Left no friend of freedom
Mood:  incredulous
The Left is No Friend of Freedom
By Daniel G. Jennings
Recently leftists like Christopher Hitchens and Noam Chomsky have began bewailing the lack of commitment to the causes of freedom and human rights by their fellow leftists. The question I have to ask is why are these people surprised by the left's lack of interest in freedom and human rights?
Historically the left has been no friend of freedom. During the 1920s and 30s when the world's first Communist dictatorship, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was committing some of the worst atrocities in human history the left was hailing it as a utopia and a symbol of human progress. Even though the crimes of Lenin and Stalin were well-reported in the news media outside Russia (America's largest chain of newspapers the Hearst Press accurately reported many Stalinist horrors) most leftists chose to believe the Stalinist propaganda. Very few leftists spoke out against the deaths of millions of innocents at the hands of the Communist utopians. There were no protests and no serious leftist outcries at the cynical deals non-Communist leaders made with these monsters. The British abandoned several independent Republics including Georgia to Lenin and stabbed the anti-Communist White Russian forces in the back in the early 1920s in a dress rehearsal of the appeasement of Adolph Hitler. Nor did the left have any serious problems with Stalin's deal with Hitler in 1939 which led to the occupation of four independent countries and the deaths of many innocent people.
Many of the world's most prominent leftists proudly and openly praised Lenin and Stalin. British author H.G. Wells, the father of modern science fiction, wrote apologies for Lenin that were downright criminal in nature. George Bernard Shaw, the greatest playwright in the English speaking world in the 1930s praised Stalin's penal experiments (in other words the Gulag). American educator John Dewey after seeing Soviet Russia said he had "seen the future and it works." These leftists showed little or no interest in the fate of the millions of average people oppressed, imprisoned, tortured and murdered by the Soviets. Nor did they seem to care about the almost total elimination of human freedom in Russia.
Nor did the left take any particular notice of the horrendous atrocities committed by Chinese Communist madman Mao Zedong in the 1950s and 60s. Atrocities that included the worst famine in human history and the Cultural Revolution an all out assault upon China's traditional culture. The left's response to Mao's barbarism was admiration. Many American and European leftists proudly waved the "Little Red Book," the Bible of Mao's vicious storm troopers, the Red Guards, in 1960s protests. There was not a single protest against Mao's crimes on American college campuses in the 1960s. No leftists picketed President Nixon when he made his cynical trip to China to slavishly cultivate Mao's friendship in the early 197Os.
As with Lenin and Stalin before him, Mao had a host of willing admirers among world leftists. American journalist Edgar Snow praised Mao's virtues, sang his praises and promoted his sick cause. Indian Prime Minister Jemal Nehru courted Mao's friendship even when Mao's brutal People's Liberation Army was invading Indian territory and killing Indian soldiers.
Disturbingly enough the left only became critical of Red China when Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping adopted reforms that encouraged capitalism. The left wing elitists who completely ignored the deaths of twenty million Chinese peasants in the 1950s and 60s and declined to take the world leaders who ignored this horror to task for it, were horrified by the deaths of several hundred students in China in 1989 in Tinnimin Square.
With the left's history of ignoring and whitewashing the crimes of tyrants past. Why should anybody be shocked when today's leftists have absolutely no respect for freedom and basic human rights? After all they're only staying true to character.

letter to democrats
Mood:  crushed out
Who Stole My Democratic Party?
By Daniel G. Jennings
I'm a loyal Democrat who is disgusted with my party. The first presidential candidate I voted for was Michael Dukakis, since then I cast my ballots for Clinton and Gore. Yet now I look at the Democrats and I am disgusted.
My party, the party of Truman, FDR, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and Woodrow Wilson has been taken over by the wimps, the whiners, the losers, the peaceniks, the snobs and the elitists. The so-called Presidential candidates are busy trying to kiss up to a small cadre of America-hating, latte-drinking, snobs while ignoring the rest of us. In Congress, our party has an important chance to compromise with the Republicans and President Bush and get important social legislation that would have benefited average people such as Medicare and Social Security reform and maybe even national health care passed. Instead we are letting pompous asses such as Ted Kennedy and Robert Byrd block such legislation in order to score political points with the Volvo driving set.
