not available then, to possibly corrupt someone like a Washington of Franklin who may have pooh-poohed another carriage or more horses or something, just more of what they already had, or even gold since even unlimited gold couldn’t buy anything that DIDN’T YET EXIST, but may have been susceptible to luxuries currently available.
So what? What makes you think that is what tempts people to corruption? Are you some kind of materialistic Marxist or something?