Thomas Friedman, liberal columnist for the New York Times, wrote a sassy number comparing Chinese Autocracy to American Democracy.http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/22/opinion/22friedman.html. In his foreign policy level analysis, Friedman spotlights China’s “impressive growth engine” in order to “light a spark under America,” as stated in the article. So, let’s look at his idea realistically.
While Americans in office do tend to mutually disagree on steps being taken to aid global warming, the health care bill, and the ending of the war on terror, we have one thing that China is seemingly lacking; something that Friedman fails to acknowledge: freedom of speech, press, things like the Internet (his job security).
“The Chinese system is autocratic, which requires liberty. Yet China also has regular rotations of power at the top and a strong record of promoting on merit,” as stated in the article. All of our money is spread out between other countries, we are in a huge deficit, we can’t handle switching government officials as often as China, that would make us a weaker link.
“(America’s corrupted political class is) more interested in defeating each other than saving the country,” as stated in the article.
We need to focus on getting other countries stabilized before we think about changing everything up. If politicians are looking for anything, it’s stability, which is exactly what Americans need.