One of our most important allies the American Association of Retired People has abandoned us and gone over to the Republicans on Medicare. A compromise that would have given millions of poor seniors the prescription drug benefits they so desperately need. Yet what do we do? We attack it come on. The AARP leaders will get the message they'll see that if they want anything constructive accomplished for their constituents they'll have to go to the GOP.
Then there's the war, I have news for you Democrats most Americans see nothing wrong with it. They have no problem with our President using our military forces to overthrow governments that are hostile to our interests such as Saddam's (many of us think it's about time the USA started kicking some ass in the third world). Average Americans see nothing wrong with American dominance in the world for we know that America is the land of freedom, justice and opportunity - not an evil empire as the college professors and journalists like to claim. (Yes Democrats those Marxist professors at your university lied to you and are still lying to you.) Average Americans know that our troops will treat the Iraqis decently and that our rule is preferable to Saddam's cheap thuggery. We also know that if we don't get control of the Middle East we'll suffer devastating new terrorist attacks that will make Sept. 11 look like tame in comparison.
We also know that there is no alternative to American dominance in the world, the United Nations and Europe are too weak to make a real difference in the world. China the would be super power is ruled by a small and vicious cadre of Communist gangsters who would invade and loot as much of the world as they could if they were given the chance. India is democratic but it lacks the economic and technological capabilities to match our military might. America has is a world leader and we have to act like one, not bow and scrape before the European elitists.
When we average Democrats see our so-called leaders listening to the intellectuals, the journalists, the movie stars and the rest of the media and academic elitists we have to wonder do you care about them or America? Do you care about our troops fighting in Iraq or the average Americans who would be slaughtered in the next terrorist attack?
We see you listening to the peace movement but we don't see you talking about some of the issues facing average Americans? What about overtime Congress recently eliminated that. You could have cut a deal with Bush and the GOP. Keep overtime and we'll back your war in Iraq. Did you? Now lots of average Americans will loose a large percentage of their income because you couldn't compromise. The Volvo driving snobs at the peace rallies won't loose any income but average working folk will thanks Democrats.
So Democrats if you want my vote again, start being the party of average Americans again. Stop being the party of Ted Kennedy, Robert Byrd and Howard Dean. Start being the party of John F. Kennedy, Harry Truman and FDR again. Start being the party of workers and the middle class and stop being the party of the latte set. Then guess what you'll start seeing the kind of electoral victories that Truman and FDR won again.

What If??
What Will Happen if the "Peace Movement" Wins the Debate on Iraq?
By Daniel G. Jennings
What will happen if the self-proclaimed peace movement and the self-serving Democratic politicians who are kissing up to it win the debate on Iraq? What happens if the United States pulls out and the so-called Iraqi resistance wins the war? Well there are two scenarios neither of one is particularly moral or appealing.
Scenario number one, it is the year 2006 or 2007, the President of the United States is sitting in the Oval Office listening to a report from the Director of Central Intelligence. The DCI informs President Hillary and her husband that Osama Bin Laden, President of the Islamic People's Republic of Iraq and Saudi Arabia and Caliph of Islam has just taken delivery of an atomic bomb or the small pox virus from a renegade Russian scientist. The President seeing no choice gives the order, she orders the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to fire nuclear missiles at Baghdad, Riddyah and Mecca. The threat is eliminated but several million innocent Iraqis and Saudi Arabians die. The peace movement's devotion to human life has led to the deaths of millions of innocent people. Americans can learn to ride the streetcar to work again because gasoline is a thing of the past in most American towns after the nuclear fires scorch the oilfields.
Scenario Number Two. It is the year 2018 and Iraq is no threat to us because the Chinese People's Liberation Army is occupying Iraq and Saudi Arabia under the guise of "UN Peacekeeping." Both those nations are now peaceful the PLA having pacified the Middle East at the behest of the world's major oil companies through the simple expedient of shooting any Middle Easterner who didn't go along with the new order. Elite Israeli military units having dealt with any Arabs who were too much trouble for the Chinese.
Since the PLA's first action on landing in Iraq was to expel all Western journalists and shut down the Arab media outlets nobody actually saw the murder of all those innocent Arabs. It's just a vicious rumor as the oil company publicists keep telling the media. Media executives flush with oil-company advertising money are quick to agree and present the "facts." CNN now part of the Chinese National Television combine has been too busy reporting on Jennifer Lopez's tax evasion charges to care what happened in the Middle East a few years ago. News of the slaughter of several million innocent Arabs didn't appear in the world's media.
