Posted on 04/27/2010 6:52:16 AM PDT by Willie Green
"Thank you, Hu Jintao, and thank you, China," said Hugo Chavez, as he announced a $20 billion loan from Beijing, to be repaid in Venezuelan oil.
The Chinese just threw Chavez a life preserver. For Venezuela is reeling from 25 percent inflation, government-induced blackouts to cope with energy shortages and an economy that shrank by 3.3 percent in 2009.
Where did China get that $20 billion? From us. From consumers at Wal-Mart. That $20 billion is 1 percent of the $2 trillion in trade surpluses Beijing has run up with the United States over two decades.
Beijing is using its trillions of dollars in reserves, piled up from exports to America, to cut deals to lock up strategic resources for the coming struggle with the United States for hegemony in Asia and the world.
She has struck multibillion-dollar deals with Sudan, Brazil, Kazakhstan, Russia, Iran and Australia to secure a steady supply of oil, gas and vital minerals to maintain the 10-12 percent annual growth China has been racking up since Deng Xiaoping dispensed with Maoism and set his nation out on the capitalist road.
China has dozens of nuclear power plants under construction, has completed the Three Gorges Dam -- the largest power source on earth -- and is tying the nation together with light rail, bullet trains and highways in infrastructure projects unlike any the world has ever seen.
Contrast what China is doing with what we are about. We have declared vast regions of our country, onshore and offshore, off-limits to drilling for oil and gas. We have not built a nuclear power plant in 30 years or a refinery in 25 years. We have declared war on fossil fuels to save the planet from global warming.
Given the power of the environmental lobby to tie up projects in endless litigation, we could never today build our Interstate Highway System, Hoover Dam, the Tennessee Valley Authority or the Union Pacific Railroad.
Determined to take America's title as the world's first manufacturing nation, as she has taken Germany's title as the world's leading exporter, China keeps her currency undervalued and demands of those who sell to China that they also produce in China. As America's share of the world economy steadily falls, China's share has doubled. This year, China will overtake Japan as the world's second-largest economy.
Having seen the Soviet Union disintegrate into 15 nations and fearing the ethno-nationalism of Tibetans and Uighurs, Beijing floods her border provinces with Han Chinese. America, declaring racial, ethnic and religious diversity a strength, invites the world to come and swamp its native-born. And mostly poor, unskilled and uneducated, they are coming by the millions.
China puts savings ahead of spending, production ahead of consumption, manufacturing ahead of finance. Embracing free trade, Americans declare that it makes no difference who produces what, where. What's good for the global economy is good for America.
Before the financial collapse, the U.S. savings rate stood at zero percent of family income. In China, it ranged between 35 percent and 50 percent.
Since the Cold War, the United States has been playing empire -- intervening to punish evil-doers and advance democracy in Panama, Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, Kuwait, Iraq and Afghanistan.
We have expanded NATO to include Eastern Europe, the Baltic States and much of the Balkan Peninsula. We have not let a single alliance lapse from the Cold War. And we have fewer friends and more adversaries than at the end of the Cold War. What has all this intervention availed us?
China, having fought no one, has rapidly built up her military power and developed ties to the growing number of nations at odds with America, from Russia to Iran to Sudan to Venezuela.
The Chinese of 2010 call to mind 19th century Americans who shoved aside Mexicans, Indians and Spanish to populate a continent, build a mighty nation, challenge the British Empire -- superpower of the day -- and swiftly move past her in manufacturing to become first nation on earth. Men were as awed by America then as they are by China today.
America seems a declining superpower. She cannot defend her borders, balance her budgets or win her wars. Her educational system at the primary and secondary level is a shambles. In the first decade of the century, she lost one of every three manufacturing jobs. In this second decade, she is looking at trillion-dollar deficits to 2020. The world is losing confidence in her ability to manage her surging national debt.
While we are finally extricating ourselves after seven years from an unnecessary war in Iraq, we are heading deeper into an Afghan war that has lasted a decade, the end of which it is impossible to see.
During the Cold War, China was in the grip of a millenarian ideology that blinded her to her true interests. Today, it is we who are captive to a utopian ideology that is becoming perilous to the republic.
Buchanan-Palin in '12
Go Pat Go!!!
I kind of like that Chinese kid. Reminds me of us when we were younger.
Did you grow up in a commune or a sweat shop?
It is a stage an economy needs to go through. We went through it 100 years ago. Now we are squandering the benefits our ancestors sacrificed so much to give us.
There goes Pat, cheering on Han Chinese racialism. What a shock.
Yeah, Willie, you like Pat because he’d make the trains run on time.
Shoved aside Indians, Pat? How about killed them by the millions? And broke just about every treaty signed with them in the process. If you are going to cheer on such actions, Pat, at least don't speak in euphemisms. Oh, and some spittle dropped on your jackboots.
Trying to prove that you’re flakier than Ward Churchill?
When the message can’t be refuted, the shoot the messenger crowd will show up.
I wasn't aware that the United States became great by being a fascist super-state, one in which God-given unalienable rights are ground into the dust by jackboots.
While we are finally extricating ourselves after seven years from an unnecessary war in Iraq
Pat gives Barack Obama a big smooch on the backside.
When the message can’t be refuted, the shoot the messenger crowd will show up.
Howdy snookie! It's good to see ya!!!"This is like deja vu all over again."
~ Yogi Berra
Uh, no, Willie. I simply admit that this country cleared out real estate by killing off Indians, rather than using the euphemism of pushing them aside the way that Pat does. If Pat is going to cheer on such actions, he can at least do so using honest language.
I'm with you on this. It's good to call a spade a spade.What happened was brutal but that's how empires/ great powers get built.
Backpedalling won't cover up your gaffe, dirtbag.
Your knee-jerk hatred of Buchanan exposed your multicultural marxist sympathies.
Backpedalling, Willie? It is amusing that you consider the truth to be backpedalling. We killed Indians by the millions to clear up real estate for our use, yet Pat likes to sanitize that historical truth as ‘shoving them aside’. And you in your idiotic worship of Pat can’t see that fact.
I live on land that was bought from Indians in a fair treaty. But I have also lived on land taken by blood. That was done by my ancestors (one was scalped by Indians during the Revolution), so I do understand it was war. But we shouldn't sanitize that fact. As you noted, great nations are often built on blood.
Pat Buchanan, Commie bootlicker.
We killed Indians by the millions to clear up real estate for our use,
No we didn't...
Maybe the Spanish killed millions of Indians down in Mexico or Peru or places like that...
But we didn't kill that many in what became the USA because there weren't "millions" of them living here to begin with.
Willie, it all becomes clear now. You have the liberal ability to formulate opinions without having to incorporate any messy facts.
The primitive nomadic tribes of North America didn't take a census to record their population.
And the archaeological record shows no evidence of large permanent settlements to support your "millions" figure that you pulled out of your butt.
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