Category Archives: China

How The Cult of The Kid Is Making America Not Great

China, Communism, Education, Family, Morality

“How the Cult of the Kid Is Making America Not Great” is the current column, now on The Unz Review, America’s smartest webzine. An excerpt:

There were likely no kids on board EgyptAir Flight 804 that crashed into the Mediterranean Sea, on May 19. Had there been kids on board, we’d be hearing about it a LOT.

Of the 224 people on board the Russian metro jet airbus—it crashed in March—17 were children. I know this because each time TV anchors reported about the plane that went down in the Sinai desert, near El Arish (once way safer because under Israeli control); they counted the kids.

Is the death of a child more of a loss than the death of an adult? Apparently so. Adult lives matter less.

The hallmark of an infantile even immoral society is the deification of The Child. Not for nothing did the Communist slave societies place kids in control of their parents. This is how one inverts the moral order, also the aim of Communism’s leaders.

The feral kids took to killing their elders like the proverbial ducks to water. It’s all in “The Black Book of Communism: CRIMES, TERROR, REPRESSION,” published by Harvard University Press, written by the finest scholars to survive Communism. The BBOC should be compulsory reading for every Bernie Sanders supporter—for every American, once Bill O’Reilly “preps” the text for popular consumption.

Where the mini-Communists killed their Confucian-minded elders—they did so absent any remorse or angst. For kids are naturally feral and liberal. They want nothing more than more privileges, more license and lenience; fewer demands for obedience, chores and hard work. This every parent knows firsthand.

In “The Death of the Grown-Up,” author Diana West contended that “America’s arrested development is bringing down Western Civilization.” Certainly, a moral society must be a hierarchical society, one in which adults guide children until they’re capable of governing themselves.

But first, adults have to be adults. And they’re not.

Take the parent who declared, as a DRUDGE headline blared, that his “Eight-Year-Old Son’s iPad Addiction Is As Real As Alcoholism, Drug Abuse.”

The editorial so titled was published on a large website. In line with the prevailing anti-intellectual childishness, public writing has turned into public advocacy. Conjure and cultivate a malady, share it with the world, and—abracadabra!—you’re a hero. In any event, you don’t need to read this flaccid folderol to know the following:

* It’s the fault of the parent that little snot is addicted not to books or to outdoor ball games, but to gadgets.
* Who gave sonny boy the gadget? The parent did! Take the iPad away.
* Stop paying for your kids’ cell phones and assorted hand-held devices. (It costs a fortune!)

We survived without them. If the kid needs to contact crazy-in-love parent urgently, he or she can go to the principal’s office. It’ll give Kid an opportunity to practice a few civilizing skills you’ve refrained from imparting, lest manners mess with his élan: …

Read the rest. “How the Cult of the Kid Is Making America Not Great” is now on The Unz Review. “Share” and “Like” it on social media.

AND, if you’d like to feature the Unz Review’s “Paleolibertarian Perspective” on your website, please email me at ilana@ilanamercer.com.

TRUMP And TRADE

Business, China, Donald Trump, Economy, Free Markets, Trade

My 2011 “Sinophobia Trumps Common Sense,” unfairly called Donald Trump “megalomaniacal.” It fairly pointed out, however, that “Sinophobia is sanctioned among American opinion makers. The dislike for China falls within the realm of perfectly respectable economic theory.”

The business mogul is motivated by the sense that the nimbus of great power that surrounds the US is dissipating. It hasn’t occurred to him to search closer to home for the causes of America’s economic anemia—at Fanny, Freddie, and the Fed, for a start. Since Trump has no idea what’s potting, and is not eager to look in his own plate — he blames OPEC and China for the burdens of doing business in the US.

With his “Sorry Mr. Trump, the Chinese Aren’t ‘Crushing’ Us,” our friend, professor George Reisman, deconstructs the “killing us in foreign trade” Trumpism:

American job losses are not the result of freer trade and an excess of imports over exports, but of government policies that prevent capital accumulation in the United States, among them policies that limit imports. An essential part of any economic policy that would truly help to “make America great again” is to avoid preventing imports. …

… READ THE REST. “Sorry Mr. Trump, the Chinese Aren’t ‘Crushing’ Us” By George Reisman is on Real Clear Markets.

Some Highlights Of ABC GOP Debate (Other Than Megyn Kelly’s Absence)

China, Conservatism, Constitution, Donald Trump, Media, Politics, Private Property, Republicans

The ABC Republican debate in New Hampshire was not an exciting evening. Other than that Marcobot malfunctioned magnificently—and with it the folly of the Rubio press was exposed. The best part of the evening was Megyn Kelly’s absence on the panel.

Lines to remember, in sequence:

Marcobot # 1:

And let’s dispel once and for all with this fiction that Barack Obama doesn’t know what he’s doing. He knows exactly what he’s doing. Barack Obama is undertaking a systematic effort to change this country, to make America more like the rest of the world.

