The most useful way to think about American competition with China is not through the language of moral theater, which is how almost every domestic political question is now presented, but through the older and less flattering language of power. Civilizations rise because they accumulate capacity, and they decline because they lose it. Capacity means…
Tag: Authoritarian
Ethnos Downstairs, Technocracy Upstairs
Here’s the multicultural sales pitch: put people with different histories, religions, loyalties, taboos, grievances, and political interests into the same country, remove the common culture, declare every inherited standard oppressive, and then wait for everyone to become interchangeable citizens united by an enthusiastic commitment to municipal recycling. It’s a beautiful idea, provided you have never…