Posted On: Tuesday - January 1st 2019 8:40PM MST
In Topics: US Police State China Liberty/Libertarianism
(As translated from the original Mandarin)
The Chinese invented a whole lot of stuff way before the West's time, and supposedly invented a lot more than that. (I want to do a book review on The Man who Loved China regarding the latter.) We can all probably agree that fireworks, made partially out of gunpowder, came from old Cathay, at least if we don't feel like doing 2 hours' research on it tonight. It's the fireworks from New Years Eve that reminded me about some China stories.
The Chinese have a real love for fireworks, as I found out in China, when some people would just randomly set off some medium-intensity (not M-80's but not your small standard ones either) ones outside a restaurant for the hell of it. In many of the States, there are all kinds of laws for sales of them, and, as I wrote last evening, I'm just glad to still have Roman Candles and small rockets.
This small freedom notwithstanding, one may note that in their 5,000 year history, Chinese NEVER had an era in which the people threw off the yoke of government to be DONE with it, as the forefathers of America did. I don't think it's much in their genes to do such a thing. Sure, dynasties came and dynasties went, but you read nothing about a group of Chinamen rejecting having authorities rule over them, period, rather than just a smarter guy next time. There is no precedent there for rights of the common people to keep firearms without strict regulation, and considering the history of gunpowder, you'd think they'd have been the first.
Even so, and with all the Mao-era Communist control, the Chinese people seem to have still kept a lot of spunk and oftentimes impress me more than Americans in their resistance to government encroachment. One big-ass encroachment is eminent domain used abusively. The idea of land takings with compensation for building of communal property such as roads is well understood and was by our Founders. However, it probably should have been explained better at the end of Bill of Rights Amendment V ("... nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.", a stipulation on US Feral Gov't takings), as it's been used to transfer people's property to private companies. All manner of excuses such as "urban blight" have been let, by our 9 robed old-farts, to rip the intent to shreds. One of the most egregious examples is the Kelo vs. New London, Connecticut case from 13 years back.
Americans don't seem to be organized enough to fight this stuff, but I'm surprised armed individuals haven't done more (I'm not sure if the Bundy standoff out in Oregon a few years back qualifies as an eminent domain issue.) I've seen numerous examples from China, however, in which individuals raise holy hell to keep governments and powerful business from taking their homes. The guy in the picture above, one Mr. Yang Youde, is shooting fireworks out of a pipe, a poor-man's home-made cannon, to protect his home.
As written about in The New American, Mr. Yang had one thing going for him that American don't in this modern Police State of ours. The local cops were on his side (very much as in the true story related here on Peak Stupidity in A China story and Chinese vs. American police states).
Whereas in New London the police were prepared to evict Kelo if she refused to move, when Yang was attacked by an eviction team in February after he ran out of rockets, Reuters reports that “local police came to his rescue” and apparently allowed him to remain on his land, which he successfully defended against 100 people in May. Yes, in Communist China the local cops are on the side of average people, while in supposedly free America they side with the government, probably seeking their share of the increased tax booty from the promised new development."... after he ran out of rockets" - I like that! If he had had an SKS, rather than just the ubiquitous Chinese fireworks, who knows how much farther he'd have gotten.
Hold that thought. I looked up the man, and he won! He got > $20,000 per acre, for his single-story house with a fish pond. What happened to the Americans, such as Kelo who went to court against a private company, Pfizer Pharmaceuticals taking their property? Not only did they lose, but after everything was demolished, some years went by, and Pfizer decided they didn't want the land anyway. Yeah, this land was in "the land of the free" ... right!
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