FROM OUR INBOX
We fear that our democracy is coming apart at the seams due to partisanship, ideology and issue/identity politics. – Lester L. P.J. O’Rourke comment: Lester, what I like to call us concerned citizens is “Militant Moderates.” (See, Mack, told you I’d steal it.) We’re sick of being stuck between the “Gimmies” and the “Gotchas,” tired of a political system where one side doesn’t know about “Please” and the other side has never heard of “Thank you.” Re: Welcome to the End of Hong Kong Thanks for the interesting piece on Hong Kong. A few months ago I took down a copy of Jefferson’s autobiography (short thank God). One thing struck me as very relevant to Hong Kong’s situation: he mentioned that in the forming of the first committees of correspondence between the various colonies to deflect the King’s increased predations the initial grievance was one brought up by Rhode Island, well before the contentious Stamp Act: a demand by the British government that Rhode Islanders accused of a crime be extradited to Great Britain to stand trial, rather than be judged in a local Rhode Island court. Almost an exact parallel to Hong Kong today. This was quite a few years before the Boston Tea Party, the initial shooting skirmish at Concord and full blown war. Of little things are sometimes born greater. I’m not saying that such an apparently tangential matter as a threat of extradition could eventually unravel a mighty government... but stranger
We can’t automatically assume that the many people who make up the Chinese government are telling the truth. The hospital worker or the local councilman each have their own interests that may not overlap with those of the rest of the world... which is to know as much as possible about, in this case, the spread of the Wuhan virus. Of course, this isn’t only true in China... We can look to the U.S. and point to coverups like the Tuskegee experiments, the Pentagon Papers, and the Afghanistan Papers. People may have different reasons to obscure reality... But the fact remains that people often don’t tell the truth. And governments, consequently, don’t either (even if they want to!). We don’t know, and we can’t know, whether it’s the highest levels of the Chinese government that’s covering things up... or whether it’s that they’re just not receiving correct information. Re: We Need a Political System That Isn’t So Sure of Itself Yo, PJ. We are called Militant Moderates. Welcome to the club! – Mack R. P.J. O’Rourke comment: Thank you, Mack, for my membership card! And, by the way, I am so going to steal the phrase “Militant Moderates.” Great piece! Kudos! We are concerned citizens worried about the world and country our children and grandchildren will live in.
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February 2020
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