May the Atlantic staff move to Wuhan.
Permanently.
No loss, and we’d have no regrets.
Beinart’s labored concern:
But a cold war with China threatens more than American competitiveness. It threatens American liberty. At the dawn of the Cold War with the Soviet Union, Harry Truman created the Federal Employee Loyalty Program, which authorized the FBI to expel leftists from the federal bureaucracy. Later that year, his attorney general published a list of “subversive” organizations, forcing many of them to close, and the FBI began deporting politically suspect immigrants.
Another cold war could again threaten the rights of Americans suspected of sympathy for the enemy. Except that this time, the victims will likely be of Chinese descent. From the 1885 massacre of Chinese railroad workers at Rock Springs, Wyoming, to the Japanese internment during World War II to the murder of Vincent Chin by a laid-off autoworker during the panic over Japanese economic competition in the 1980s, the United States has a long history of anti-Asian bigotry, especially during periods of conflict with Asian governments.