Why America Must Learn to Bow (You won't believe it!)

The Daily Beast ^ | November 21, 2009 | Martin Jacques

[HiTech RedNeck]

He’s proud of his faux humility. It isn’t humility to suck up to all and sundry in fallacious ways.

[henbane]

The starting point for a new American strategy toward China must be intellectual humility. . . .

A pompous and arrogant call for America's self-humiliation by a demonic little Marxist wanker.

[highlander_UW]

If Zero gets his way, then certainly the U.S. will enter a protracted period of decline - but since we’re unlikely to catch up with Europe on that score, I don’t really get what reason Jacques has to be giddy.

To be honest, given the damage the dems are doing to the nation's economy, I really don't think the US will survive as a single entity. They appear to be implementing the Cloward and Piven strategy, which is designed to crash the economy so they can be in control of the "restart" and shape the nation to their view. The blind spot in such a strategy is that it fails to take into account a balkanization of the nation. Some states will likely try to jump off the sinking ship.

[denydenydeny]

It surprises me not at all that a Brit would know all about national decline and project it onto other countries.

[RC one]

I think that so long as we retain our bill of rights (as in all of it), we need not bow to any foreign power(s). We are free men and we are heavily armed and we can always renege should our “partnership” with China become one of master and slave.

[ketelone]

Yes, I can see he’s British. Well, being a marxist apologist from a nation which lost its empire 60 years ago, and is regarded today as a third rate power worldwide, Jacques must be luxuriating in the idea of a China which is more powerful than the US.

Well, I have only this to say: NUTS!

Martin, America has not even begun to fight yet. And we wont let any Chinaman rule the world, your wet dreams notwithstanding. One bad president, thats a setback. But you cant fool an entire nation forever.

[thecabal]

I’m sure this Brit Fabian Socialist has our best interests at heart.

[paulycy]

Learn to bow? Well, practice makes perfect...

[Don Joe]

Y'know, I wouldn't mind at all if it was a mutual bow -- two equals (i.e., heads of state) graciously demonstrating mutual respect and courtesy to each other.

But, that's not exactly what our madrassa-trained ruler instinctively does, is it? He seems to reflexively -- instinctively -- kowtow to perceived authority symbols.

So, what could have been a symbol of mutual respect, turns into a bit of humiliation on a national level.

[paulycy]

Y'know, I wouldn't mind at all if it was a mutual bow -- two equals

Agreed. The one-sided weakness is humiliating, but mostly for zer0. I don't think *anybody* thinks that "America" is bowing... The One has made everything about himself too much for anybody to think that. This is his own self-destruction.

[livius]

To give one example, the role of the state is highly circumscribed and viewed with inherent suspicion by American society; in China the opposite is the case, not just in the communist period but over many centuries, with no obvious boundaries to its power and the state enjoying remarkable legitimacy and deference (even though not a single vote is cast).

That deference is actually called "fear," Jacques. And it hasn't enjoyed legitimacy, which was precisely why it was possible for Mao to stir up a revolution. Granted, what he put into place was a tyranny even more draconian and far-reaching than that of the emperors of the past. The Chinese people have accepted both forms of tyranny because they had no choice.

We have here another example of a clueless liberal rejecting natural law and the rights of man.

[mware]

....meanwhile in Afghanistan, it was just reported that four Americans were killed. Three on Sunday, one this morning.

I wonder how many holes of golf Obama got in while our men and women are bleeding out.

[hershey]

Drivel.

[Cringing Negativism Network]

“The U.S. also faces another problem, in truth a far bigger one. It does not understand China. Ever since the Nixon-Mao rapprochement, it has operated on the assumption that China will in time end up like the United States, that it would become another Western-style society. It will not. “

-

The author hits the nail on the head.

We are FOOLS to allow our industrial base to be exported to China.

The result will not be China becoming like America.

The result will not be some magical embrace of freedom.

The result will be exactly what is happening now: American joblessness. American decline. America losing our ability to make things, to invent things.

Worst of all, the end result is an increasing number of unemployed, no-skill Americans whose jobs have been outsourced - VOTE FOR SOCIALISTS.

So called “free trade” is destroying America.

Right before our eyes.

[dennisw]

marxist ball gargler.....with a Chinese boyfriend that gives it to him up the __________

[Jack Hammer]

Open butt, insert head.

‘...writes a regular column for The Guardian...’ says it all.

[victim soul]

Time to read Malcolm Muggeridge who once wrote for The Guardian.

Here’s a atarter

http://www.heritage.org/research/politicalphilosophy/hl229.cfm

[beachn4fun]

I think it’s too soon to count us out.

[Billthedrill]

While the Chinese have been developing and elaborating their strategy of transformation for over three decades with great skill and patience, the Americans have never seriously entertained the scenario of decline they now find themselves in.

This is simply false. Authors such as Jacques imagine that they understand the United States from stereotype and the rest of the world from actual knowledge. Neither is true.

American foreign policy has been structured around the concept of a fading prominence since Woodrow Wilson, and not always very successfully. The notion that a set of international rules may be set up under which there is no one vying for dominance is one of which Marxist and other internationalist (and Wilson was certainly that) thinkers are inordinately fond. It runs entirely contrary to actual experience in that field and has found its final, grotesque parody in the United Nations, which organization's members can agree only on one thing - opposition to the United States. This isn't due to any hegemonic abuse on the part of the U.S. (although that too is a largely unexamined tenet of the Left) but simply because were the United States not to exist they'd have had to make one up or the organization would be too obviously without a purpose.

The Chinese have this in common with the Saudis and other Middle East potentates - they have manufactured something for which the U.S. public is willing to part with a nearly unbelievable level of wealth. Both are riding high in terms of international influence because of it. What either does with it will demonstrate both its planners' worth and the abilities of the respective governments to execute those plans. Neither is complete enough at the moment to judge.

Nor is a decline in international prominence necessarily a determinative factor in evincing humility, unless one considers the likes of Vladimir Putin to be humble. Best of luck fitting that one into the overall "inevitability of history" narrative.

[skimbell]

Guy’s name ought to be...Obowma.