The Middle East is now peaceful Western oil field workers can now safely walk the streets of Riddyah and Baghdad and enjoy a nice meal of Dim Sum washed down with a cold can of Tsingtsao. Western women can now wear pants and make up in Saudi Arabia. They can even wear shorts and miniskirts if they want. American oilmen can even enjoy a night at the new strip clubs enterprising PLA officers are opening in Middle Eastern cities as a moneymaking sideline. (Arab women caught wearing the Burkah are now shot by Russian Jewish mercenaries who compose the new Chinese sponsored "police forces" in the name of sexual equality.) No Moslem dares speak out against such outrages, the Chinese security service and the Mossad are everywhere and very efficient.
None of them dare ask where all of the mass graves on the outskirts of major Arab cities came from? Or where all of the Arab men of military age are?
Who cares? There are now pictures of Mao hanging in the Mosques and puppet regimes recognizing the legitimacy of Israel in all the Persian Gulf nations. Western businessmen with "friends" in the politburo in Beijing are making big money by setting up franchises in the Middle East. Israel is at peace with the Palestinians who are now happy in their new role as servants to Chinese officers and American oil executives. Of course, no Western oil field worker publicly voices such suspicions.
Americans are now paying $25 a gallon for gasoline and Taiwan, Vietnam, Siberia and the recently reunited Republic of Korea are now provinces of the People's Republic of China but who cares. There is finally peace in the Middle East and China's paramount leader has just been awarded the Noble Peace Prize for her peacekeeping efforts in the Middle East over the protests of human rights activists everywhere. The leader interrupted her golf game with the president of Exxon-Shell-Total-Royal Dutch, former President Jeb Bush and the Prime Minister of Israel to tell reporters how happy she was to receive such a great honor before returning to the links.
These are the two most possible futures we face if we listen to the "peace" movement today. Persons who don't believe me should read their history, because the British people listened to the "peace movement" of 1938, six million Jews died, London was devastated by the Blitz and the Red Army was occupying most of Eastern Europe by 1945.
The fools in the peace movement have to be careful what they wish for. They might just get it and the future they get won't be very peaceful.

Reagan and Bush
Reagan and Bush
By Daniel G. Jennings
The chattering classes are all a blather about President Bush's new commitment to bring democracy to the Middle East. They are calling Bush's plan unrealistic and hypocritical and saying it will shatter the peace by provoking other nations.
This seems like d?j? vu all over again to me, back in the 1980s I recall another bold visionary President who made similar statements. His name was Ronald Reagan and he challenged the Soviet Union, he demanded that Gorbachev tear down the Berlin Wall. He armed anti-Communist guerrillas in Afghanistan and backed the Solidarity strikers in Poland.
The intellectuals were horrified by Reagan's statements, they dismissed him as a warmonger and a cowboy. They said his statement would lead to increased conflict with the Soviet Union and heat up the Cold War. The Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe was a fact of history that could never be changed.
Well, history shows us that the intellectuals were wrong and Reagan was right. Relations with the Soviets actually improved, the Red Army pulled out of Eastern Europe, the Cold War ended and the Soviet Union collapsed. The intellectuals of course don't remember this.
The question is who are we going to listen to? The bold and visionary President who is offering us a vision of hope and a better world or the arrogant, small-minded and weak-kneed intelligentsia that won't take any action to improve the world while ridiculing those who do?

Marxist Kamizkies
Marxist Kamikazes
By Daniel G. Jennings
At least some of the kamikaze pilots, the Japanese fanatics who crashed airplanes into American ships during World War II, may have been motivated by Marxism rather than patriotism or Traditional Japanese Values.
A new book, "Kamikaze, Cherry Blossoms and Nationalism: The Militarization of Aesthetics in Japanese History by Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney," profiles a number of kamikaze pilots and reprints some of their writings. Ohnuki-Tierney's research indicates that at least some of the kamikazes used Marxism to rationalize their suicide attacks on American ships.
Two of the kamikazes Ohnuki-Tierney writes about, Tadao Hayashi and Hachiro Sasaki, were college-educated Marxists who believed that America and Britain must be destroyed because Britain and America were capitalist countries. Both men believed that capitalism was evil because they had been taught that capitalism was evil by Marxist professors at Japanese universities before the war.
Like many modern leftist intellectuals, Hayashi and Sasaki also believed that America was an imperialist, racist and colonialist power that must be destroyed. They used Leninist arguments about American imperialism to justify their participation in barbaric suicide attacks on US military forces.
