RE: Lies, Damned Lies, and the Chinese Media
Funny thing is, the muck that populate the land mass that is designated "China" can't even be called "Chinese," since they have no connection to their past, thanks to Mao's "cultural revolution." They may be genetic Hans, but the muck have no historical, cultural, or social ties to their supposed forebears; the illiterates can't even read their own history because their current logograph has been significantly altered by their foreign Marxist occupiers. The modern "Chinese" are quite similar to the modern Western humanist; both attempt to construct a cultural identity while jettisoning the central elements and values within their sociocultural matrix.
Why do you consider "democracy" as a political ideal towards which humans ought to strive? Plato called democracy the worst form of government. The US rebels, after seceding from His Majesty's government, encoded within their legal and political institutions obsticles towards democracy and populism. The idea that a mob of ill-educated, over-emotional rabble is given the authority to determine the fate of a community, society, or nation ought to terrify any sensible man.
I wish I could give a longer reply to this thought-provoking comment, but ever since Hardfuck 20 and the advent of RC's, I'm rather verbally poor. This post itself dropped my RC's from 100% to 21%
Literal democracy, absolute democracy if you prefer, has never worked. The Founding Fathers were quoted saying "there has never been a democracy that didn't commit suicide." Winston Churchill went on record saying "the best argument against Democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter." I acknowledged this in the article when I said "Democracy's Achilles' Heel has always been that it only works if the People are sensible and informed, and the day has come when that condition is no longer met." However, I believe it was also Churchill who said "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others."
See, I'm using the term "democracy" in a very general sense here, mostly for lack of any other commonly recognizable term to use. I'm speaking of the ideal that an individual's rights are more critical than the power of a supposedly benevolent central authority, because without that, without the institutional supremacy of the individual's rights over the "Common Good," then whoever winds up with the power to define "the Common Good" has unchecked authority.
Deities notwithstanding (yes, I am of a religious inclination myself, Christian to be precise), I am staunchly opposed to the idea of anyone having unchecked authority, and this Chinese notion of unchecked authority extending even as far as authority over thought, absolutely repulses me.
So when I speak of "democracy," it can basically be interpreted as "ironclad systemic prohibition on unchecked authority by virtue of enshrining individual rights above the will of the mass."
If one were inclined toward semantics they could poetically point out that this is actually the polar opposite of Democracy and is in fact a society where everyone is a dictator, but I haven't the RC's for such a debate.