Foghorn Leghorn (Rooster crowings at obfuscating liberal and media fog) on Liberals’ continuing apologies for mass murdering communism

Given the 5000-year old archaeological evidence that China is the world’s oldest continuous civilization, I did a double-take this Thursday headline in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

“Future bright as China turns 60″

It turns out that October first was the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China and, as related by Mary Brown Bullock, president emeritus of Agnes Scott College and author of the AJC column:

 ”…60 years since Mao Zedong stood on the Tienanmen Gate and proclaimed: “The people of China have stood up.”

Over the next 27 years until his death, Mao reduced the number of standing Chinese by over 45 million thru brutal political repression and starvation, i.e. mass murder, and also known in academic circles as “The Cultural Revolution.”

The second double-take occasioned by this Dead-tree Drive-by media article, was the identity of the author, about whom I have long heard high praise from ones whose opinions I value and the products of whose Decatur, Georgia academic institution are widely admired for their scholarship. Therefore, despite my misgivings about the Bullock column and its consistency with many of the liberal tendencies it seems to reflect that eventually led to my separation from the Democratic Party, I reach no conclusions as to the author’s intent; will couch my examination in the form of questions; and am simultaneously sending this column to her should she wish to respond.

I must also observe that the column superbly written; makes many important points and is obviously the product of a very learned and thoughtful expert on China. But I also observe that many of her astute observations of positive facts seem disconnected from their actual causes. Further, I do not know who decided on the headline that appeared in the AJC, so do not know if Bullock wrote or approved of same.

That said, the sentence (and paragraph) immediately following the identification of October 1, 1949 as the date marking the founding of Mao’s ”Red China” is consistent with what troubles me about the 4,940-year disconnect between history and the headline:

Recent events give the Chinese people much to celebrate, including a successful Olympics and leading a global bounce out of a devastating recession.

Bullock goes on to recount many other events, all, significantly, after Mao’s death in 1976, and never provides any causal connection between the celebratory events and Mao’s 27-year dictatorship. Nor could she. rather, it is what goes unsaid that concerns me.

Bullock is impressive in her recitation of the significant Chinese event anniversaries coinciding in A.D. 2009:

May 4th marked the 90th anniversary of student demonstrations that ushered in the Chinese enlightenment, an anniversary that evokes now-repressed Chinese liberalism. June 4th marked the 20th anniversary of the Tienanmen massacre.

“Now” repressed Chinese enlightenment? Now? Yes, as Bullock notes, the Chinese government is an “authoritarian” one that denies much free speech, especially of the political kind, but best as we can determine, there was no repression remotely equivalent to the 45 million slaughtered in China before 1949, nor since 1976. Moreover, in Olympic terms, Mao’s Red China won the Evil Empire gold medal in a runaway, with more “points” that the USSR silver medalist, Nazi (National Socialists) Bronze and even the fourth place Kymer Rouge communists combined. These atheists make all the so-called Christian Wars/mass murder look like child’s play, but I digress.

No mention of the Mao repressions in the article.

Bullock rightly cites recent liberal moves by the Chinese government to improve relations with Taiwan, but never mentions why there is a separate Chinese nation on the small island. Hint: it relates to the 45 million Chinese that Mao excluded from those that were to “stand up”. They lie in six feet under.

Bullock then cites the progress of the past 20 years:

Looking back 20 years, China has come a long way. Snubbed by most Western countries after Tienanmen, few outsiders thought the Chinese Communist Party could survive. Instead China embarked on an aggressive round of diplomacy that secured natural resources and political influence in Latin America and Africa. It has also improved its overall image in Asia and played an important role in negotiations with North Korea. Domestically, the Communist Party embraced internal reforms that led to term limits on political leaders, a regulated succession process and an increasing appeal to China’s younger generation.

Growing at about 10 percent a year, the economy has boomed, transforming some of China’s cities into the most modern in the world while also lifting 300 million people from poverty. For the first time, agricultural taxes have been abolished. Anyone who thinks China is still intellectually “closed” should talk to Chinese students who have mastered the art of Internet access — despite official efforts to close it down.

Bullock never mentions why China was “snubbed” nor what happened at Tienanmen in 1989. What happened: The communists deprived freedom seeking Chinese the ability to “stand up” by killing them in cold blood. Seems a good reason for a snub to me.

Even more significantly, the column nowhere connects the survival of the Communist Party with the changes it made precisely for the purpose of ending the snubbing. To add insult to injury, the article not only seems to gloss over the positive effects of “market reforms”, including tax cuts, on reducing poverty but then seeks to blame “capitalism” (aka market reforms) for “corruption.”

Where to begin? How about with the implication that there was no corruption before government allowed people to make a dollar. Was there no “corruption” under Mao, Stalin, Lenin or Nebuchaddnezzar? Were the builders of the Tower of Babel pure as the driven snow?

Bullock correctly sees a brighter future for China 60 years after Mao’s acension; millenia after the Khans; and nine years after the election of George W. Bush. But that future has brightened in direct portion to China’s rejection of Mao’s communism.

September 9, 2036 will be the 60th anniversay of the main event that led to this brighter future: Mao’s death.

Finally,  as a former activist Democrat of 18 years before 2001 and a trial lawyer, let me offer a defense of Bullock before I relate the above to my own conclusions about modern day liberals and the history of my former party since the death of rabid anti-communist President John F. Kennedy at the hands of a communist: Bullock obviously loves the Chinese people and in this column wishes to praise them. I join her, and reach no conclusion that she intends to leave the implications I fear from the ommissions in the column. That I think the column should have been written differently is just my opinion.

But the implications I reach were first manifested soon after I became an adult Democrat when fellow party members mocked President Reagan’s characterization of the USSR as an “evil empire”; liberal Democrats sided with Nicaraguan communists against Reagan’s support for the Contras; mocked the rescue of Grenadans from a communist takeover; and said for free over the past 9 years what Osama bin Laden, Saddam’s lawyer and Iran’s mullahs would have paid them to say and do.

And now we have the culmination of all of the above with a Democrat President that will not tolerate bedroom additions to Jewish homes in Bethlehem but seeks dialogue with those that seek the extinction of the Jewish State in Tehran.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

Originally published @ Examiner.com, where all verification links may be accessed.