On an even more disturbing note both Hayashi and Sasaki wanted to see their own nation, Japan, defeated and devastated. These young men thought that the destruction of their own country would be a good thing because they thought such a catastrophe would usher in a Communist revolution and create a Marxist utopia.
Hayashi and Sasaki learned these bizarre ideas from Marxist professors at Japanese universities right before World War II. Far from helping the young men question authority and think independently this sick line of thinking made them willing pawns of Japan's military imperialists and weapons in a brutal and senseless war.
Ohnuki-Tierney's findings indicate that Marxism can be used to justify war and terrorism in almost any context. Worse, Marxists can easily be duped into fighting, killing and even dying for causes which they loathe.
On a really chilling note Ohnuki-Tierney found that both Hayashi and Sasaki hated Japan's military government and what it stood for. Yet their Marxist philosophy enabled them to justify their willingness to sacrifice their own lives and the lives of others for what they hated.
The most disturbing aspect of this story is that tens of millions of young people all over the world, including hundreds of thousands of Americans, are being taught the same Marxist ideology that motivated Hayashi and Sasaki. These people are learning the same sick myths Hayashi and Sasaki took to heart: that capitalism is evil, that America is racist, imperialist and colonialist, that the destruction of traditional society would be a good thing and that violence against capitalists is a good thing. Just as Hayashi and Sasaki wanted to see Japan destroyed, some of the idealistic young American Marxists on today's college campuses want to see America destroyed.
Those who believe that Marxism somehow prevents war and militarism would do well to read "Kamikaze, Cherry Blossoms and Nationalisms" and see how easily Marxists can be turned into suicidal fanatics. They might also reflect on how easily Marxist ideology can be used to justify war crimes and senseless violence. Perhaps this might convince them to abandon their twisted beliefs and adopt a rational philosophy.
If they don't then history might repeat itself and the new generation of Marxists will make the same mistakes as those tragic young Japanese men sixty years ago.

Idealism
Idealism
By Daniel G. Jennings
I proudly reject the title of idealist because idealism is a negative and destructive way of looking at the world. Idealism is a viewpoint that leads to violence, bigotry, war and a host of other evils.
The idealist is a person who believes that some ideal or set of ideals if applied properly in the world would solve all the world's problems. This leads to conflict because the idealist believes that anybody who disagrees with his or her ideals is wrong. Worse, the idealist believing that he or she has the answers to humanity's problems, believes that anybody objects or tries to stop his or her actions is an evil enemy trying to harm humanity.
This terrible line of thinking can justify any atrocity or crime against humanity. When the idealist kills, imprisons, attacks or oppresses those who disagree with him, the idealist is doing good and trying to help humanity. Those who object are evil and deserve what they get.
This means that compromise is impossible for the idealist. The idealist can not reach a compromise with the other side, cut a deal with his enemies or work with those disagree with him because that would be betraying the cause.
Worse, the idealist is free to engage in back-stabbing and betrayal to achieve his goals. The idealist is free to lie, cheat, steal and betray to achieve his goals. He can break any treaty or violate any deal.
Behind the recipe for violence and oppression inherent in idealism there is the rejection of humanity. The idealist has to reject the rest of humanity and everyday life for they don't live up to the ideal. The idealist must reject or criticize all that doesn't meet his or her ideal because it is flawed and imperfect.
The idealist thus must become an arrogant elitist living outside of society passing judgement on everybody and everything. Yet, because the idealist has idealism, he himself is not open to criticism. Anybody who criticizes the idealist and his ideals is automatically the enemy and must be treated accordingly.
Since reality almost never lives up to ideals the idealist is left with a few choices. The first and best choice is to reject idealism and adopt a sensible and pragmatic view of the world. To learn to accept and work with those who don't share his beliefs, to tolerate imperfection and accept limited progress. To abandon those views that don't work.
The second is to try and force reality to conform to the ideal. Usually this involves violence such as attempts to kill those who stand in the way of the ideal. To destroy everything that doesn't conform to the ideal. To restructure society to fit the ideal and bulldoze everything that stands in the way of the ideal.
The third is to retreat into a dream world, to pretend that the ideal is becoming real and ignore anybody or anything that says otherwise. The idealist thus surrounds himself with people, books, media and documents that tell him that the ideal is real and dismiss every other point of view. The idealist ends up living in Cloud Cucko's Land where his point of view is the only reality and any other view is heresy punishable by death.