That’s why he passed Obamacare and the stimulus and Dodd-Frank and the deal with Iran. It is a systematic effort to change America. When I’m president of the United States, we are going to re-embrace all the things that made America the greatest nation in the world and we are going to leave our children with what they deserve: the single greatest nation in the history of the world.

Marcobot # 2:

But I would add this. Let’s dispel with this fiction that Barack Obama doesn’t know what he’s doing. He knows exactly what he’s doing. He is trying to change this country. He wants America to become more like the rest of the world. We don’t want to be like the rest of the world, we want to be the United States of America. And when I’m elected president, this will become once again, the single greatest nation in the history of the world, not the disaster Barack Obama has imposed upon us.

CHRISTIE about Marcobot:

I think he mentioned me and my record in there, so I think I get a chance to respond. You see, everybody, I want the people at home to think about this. That’s what Washington, D.C. Does. The drive-by shot at the beginning with incorrect and incomplete information and then the memorized 25-second speech that is exactly what his advisers gave him. … [Marco] gets very unruly when he gets off his talking points. …

TRUMP: [Waffles a lot before he spits out a reasonable position on North Korea.] The Chinese … They tell me. They have total, absolute control, practically, of North Korea. [L]et China solve that problem.

BUSH: More sanctions on Iran and North Korea [so that more of the people may die or fall into poverty. What’s new in Republican “thinking”?]

Kasich: “It is completely ridiculous to think we are going to go into neighborhoods, grab people out of their homes and ship people back to Mexico. That’s not where the party is. The party is not for departing 11.5 million people.”

CRUZ:[About that wall] I’ve got somebody in mind to build it.

we’re going to build a wall. We’re going to triple the border patrol. We’re going to increase — and actually, since Donald enjoyed that, I will simply say, I’ve got somebody in mind to build it.

We’re going to increase four-fold, the fixed-wing and rotary-wing aircraft, so that you have technology monitoring an attempted incursion to direct the boots on the ground where they’re occurring. We’re going to put in place a strong e-verify system in the workplace, so you can’t get a job without proving you are here legally.

We’ll put in place a biometric exit-entry system on visas, because 40 percent of illegal immigration comes not over the border illegally, but people coming on visas and overstaying.

We will end sanctuary cities by cutting off taxpayer dollars to any jurisdiction that defies federal immigration law.

MARCOBOT: Like Kasich, he supports what his large donors call “a very reasonable, but responsible approach to people that have been here a long time, who are not dangerous criminals, who pay taxes and pay fines for what they did.”

TRUMP ON HEALTHCARE: “The insurance companies are getting rich on Obamacare. The insurance companies are getting rich on health care and health services and everything having to do with health. We are going to end that. … We’re going to take out the artificial boundaries, the artificial lines. We’re going to get a plan where people compete, free enterprise. They compete. So much better.

As for Trump on eminent domain. His only reasonable defense (which he doesn’t put forward because he’s not surrounding himself with the smartest people) is that “the Con-stitution” gives government the power to confiscate. It’s wrong. And the Con-stitution is wrong to do it:

The Constitution gives authorities the right to seize private property for the “common good—that catch-all constitutional concept. READ “The Con-stitution And The Power To Confiscate.”

Why we’re glad circus girl was not on stage:

(Thanks, Washington Post, for providing a transcript of the GOP debate, Feb. 6, for those of us who still favor the written word.)

Halloween Candy: When Made In China Is Magnificent

China, Ilana Mercer, Regulation, Trade

Sometimes the nastiest, unhealthiest Chinese candy, just shy of toxic, is what the doctor ordered. It’s what this household seeks out every Halloween. Candy too nasty for adults to consume is still legal at Fred Meyer, that great American supermarket.

If it’s in the house, chocolate fiends like myself will consume bad chocolate like Kit Kat or Hershey’s. So for Halloween, we look to China. The kids love the body parts candy on offer. None has yet to die.

The Freaky Fingers purple and green, for example, contain sugar, corn syrup, Sorbitol, gelatin, corn starch, malic acid, pectin, artificial preservatives like Potassium sorbate, and artificial colorants like Red, Blue, Yellow 5 and 6. Candy that’s just dandy for kids.

We’re up front about what we offer, thanks to explicit labeling that includes a “Chocking Hazard” alert on the wrappers.

In the case of Halloween candy, made-in-china is magnificent, so no tariffs on bad candy form China, Donald Trump.

Just as I was setting the stuff out, I heard one of Fox News’ female fascist “experts” advise parents to call the … cops if they spot untoward candy, presumably like the stuff our household puts out.

And we call China a police state.

Anyhoooo, as The Simpsons’ Mr. Barnes would say, there are leftovers, if you’d like some for your kid. The candy only expires in May of 2016.