Note: This one is definitely an article written exclusively for the Pro-Reading lobby. Even the excerpt is longer than most message board participants will be comfortable with, however for those few of you who make it all the way to the bottom of this page, I strongly encourage you to go ahead and click the link, and read not only this article in its entirety, but get to know Henry Liu. He is a Thinker.
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...The US needs to recognize that it cannot win its "war on terrorism" with military force alone, however overwhelming. While the notion of preemptive defense can serve as a convenient pretext for outright aggression, a widening gap between the enormity of US power and the legitimacy of its use erodes support for US policies even by its allies. This gap acts to stimulate rising resistance by asymmetrical warfare of which terrorism is a central component....The US needs to re-examine the moral prerequisite of its power. Unhappy experience with the war on poverty and the war on drugs should alert US policymakers to understand that to win the war on terrorism, the root causes of terrorism, the institutionalized socioeconomic inequities that lead to widespread rage fanned by hopelessness among the oppressed, must first be eliminated...
China, drawing on Chinese philosophical underpinning, has managed to survive the unprecedented onslaught of a century of Western imperialism....The United States is a relatively young nation among modern-day great powers, while China is the oldest continuous nation in history...The US is naturally modern because it does not have much of a past to update...Throughout much of its history, the United States has regarded China with a sense of racist superiority based on ignorance....
The US...has justified going to war many times in recent decades in the name of defending democracy around the world. Yet the word "democracy" cannot be found in the US constitution..limit outright majority rule, in the belief that it would endanger property rights and prevent wise and meritorious leadership. The prevalent sentiment was a distrust of democracy. Meeting behind closed doors, and with the proceedings kept from the public, many spoke their true feelings. Edmond Randolph of Virginia spoke for the delegates when he said "the evils under which the United States labored" were due to "the turbulence and follies of democracy". Madison declared that the aim was to "protect the minority of opulence against the majority"...the American spirit of freedom and democracy, self-evident under conditions that have long since ceased to exist..a unique and peculiar form of government applicable only to conditions of the New World. Over the span of two centuries, those conditions have been fundamentally altered. As the United States has grown stronger, its citizens have over time surrendered more of the freedom that their forefathers had cherished......Hamilton believed in government by the wise, the rich and the well-born, and in aristocratic control as opposed to democracy..Rule by law as interpreted by nine politically appointed justices has since been the modus operandi of the US political system, not rule of law....The current occupant of the White House owes his tenancy to the Supreme Court, not to the voters....The image Americans hold of themselves as being more free than other people is merely collective narcissism. In reality, they are merely more free in their own peculiar ways. Many Americans, for example, have been conditioned to view freedom from want as not part of their natural right even though the means of individual economic self-sufficiency have been systematically taken away from them...
the US crusade of making the world safe for freedom and democracy in its own image is a dangerous delusion of grandeur. Like all crusades in the past, this one will also cause great destruction and misery....
European culture was enriched by war contacts with the East. The cotton paper-making process replaced importing parchment; the amount of writing increased, laying the foundation for the Enlightenment. The handkerchief, an Arab invention, was introduced to Europe. The guitar and the violin were introduced, and Arabic numerals, decimals and spherical trigonometry, algebra, sine and tangent, physics and astronomy, the pendulum, optics and the telescope all benefited European culture, albeit at excruciatingly high cost....George W Bush's new Crusade may also change the United States more than the rest of the world. When his new Crusade finally ends, capitalism, like feudalism of the old Crusades, may well subside if not disappear from the world...The Crusades failed in all three of their geopolitical objectives. The European Christians failed to win the Holy Land. They also failed to check the global advance of Islam....There is symmetry between crusade and jihad....In truth, the Crusaders committed atrocities not just against Muslims but also against Jews and even other Christians...The United States hopes to see China as a reluctant ally in its crusade against terrorism, notwithstanding the fact that prior to September 11, 2001, when terrorism hit US soil on a devastating scale, the US was covertly sponsoring anti-China terrorism by separatists...US-China relations on an unconstructive path that holds more costs than benefits for both sides. The most serious of these is the issue of Taiwan...And quite possibly, it may end in war. ..
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/EL09Ad02.html
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