The fourth way the idealist copes with reality is through demonization. The idealist goes out and finds some group to blame for the failure of the ideal: Jews, Communists, blacks, capitalists, Fox News, CNN, liberal media, conservatives, anybody who doesn't conform to the ideal will do. The idealist then blames all of the world's problems on this enemy and fights them. Any failure of the ideal system is the fault of the enemy not of the ideal's shortcomings.
This method of thinking makes any crime committed against the enemy justifiable and even good. When the idealist kills, tortures, imprisons or oppresses the enemy he is simply protecting the ideal.
The fifth way the idealist responds to reality is to turn to religion or some other form of mysticism. The idealist simply trades God for the ideal and starts believing in Heaven after death than here in Earth. Naturally, a great many idealists end up as religious fanatics.
Finally, idealism is a bleak viewpoint, in which happiness or enjoyment of life is impossible. The idealist can't sit back and enjoy life as long as the ideal is not achieved. Since the ideal can never be achieved, the idealist must spend his or life struggling and working to achieve it.
The idealist must be miserable and he must work to make everybody else miserable. People only adopt idealism when they are unhappy and discontented. Therefore the idealist must work to make others unhappy and discontented. He must portray the world as a terrible and ugly place. He must portray evil as evil or unhappy. He must portray all basic institutions as fundamentally corrupt.
The idealist must adopt a dark and negative view of the world and force that view upon everybody else. The idealists' world must be filled with enemies, and it must be corrupt, violent, and filled with ignorance and poverty.
To make matters worse there can be no creativity in such a world, nothing new or better. Since the idealist has all the answers, there is no need for innovation or ingenuity. No need for new art, science, technology or ideals. No reason to improve on anything because the ideal is already here.
Of course in the world of the idealist, imagination is a crime. To imagine anything better or different is to reject the ideal. To think that there might be anything beyond the deal is the ultimate heresy to the idealist. Any attempt to suggest that there might be a better way of doing things is wrong.
Since I don't want to live in a dark and ugly world filled with enemies, a world lacking in creativity and imagination, and since I don't want to be miserable or force my misery upon others. I can't be an idealist.
More importantly, I don't have all the answers. Since I don't have all the answers, I'm open to new ideas and the viewpoints of others. The idealist never can be. I can change my mind and more importantly, when something new and good comes along I'll be open to it. The idealist never will be.
Therefore I'm not an idealist because I want to be happy.

capitalism in iraq
Capitalism: America's Secret Weapon in Iraq??
By Daniel G. Jennings
The secret weapon that will ensure America's success in Iraq is one that the leftists in the media can't see or appreciate because of their biased world view: capitalism. By applying capitalist principals in Iraq, America is ensuring that nation's future and the success of our rebuilding efforts.
America has privatized Iraq's economy, the totalitarian controls Saddam Hussein imposed on Iraq's economy have been abolished. Iraqis are now free to trade, set up businesses, work for themselves, loan money, etc. Already large numbers of Iraqis have started businesses, vast amounts of consumer goods have been imported. Even though Iraq's oil isn't flowing, Iraq's economy is booming.
Naturally this won't appear in our media, an Iraqi bringing a truckload of refrigerators in from Jordan or Kuwait and selling them in Bagdad isn't a sexy story that will make the top of the hour on CNN or Fox. A fanatic driving a car full of dynamite into an embassy and trying to blow it up is a dramatic story that will appear on the news.
The prosperity and freedom that a successful capitalist economy will bring will do more to stabilize Iraq than all the guns and soldiers in the world. Prosperous societies don't breed terrorism, violence and civil war. Poor countries with command economies are breeding grounds for violence because people in such places have no hope for the future.
This isn't fantasy, capitalism has turned other poor and violent nations into peaceful and prosperous ones. Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, Greece, Chile, Malaysia and Hong Kong were once as poor and as violent as Iraq is today. Today those nations are all peaceful and prosperous because of successful capitalist policies adopted by their governments.
If the US takes the Hong Kong route in Iraq, sets up a free market economy and abolishes most economic controls the result will be a massive economic boom. The Iraqi people are among the most creative in the world, after all their invented civilization, agriculture and free markets in the first place.
