Academic

HEH: Thomas Friedman, For One, Welcomes Our New Chinese Creditor Overlords. ?Because not only does?

By Glenn Reynolds

HEH: Thomas Friedman, For One, Welcomes Our New Chinese Creditor Overlords. “Because not only does China finance our deficit, it sets an Example of Governance and Shows Our Decadent Democracy the Enlightened Autocratic Way. In Friedman’s hands, China is, dare one say it, nearly a City on a Hill. This is quite an op-ed, even for Thomas Friedman and even by the historical apologetics of the New York Times. . . . Let me just say for the record that this is a monstrous column. When faced with American public defection from elite preferences outcomes on certain policy issues that involve many difficult tradeoffs of the kind that democracies, with much jostling and argument, are supposed to work out among many different groups, Friedman extols the example of … China’s political system, because it’s both enlightened and autocratic? Who among us knew?” Our political class — which emphatically includes the NYT punditocracy — is far more interested in its own power and position than in anything so trivial as democracy.

UPDATE: Friedman’s cheerleading for China comes one week after dissident Xie Changfa was sentenced to 13 years for trying to organize a political meeting.

Full post as published by Instapundit.com on September 09, 2009 (boomark / email).