It really is hard to know where to start after reading Thomas Friedman’s latest column in The New York Times:
Watching both the health care and climate/energy debates in Congress, it is hard not to draw the following conclusion: There is only one thing worse than one-party autocracy, and that is one-party democracy, which is what we have in America today.
One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks. But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages. That one party can just impose the politically difficult but critically important policies needed to move a society forward in the 21st century. It is not an accident that China is committed to overtaking us in electric cars, solar power, energy efficiency, batteries, nuclear power and wind power. China’s leaders understand that in a world of exploding populations and rising emerging-market middle classes, demand for clean power and energy efficiency is going to soar. Beijing wants to make sure that it owns that industry and is ordering the policies to do that, including boosting gasoline prices, from the top down.
Our one-party democracy is worse.
Or to put it in a shorter form — it’s so much easier to run a country when you don’t have to worry about things like an opposition or the voice of the people.
Jonah Goldberg comments at NRO:
I cannot begin to tell you how this is exactly the argument that was made by American fans of Mussolini in the 1920s. It is exactly the argument that was made in defense of Stalin and Lenin before him (it’s the argument that idiotic, dictator-envying leftists make in defense of Castro and Chavez today). It was the argument made by George Bernard Shaw who yearend for a strong progressive autocracy under a Mussolini, a Hitler or a Stalin (he wasn’t picky in this regard). This is the argument for an “economic dictatorship” pushed by Stuart Chase and the New Dealers. It’s the dream of Herbert Croly and a great many of the Progressives.
I have no idea why I still have the capacity to be shocked by such things
Me neither.
September 9th, 2009 at 2:06 pm
O. M. G.
What else is there to say?
September 9th, 2009 at 4:49 pm
While Hitler’s Germany was one of the most vile and evil nation’s to ever exist it was brutally efficient in many ways. Even Communism, as written by Marx, and not perverted by Stalin or Mao, was, theoretically, an efficient system.
Democracy is inherently messy due to the clash of ideas from all directions. It’s slow to progress in many ways due to the fact that in order to progress all sides have to compromise in some fashion to find a middle ground. It is however that messiness that makes Democracy the better system. The fact we have to find a middle ground to progress prevents us from falling into the traps of the extreme that have no check or balance withing Fascism or Stalinism.
September 9th, 2009 at 5:01 pm
The supposed economic efficiency of dictatorship is perhaps one of the more vile myths of history.
The USSR was not “efficient” it was a 70 year long economic basket case.
Nazi Germany was not “efficient” it was an organized killing machine.
September 9th, 2009 at 5:57 pm
Singapore might be considered a “benevolent” dictatorship.
September 9th, 2009 at 6:01 pm
I didn’t say that either Nazi Germany or the USSR were economically efficient. Nazi Germany was extremely and horribly efficient at killing and social engineering.
I also said that communism was theoretically efficient if you go by what Marx and Engels wrote. The form of government that the USSR used, which was highly inefficient, was not the communism of Marx, Engels, or even that of Lenin.
September 10th, 2009 at 12:57 am
[...] (Who else would publish this dreck? Anyway, hat tip to Cafe Hayek and Below the Beltway.) [...]
September 11th, 2009 at 12:53 pm
Interesting how this pining for authority on Friedman’s part was just in time for 9/11. Perhaps living under a restored caliphate would be to his liking?