Iraq's Arab and Islamic culture is particularly well suited for capitalism. The Arabs were among history's greatest traders, in Medieval Times they built a network of trade that spanned the globe while most Europeans were still living in huts with mud floors and practicing subsistence agriculture.
If Arab and Islamic traditions can be channeled into free enterprise we could see something wonderful in Iraq. If we play our cards right Iraq could become the economic center of the Middle East and the lynchpin of economic modernization in the region.
The success of American-style capitalism in Iraq will serve as an example to the rest of the Middle East. The example of a free and prosperous Iraq will force neighboring countries to adopt capitalist policies and abolish socialism. The Islamic extremists in Iran, the fascists in Syria and the old time monarchies in Saudi Arabia and Jordan will be forced to join the 21st century whether they like it or not.
A similar development has already occurred in Asia. The success of the dragon economies in Asia: Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong convinced the Chinese government to scrap Communism and adopt capitalism. This led to one of the greatest economic booms in history and made China, once a threat to world peace into a member of the global community.
The lack of international "help" could be a boon to efforts to build capitalism in Iraq. The UN with its legions of European and third world bureaucrats who still believe in socialism and the command economy would stifle efforts at development and build a massive bureaucracy that would keep Iraq poor. International aid agencies which are in the business of giving handouts to the poor, do little or nothing to help the poor out of poverty and often strip people of whatever dignity they have left, have had a poor history of rebuilding nations. Most of the nations getting such aid are just as poor as they were before the international aid workers went to work.
By using the power of capitalism to rebuild Iraq, America can prove the socialists wrong and turn a poor and troubled land into a peaceful and prosperous one. More importantly we can show the people of the Middle East and the Islamic world how to modernize their countries without sacrificing their traditions and faith.

Quenton Tarantino Strikes Again!!
Capsule Movie Review: Kill Bill
By Daniel G. Jennings
The fourth film from Hollywood's mad genius Quenton Tarantino actually lives up to the hype. Quite simply this is the best movie that I've seen in years.
A violent over the top action film with a wry sense of humor that's entertaining, exciting, thrilling and funny at the same time. Like all good action films, Kill Bill is a thrill ride, but it's one we want to get on.
Like all action movies, Kill Bill is a comic bookish fantasy but one that works because Tarantino succeeds in putting all the best elements of modern cutting edge comic books into the film. More importantly Tarantino understands that comic books and movies are supposed to be entertainment, so he concentrates on making an entertainment. Kill Bill is an Entertainment with a capital E and one that works. There's nothing pretentious about this movie, Tarantino isn't trying to make a great statement here. He's simply trying to entertain us, which of course is a radical departure from the direction of modern Hollywood.
Tarantino is a good enough filmmaker to ensure that everything in the movie works. In particular the fight scenes, the climatic sword fight between Uma Thurman and the Japanese Mafia is absolutely incredible. Stuff that shouldn't work such as lots of flash backs and a sequence of animation also work and make sense. As do plenty of pop culture references.
Finally there's Uma Thurman who gives what maybe the performance of the year as the Bride a female assassin out for revenge on her former comrades. Instead of going over the top, Thurman brings quiet dignity and even grace to this role. Her low-key almost deadpan performance makes the character work. Uma is truly frightening as a steely-eyed killer who enjoys her work. Her character is so disciplined and serious that she can only express herself through violence. Yet she seems to enjoy the mayhem and even effects a smirk. A very quirky sense of humor comes across. Thurman grounds the movie and brings a sense of humanity to it. My prediction Uma will get the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress, and will receive an Oscar nomination for best actress in an action movie.
This movie isn't for everybody, action movie fans and younger viewers will love it. There is some graphic violence here, but it's not as bloody or as violent as some commentators make it out to be. Still, I wouldn't take a kid to it.

China in Space
Will China Conquer Space??
By Daniel G. Jennings
The history books of the future may not name America or Russia as the nation that led humanity into space, colonized the moon and set foot on Mars. Instead they may give that honor to a country that hasn't even put an astronaut into orbit yet: China.
Although the America media has largely ignored it, the People's Republic of China has been getting real serious about space exploration lately. In November, the Chinese successfully tested the Shenzhou (sacred vessel) a space capsule capable of carrying people into space. China plans to send its first two taikonauts (Chinese astronauts) into orbit sometime within the next week. Several Chinese fighter pilots have trained to become taikonauts in Russia. The budget for China's space program is growing while ours is shrinking.
