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As readers of this Request of the Week from the end of last month will know, at the request of D Pace of Toronto and others, we're currently counting down some of Steyn's Greatest Hates. Here's Mr Pace's missive:
Mark,
I have just read Warren Kinsella's unpublished letter to the editor of Maclean's Magazine dated March 2, 2008 on his website . Within you are portrayed as quite a "hater". Mr. Kinsella provides references to many of your past columns proving his case.
Would you consider reprinting one or two of the columns he references so that we may judge for ourselves if you are being quoted properly or if the words attributed to you are being taken in their proper context.
To which I replied that we'd be happy to count down my Greatest Hates in reverse order, if only because dear old Warren needs all the publicity he can get these days, and, unlike his buddy Richard Pieman, he doesn't seem to have quite as many bloggers he can sue. Anywhere, here's the relevant portion of Warren's letter:
In his writings, Steyn also goes on about “the Yellow Peril”4 and “gooks.”5 He says it’s “correct” to refer to Muslims as “beturbanned prophet-monkeys”6...
FOOTNOTES
4. National Post, April 16, 2001
5. National Post, May 11, 2000
6. The Telegraph, November 8, 2005
Three weeks ago, we reprinted Big Hate Number Six - the "beturbanned prophet-monkeys". Last week we got to Number Five, so here comes Big Hate Number Four, written after the release of two dozen US servicemen kidnapped by the Commies. And don't forget the SteynOnline Request Of The Week now appears midweek. Drop a line requesting a favorite (or favourite) bigoted column from Mark's Greatest Hates here.
Trading with the enemy
from The National Post, April 16th 2001
Well, they're back now, and we can quibble endlessly about the ersatz kowtow of the ambassador's letter (A mere ambassador! Bill Clinton would have done the full lip-biting feel-your-pain routine himself). But a more interesting question is whether we've learned anything these last two weeks. On Thursday, to "celebrate" the release, the Empire State Building was illuminated: The red, white and blue on the front was embarrassing enough; the Chinese red and gold on the side was pitiful. Clinton, a wholly owned subsidiary of China, our "friend" and "strategic partner" (his words), would have appreciated the even-handedness. Bush is under no such illusions.
In crude terms, the United States had nothing at stake in this stand-off. Yes, there were 24 servicemen and women, trained (one hopes) to put up with this sort of thing a little more robustly than the wretched Tie A Yellow Ribbon (made in China?) routines back home might suggest. And they had that clunky 1950s spy plane, though most of the interesting stuff was presumably in the conveniently missing nose cone. But China had everything at stake. Its entire economy: $100-billion with the United States alone. Its prosperity could not have survived the prolonged detention and physical harm of even a single U.S. serviceman.
So why for 11 days did a sophisticated world economy behave as nuttily as those wacky Ayatollahs 20 years ago? One theory is that the old guys in the lounge suits on the Politburo were not entirely in control of the situation, and China's military bureaucracy was freelancing on this one. That's quite likely. Former French president Giscard d'Estaing was in Washington in the early days of the crisis and opined that China no longer had any characteristics of a Communist state; it was more like a relatively benign authoritarian state such as Mexico pre-Vicente Fox. Well, there wasn't much evidence of that over the last two weeks: Washington has found itself dealing with a drearily conventional Communist mindset, indicating that at least in certain power centres in China such a mindset still trumps more enlightened variants of totalitarianism.
Thus, the second question: Are we sufficiently disabused of our self-deceptions to rethink China policy? Initially, its purpose was to prevent any possibility of a Sino-Soviet alliance, but the Soviets went belly-up a decade ago, and since then Beijing has been merrily making mischief. Why are India and Pakistan now nuclear powers? Pakistan did it because India did it, and India did it because China helped Pakistan do it, and China helped Pakistan do it because ever since 1994, when Clinton lifted the sanctions imposed against Beijing for violating the 29-nation Missile Technology Control Regime by selling M-11 missiles to Pakistan, China has known it can get away with anything. And why did Clinton lift the sanctions? Because U.S. satellite manufacturers wanted unfettered access to Chinese satellite launch services. And, as then national security advisor Sandy Berger put it, "Launching satellites in China is good for the U.S." Ah, yes: Providing Beijing with launch-failure analysis to improve their rockets will ultimately stimulate growth and jobs in the American bomb-shelter construction industry. (It's only two years since a Chinese government spokesman threatened to nuke Los Angeles, which Washington chose to take as an example of that delightfully inscrutable Oriental sense of humour.)
For the best part of a generation, America's Sinophiles of left and right have insisted China be accorded not just "Most Favoured Nation" status but a kind of most "Most Favoured Nation" superstatus, denied to all other totalitarian regimes, no matter how ineffectual (i.e., Cuba). What the United States gets out of it is harder to figure out. During last year's election campaign, Pat Buchanan declared that, when he becomes president, he'll tell China they've sold their "last pair of chopsticks in any mall in the United States of America." Actually, the Yellow Peril's export department doesn't bother much with chopsticks: That's what's so fiendishly cunning about them. But they do make practically every toy and T-shirt sold in American shopping malls. Stroll along DisneyWorld's "Main Street USA", and you can't help noticing that pretty well all the merchandising in this faux recreation of small-town Americana comes from the People's Republic. Come the Third World War, Beijing will have the ultimate fifth column inside the West: our kids, resentful at having their toy supply cut off for the duration.
Even in peacetime, I confess I'm not entirely comfortable with contracting out U.S. innocence to the butchers of Tiananmen. What do Communist factory workers sewing up Disney characters make of Donald Duck's three naughty nephews, Huey, Dewey and Louie? Under China's one-child-per-family policy, Huey would have been fine, but Dewey and Louie would have been ripped from the womb in grisly compulsory abortions. Fortunately for puzzled Chinese moppets, while the Middle Kingdom is happy to manufacture all the Disney tat, they're reluctant to expose their own kids to it. The Sinophiles say America's almost $100-billion trade deficit with China will right itself once Beijing's in the WTO. But the West's experience with Japan should remind us that full membership of the international community is no guarantee of open trade. As things stand, more than 80% of America's most beloved and cuddliest toys -- the Barneys and Elmos and Poohs -- are stuffed and stitched up by Chinamen. And so are America's long-term interests.
In The New York Times a year or so back, Thomas Friedman advised Mr. Clinton to issue a challenge to those in Congress kicking up a fuss about Beijing. Come on, he said, out with it: Are you in favour of full-scale war with China? Right now? Yes or no.
Well, no, not really -- though I fear it may come to that one day. But nor do I wish to help an ambitious regional power develop the first strain of communism that's economically viable. Americans are welcome to support their homecoming servicemen by wearing those T-shirts displaying the Stars and Stripes and the slogan "These colors don't run." But they should check the label inside.
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