"Watching both the health care and climate/energy debates in Congress, it is hard not to draw the following conclusion: There is only one thing worse than one-party autocracy, and that is one-party democracy, which is what we have in America today. One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks. But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages. That one party can just impose the politically difficult but critically important policies needed to move a society forward in the 21st century. It is not an accident that China is committed to overtaking us in electric cars, solar power, energy efficiency, batteries, nuclear power and wind power. China’s leaders understand that in a world of exploding populations and rising emerging-market middle classes, demand for clean power and energy efficiency is going to soar. Beijing wants to make sure that it owns that industry and is ordering the policies to do that, including boosting gasoline prices, from the top down. Our one-party democracy is worse...."Now you could have imagined if a conservative writer would have suggested during the Bush years that "wouldn't it be great" if we just made Bush KING!
Yet Friedman's celebrative comparison of China to all that is good is particularly offensive. Which part of that "enlightened" society does he compare? The human rights abuses, mass abortions, the taking of political prisoners.
So in Friedman's world, Obama running unfettered and unopposed would mean Nirvana, but alas he forgets that that is why the early settlers left English, the Kind and a Monarchy.
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