China's long term plans in space go far beyond orbiting satellites and putting men in orbit. The Chinese are thinking of landing people on the moon, mining it for resources and setting up space ports for journeys farther out into the Solar System. And these aren't flights of fancy being pondered by geeky science fiction fans. An important Chinese official Zhuang Fenggan, a rocket scientist and Vice Chairman of his nation's Association of Sciences told the Associated Press that he thinks the moon could be mined for fluids that could generate electricity on Earth.
Now many people will scoff at this claim. After all China's space program is forty years behind Russian and American efforts. China is testing space capsules similar to those used by John Glenn and Yuri Gregorian. These scoffers are ignoring history and an important advantage that the Chinese space program has: China is poor and desperate.
China's space program may succeed because China is still a poor and desperate nation with limited resources. Although China's economy is growing fast, the Middle Kingdom is still a third world nation in many ways. Many of its people are still poor and living in almost Medieval conditions and China simply lacks the wealth and resources to lift them out of that poverty. China lacks the military might and sophisticated technology to seize those resources here on Earth. China's army with its 1950s weapons and tactics is incapable of projecting its power beyond its borders. How is a nation that can't conquer Taiwan supposed to stand up to American military might?
In other words, China will expand into space because it has nowhere else to go. With a billion mouths to feed, and increasingly, a billion citizens demanding the kind of middle class lifestyle Americans enjoy. The Chinese may have to develop space just to survive.
China will also turn to space because space is a frontier and China needs a frontier, America doesn't. It is people with nothing to loose, persons without hope or opportunity the poor and the desperate who head to frontiers, not the comfortable and contented. China has hundreds of millions of poor and desperate people to populate a new frontier.
It's hard to imagine Americans abandoning their comfortable middle class lifestyle, their cars, houses in the suburbs and home entertainment centers for a tiny cubicle in a box on the moon. It's easy to imagine a Chinese peasant trading his or her hovel in a poor village and exciting career prospects in the rice paddies for an opportunity, no matter how slight, of striking it rich on the moon or Mars.
History proves this in the early 15th Century, the richest nation in the world, Imperial China, sent out seven huge voyages of exploration. Massive well equipped fleets with dozens of ships and thousands of men. These ships explored the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean sailing all the way to Mecca and they weren't followed up by Chinese Conquest and colonization because the Chinese had no reason to do so. In the 15th Century Imperial China was the richest and most content nation in the world - like the USA today - it had no need of bold adventures to gain colonies or markets.
On the other hand, just a few decades later when small poor European nations like Portugal, Spain, England and the Dutch Republic began voyages of exploration and learned of vast new territories overseas they quickly followed up the discoveries with conquest and colonization. Less than thirty years after Columbus set foot in the Caribbean, Cortez was raising the Spanish flag over the ruins over the ruins of the Aztec capitol.
In the 16th Century Spain, Portugal, England and the Dutch Republic were poor, they were small and they were over populated. They needed the resources their soldiers could capture in the new lands, the goods and money their traders could bring back, the new products and the new lands for their people to conquer and settle. China, today, like the European powers at the beginning of the 16th Century needs the things it can find in space, new worlds to conquer, new lands to settle, new resources to exploit. America thinks it has everything it needs here on Earth, just as the Ming Dynasty thought it had everything it needed within the borders of the Middle Kingdom.
The Europeans were able to use the new resources they found in distant lands to totally transform Europe from something of a backwater to the most advanced civilization on Earth. It was the Dutch Republic which was willing to undertake ambitious long range trading ventures, where free enterprise, free speech and representative government began in the 16th and 17th centuries. Britain, which embarked on the boldest voyages of exploration in the 18th century, was the cradle of the Industrial Revolution which transformed the world beyond recognition. Meanwhile China had become one of the poorest and most backward nations on Earth by the beginning of the 20th Century. Having lost whatever technological and scientific prowess it once had.
By acting like Imperial China and ignoring important new frontiers, the United States could end up just like the Imperial China. A poor backwater at the mercy of the descendants of those willing to take the risks of going to a new frontier and conquer it. A little over four hundred years after the budget cutting Ming Dynasty bureaucrats ended China's program of exploration because it was a waste of the taxpayer's money. British and French soldiers were marching through the streets of China's capitol Beijing and burning the Imperial Palace during the Second Opium War, because there was nothing China's army could do to overcome the new military technology the Europeans were using. That's something we Americans ought to think about.
