|
My
Daughter, and Tibet, China and the Neocons
DIGG THIS
My daughter
Hannah will soon receive her Ph.D. in neuroscience from a prestigious
graduate school on the east coast. She tells me what she is working
on, but, dufus that I am on all such matters, I haven’t got the
slightest idea of what she is talking about. Something to do with
spines, or brains? Maybe lesions on the brain? Something like that.
If you
will forgive a proud poppa bragging about his baby girl, Hannah
is a real bright woman, and very hard working, too. When she was
about 2 years old, before she learned to read, she memorized entire
(kiddie) books, and tried to fool me into believing she could actually
read them (fooling her daddy was something she always took great
delight in). I knew she couldn’t read since she wasn’t word perfect.
At around this time I asked her if she wanted to invite Betty Bear
to her upcoming birthday party. She looked at me with real scorn
and derision in her eye and said: "Betty Bear isn’t real."
I think she thought then that in the lottery of daddies, she got
a real stupid one. (I’m not sure she’s changed her mind about this
initial assessment.)
When she was
about 8 years old, she would typically walk home from school with
a book right in front of her face; she wasn’t really looking where
she was going. Needless to say, she was the valedictorian of her
high school. If memory serves, at university she received all A’s.
Or was there some one moron professor who once gave her a lower
grade? I’m not sure. (I dare not ask her; she’s a world champion
eye roller.)
In any case,
I am so delighted with her course of study, I can’t tell you. I
hope that one day she makes a real contribution to solving some
disease or other, probably having to do with the brain or spinal
chord. In this regard I once (okay, okay, more than several times)
gave her marching orders: next year she would cure cancer; the year
after, AIDS; then, she could work on MS, and after that some other
dread disease. When I first broached this subject she would roll
her eyes and say "Yes, Dad." Nowadays, she doesn’t even
roll her eyes. The other day some woman told me that her husband
was dying of cancer. I’ll be damned if I didn’t draw some small
amount of comfort from the "fact" that Hannah would soon
be curing that disease, hopefully in time to save this precious
life. Weird how the mind works, sometimes.
What oh what
does this have to do with the present brouhaha about Tibet, and
China, and the neocon present saber
rattling
about that country? I’m glad you asked me. It is this.
I was ruminating
the other day, thinking about my medical "assignments"
to Hannah. My mind, that is, what there is that is left of it, went
off in the following direction: of course, she is not going to cure
all diseases known to man. (We joke around a lot in my family; one
of the early child books we used to read at bedtime concerned the
"Clown Around" family. Well, I suppose there are worse
things than helping your kids develop a great sense of humor.) If
she has a very successful career, she may just be able to make a
small contribution to dealing with just one of them. But, suppose,
just suppose, I could have my wishes come true in this regard. What
would I really ask her to do? Well, maybe, my "assignments"
to her weren’t so off the wall after all, given her predilections.
But suppose I wanted more realism, while still being true to my
wish list ’druthers. Then, what would I ask for? Well, still, that
is not a bad set of goals. After all, who, really, opposes consigned
to the dust bin of history every disease that has ever afflicted
mankind? Not even Hitler, or Stalin, one would suppose.
But if I wanted
to be even more realistic? That is, to ask for something that could
actually come about, right now, if we were all of a mind
to achieve it? See, the problem with curing all diseases is that
it is really impossible given our present knowledge. Even
if all scientists around the world work full out on this problem,
and many of them are, they still cannot solve it. We exist in a
context of ignorance.
There is, however,
one problem that afflicts mankind pretty much on the same level
as illness: we keep killing each other, often on truly massive scales.
The latest threat in this regard, it would appear (I told
you I’d get the second point of this article) is the fact that there
is a very real danger of the U.S. bombing not Iran, but China. (Okay,
okay, both of these "evil empires.") Why China, for God’s
sake? Because they are being nasty to the Tibetans who want to secede.
Now let it
be said, loud and clear, I favor secession; heck, not only
at the national level, but also including states, cities, boroughs,
neighborhoods, families, even individuals; see here,
here
and here.
Certainly, I support the Tibetan cause. By all means, allow them
to set up their own country. And this goes for Taiwan as well. Anyone
who opposes this is certainly on the non-libertarian side of this
debate.
But the call
for a separate country of Tibet comes with particular ill grace
from the neocons, and indeed, from any American. If this attack
on China for its rejection of Tibetan (Taiwanese) separation is
to come with clean hands, we must support, domestically:
- giving
large swatches of the American southwest back to Mexico
- allowing
the confederate states to set up their own country
- rescinding
the unconstitutional Louisiana purchase
- redoing
our borders with Canada in favor of the latter; "54-40 or
fight," indeed
(Don’t
think that if we gave up all this territory, we would somehow cease
to exist. No, we could live better, and prosper to a greater degree,
under much more salutary political arrangements.)
And, on
the international scale, if we are to obviate the charge of hypocrisy,
we must favor the separation of
- the Basques
from Spain
- Chechnya
from Russia
- the Flemish
and the Walloons
- Scotland,
Northern Ireland, and Wales from the UK
 Unlike
dealing with sickness, we could, if we were so minded, at one
fell swoop, end all of man’s brutality to man. It would
not require knowledge we do not have, merely an act of will.
There are worse places to start this process than getting off China’s
back regarding Tibet (and Taiwan.) Surely, China is in the wrong
here. But the U.S. is in no position to make this case. Let us first
get our own house in order, before blundering around the globe,
setting things right everywhere else.
 The
Samuelson introductory economic text used to compare the U.S. and
the USSR economy. In the view of this pinko professor, the latter
would soon overtake the former in terms of economic development.
Nonsense on stilts, of course. However, if there were a similar
comparison made between the U.S. and China, indicating, over time,
patterns of freedom within the two respective countries, it would
indicate that the former is falling, while the latter is increasing
at a rate perhaps never before matched in all of human history.
Just a few short decades ago, the People’s Republic was wallowing
in Communism, totalitarianism, central planning and outright starvation.
Nowadays, there is a real question as to which is the freer country.
If this past pattern persists, there will soon be no doubt. So,
again, we have an anomaly: the US, bully boy to the world, where
freedom is fast disappearing, is presuming to lecture China, which
has no foreign military bases anywhere, and where
domestic freedom is wildly on the upsurge.
With the
neocons in full cry, it is possible, just possible, that Hannah
and her colleagues will cure all physical ailments before we put
a stop to the horrendous international slaughter – actual and threatened
– that now infests our species.
March
31, 2008
Dr.
Block [send him mail] is a
professor of economics at Loyola University New Orleans, and a senior
fellow of the Ludwig von Mises Institute. He is the author of Defending
the Undefendable.
Copyright
© 2008 LewRockwell.com
Walter
Block Archives
|
