Why ?

Talk about seeing things that aren’t there.

Geez, Rockwell was the moron who wrote the post praising a dictator, he’s the one I was talking about.

And….obsessed with Ron Paul, I haven’t given him much thought for about six months now.

I thought the exact same thing.

1. The article is mostly about China’s past and future place in the world.

2. Lew Rockwell posted a link saying, “here’s something to think about”.

3. And LW and RP at one time (and maybe still are!) friends.

Conclusion? RP is a communista.

QED.

“Well, since I don’t think it’s morally justified to murder a baby based on something they might do in the future, I would choose neither.”

OK, then convince (or bribe) the mother to voluntarily abort.

Regards, Don

There’s a case to be made that the Soviet Communists improved the lives of the Russian people by eliminating the nation’s dependence on farming and building a large, if inefficient, industrial complex.

Of course, they murdered alot of people to do it.

Just because Deng made the trains run faster doesn’t mean he’s worthy of any praise or recognition at all. Remember that he’s the one who allowed thousands of innocent students to die:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deng_Xiaoping#Role_in_the_Tiananmen_Square_protests

The man was a thug, pure and simple.

Deng was never unclear concerning his goals: He wanted to bring western capital and industrial innovation to China …

… to the exact extent that he could do so without compromising the power of his totalitarian state so much as an iota, and not one inch further.

Any small signs of liberalization we see in China are symbols of Deng’s failure, not of his success, in achieving his goals.

Exactly.

One could argue that Deng’s model wasn’t the United States, but Sinagpore, which has managed to combine technological innovation and economic liberalization with an authoritarian state.

Although I’m sure that Deng though Singapore was far to free for his taste.

“There’s a case to be made” =/= was someone to admire as a human being.

To paraphrase you: one of the reasons why I sometimes think that libertarians will never really be taken seriously until we purge ourselves of the simpleminded purists.

Only admire Spooner then, since he was pure. Of the rest of mankind we have to think ill since they are all a bunch of socialists or would be once in power…

Give me a break.

… to the exact extent that he could do so without compromising the power of his totalitarian state so much as an iota, and not one inch further.

Any small signs of liberalization we see in China are symbols of Deng’s failure, not of his success, in achieving his goals.

His success, measured by his own lights, is that he managed to leverage the customer power of relatively free countries into production power exercised by China’s slave population to produce revenues for its slave-keeping regime.

I certainly won’t argue that Deng Xiaopeng is a saint. But one can judge him on what his government has done right, and that’s quite a bit.

You could say the same thing about George W. Bush, or even Richard Nixon.

Yes, but Washington and Jefferson both recognized that there was a contradiction between their words and their actions and governed in a way that enhanced individual liberty.

The same cannot be said for a man like Deng.

If, 50 years in the future, you could reach back in history and abort the birth of Deng or GW Bush, or both or neither, which of the four choices would likely leave the world better off?

Well, since I don’t think it’s morally justified to murder a baby based on something they might do in the future, I would choose neither.

However, if both men appeared before me to judge their fate, I would say that Deng clearly has more blood on his hands.

2. It’s an brief facial analysis suggesting that, on balance, he has done more for more people than anyone else. And that’s not a half-baked idea. There are 1.3 billion Chinese. So, if someone causes $1 per capita of improvement in both the US and China, he’s done over four times the good in China than in the US.

I certainly won’t argue that Deng Xiaopeng is a saint. But one can judge him on what his government has done right, and that’s quite a bit.

3. The article, for the most part, has nothing to do specifically with Xiaopeng. It’s about China and the past and future role in the world.