The history books of the future may teach us that space - like any other frontier - belongs not to those with the best technology or science, but those desperate enough to take the risks required to conquer that frontier. At the present moment it seems that China is the only nation desperate enough to take those risks.

Communism
Vietnam: the Left's Pyrrhic Victory
By Daniel G. Jennings
There is a joke that history likes to play on the mighty, it's called a "Pyrrhic Victory"- a victory that is so costly to the winners that it is just as bad or worse than a defeat. A prime example of a Pyrrhic Victory in modern times was the Vietnam War.
Although the Communists and their leftist allies in the US and Western Europe won in Vietnam, their limited victory in one tiny corner of the world laid the groundwork for their inevitable world wide defeat. Instead of the start of the inevitable victory of socialism, the war in Vietnam turned out to be the beginning of the end for the Communist empire.
The victory in Vietnam encouraged the Soviet Union to embark upon a program of expansion by sponsoring wars of liberation (in reality Communist thuggery) around the world. In many cases the Communists won. The result was not a mighty Communist empire but a collection of weak and impoverished puppet states the Soviets had to prop up with aid and resources. In many cases the Soviets ended up buying food from the United States and shipping it to their allies in the third world.
The attempt at world domination through revolution helped bankrupt the Soviet Union and bring about its downfall.
The debacle in Vietnam prompted the US to reorganize and reform its military forces. The draft was phased out and a new professional military with far higher standards of training and professionalism created. New weapons technologies were developed and adopted and new strategies devised. The Vietnam War actually made the United States stronger militarily and laid the ground work for the powerful military forces that dominate the world today. By the mid 1980s, the US military was so far ahead of the Soviets militarily that the Russian military leaders agreed to Gorbachev's reforms because they hoped greater freedom would lead to technological advances.
At the same time, the lessons the Communists learned from the Vietnam War weakened them militarily. The Communists came out of Vietnam believing that they could win through people's war, that they didn't need powerful new technologies. That their military forces and cause were so morally superior that no enemy could stand up to them. The result was the catastrophe in Afghanistan, where a poorly prepared Red Army couldn't contain a small force of poorly armed and poorly organized guerrillas.
The American left, rightly viewed the disaster in Vietnam as its handiwork and wrongly viewed defeat in Southeast Asia as a tremendous victory. The victory in Vietnam cost the American left most of its power and influence and virtually all of its popularity.
Until Vietnam, the left enjoyed quite a bit of popularity in the United States. Many average Americans viewed the left in a positive light because of the New Deal and the Civil Rights movements. Americans liked the left because they viewed it as American and patriotic. The protests against the Vietnam War changed all that.
The sights of protestors burning the flag and calling US soldiers baby killers and leftist leaders bad mouthing America while praising Communism turned average Americans off to the left. Americans who formerly thought leftists cared about them came to view leftists as arrogant, self righteous and hypocritical elitists. Americans began to view the left as an alien force out to destroy their way of life.
The victory in Vietnam made the left completely arrogant and blind to its own weakness. After 1975, leftist intellectuals in the media, the entertainment industry and academia deluded themselves into thinking they ran the country and began to behave accordingly. They began telling the rest of us what to think, how to live and what to believe. They began trying to force all of their screwy beliefs and values down America's throat.
The result was that the public was turned off completely and stopped listening to these people. Even as their stature increased, the actual power of the left was diminished. Within five years of the victory in Vietnam, the American people having had their fill of the leftist elite elected Ronald Reagan President. They began seeking alternative media to watch, read and listen to. The public became more and more conservative. By the 1990s not even the left's sacred cows like welfare were safe from the growing conservative revolution. The last Democratic President, Bill Clinton, won two elections not by tilting to the left but by ignoring the left and parading his credentials as a centrist through the streets.
Now nearly thirty years after their victory in Vietnam, both Communism and the American left are sorry shadows of what they once were. Only a few Communist states remain and of those only two still utilize Communist economics(North Korea and Cuba), even Vietnam has adopted a watered down version of capitalism. The American left finds itself confined to a few urban areas and university campuses and the entertainment industry. Its influence on national policy is non existent. Despite large scale peace protests and a torrent of peace propaganda, President Bush was able to carry out the most aggressive American military adventures since World War II and win popular backing for them.
Vietnam then wasn't the left's finest hour. It was the left's greatest and most destructive defeat. A defeat from which both Communism and the left may never recover.