Under Gov Newsom, the number of illegals in CA who are getting freebies courtesy of Newsom’s “sanctuary state” has multiplied. CA’s taxpayers have contributed $75 million for cash payments to illegal immigrants during the COVID pandemic. CA taxpayers are also paying the tab for health benefits granted to illegals.Newsom has proposed adding over 700K more illegals to the gravy train starting next year. JOSEPH KLEIN
Time Running Out for Democrats to Replace Biden on Primary Ballots, If Need Be
Time is running out for the Democratic Party to find an alternative candidate to incumbent President Joe Biden — if he decides not to run after all, either for health reasons or because of the growing Hunter Biden scandal.
Wednesday’s decision by a federal judge in Delaware not to approve a plea deal between Hunter and federal prosecutors, which would have shielded him from further prosecution relating to business deals in which his father may have been involved, created new potential legal troubles for the president. His claim not to have spoken to Hunter about his business affairs has been shown to be a lie, and further questions may be coming.
George Washington University legal scholar Jonathan Turley suggested Thursday that Biden might do well to pardon his son and then announce that he would no longer be running for reelection — a “happy ending”:
However, the problem with dropping Biden is that Democrats would have to find a replacement on the primary ballot in nearly all of the states, or at least enough to account for a sufficient number of delegates to the party convention in Chicago in August 2024 (when combined with the party’s peculiar system of “superdelegates,” who are a group of notables and insiders that possess at-large votes that can be used to defeat insurgencies).
Each state has different rules for presidential primaries. Presumably, Vice President Kamala Harris could be a replacement for Biden in many states. The problem, however, is that she is even more unpopular than Biden is.
There are already two Democratic challengers to Biden who have been working on qualifying for the ballot in the early primary states — namely, environmental lawyer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and spiritual guru Marianne Williamson. If Democrats want an alternative — say, perhaps, California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), who has been building a national profile in anticipation of a future presidential run — they face a rapidly-closing window.
According to Ballotpedia, which compiles information about elections, some deadlines are earlier than others. New Hampshire allows candidates to file until the week before the primary election — whose date is not yet set — while other early states, like Nevada, have tougher deadlines, requiring candidates to file by Oct. 16, 2023. In some states, political parties have discretion over deadlines. But the sheer complexity of the task requires time.
Then-Sen. Robert F. Kennedy (D-NY), father of the current candidate, waited until after the New Hampshire primary to enter the 1968 presidential race, and he was on his way to winning the Democratic nomination when he was assassinated in June that year. Certainly the party would move mountains to replace Biden, perhaps tinkering with its own rules — as it did in confirming Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton in the 2008 primary.
But the task will be a complex one, requiring a national-scale operation. Time is running out — and Democrats may soon find they are down to a choice between Kennedy, Williamson, and perhaps Harris, if Biden drops out.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
When a president proves he's a toothless paper tiger ON THE CHINESE PAYROLL
Hunter Biden Admits in Court He Made $664K from CEFC China Energy, Contradicting Joe Biden’s Claims
Hunter Biden’s lawyer, Chris Clark, admitted in court Wednesday the president’s son received $664,000 from CEFC China Energy Co. in 2017, contradicting President Joe Biden’s claim Hunter Biden never received money from a Chinese entity.
During a hearing before U.S. District Judge Maryellen Noreika, Clark revealed Hunter made over one million dollars in foreign business transactions, including $664,000 from CEFC, a company linked to the CCP and Chinese intelligence.
“During calendar year 2017, Biden earned substantial income, including: just under $1 million from a company he formed with the CEO of a Chinese business conglomerate [BHR Partners]; $666,666 from his domestic business interests; approximately $664,000 from a Chinese infrastructure investment company[CEFC]…” Clark told the judge, according to the court transcript obtained by not-for-profit Marco Polo.
Clark confirmed additional income from Hunter Biden’s business ventures, including $500,000 in director’s fees from his ventures with Burisma Holdings, a company whose executive told an FBI informant he bribed Hunter and President Joe Biden each with $5 million:
From 2017 to 12 2019, he served on the board of a Ukrainian energy company and a Chinese private equity fund. He further negotiated and executed contracts for business and legal services that paid millions of dollars of compensation to him and/or his domestic corporations, Owasco, PC and Owasco, LLC. Through at least early 2017, he also was employed by a prestigious multi-national law firm in an ‘of counsel’ capacity. For this work, he earned substantial income, totaling more than $2.3 million in 2017 and $2.1 million in 2018.
Clark also said the younger Biden made” $70,000 relating to a Romanian business; and $48,000 from the multi-national law firm.”
The money received by Hunter Biden contradicts Joe Biden’s claims his son never received money from a Chinese entity.
“Hunter Biden’s business associate sent over a million dollars to three of your family members. Any reaction to that?” a reporter asked Joe Biden in March.
“That’s not true,” the president said.
In the 2020 election cycle, the president told voters on the debate stage he nor his son ever made money from a Chinese entity. Instead, Biden accused former President Donald Trump of making money from China.
Hunter Biden arrives for a court appearance at the J. Caleb Boggs Federal Building on Wednesday, July 26, 2023, in Wilmington, DE. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty)
The House Oversight Committee James Comer (R-KY) revealed the Biden family business, over the course of several years, received over $10 million from business schemes in Romania and China in return for what appears to be influence peddling. In addition, Burisma paid the Biden family business $7.3 million over the course of many years, including when Joe Biden was vice president, IRS agent Joseph Ziegler told Congress last week.
Suspicious Activity Reports obtained by the committee revealed a Biden associate, Rob Walker, received a $3 million wire transfer from CEFC China Energy Co. In turn, four Biden family members — Hunter, James, Hallie, and an unidentified “Biden” — received a collective $1.3 million cut from the $3 million wire transfer.
The committee is investigating the entities that accepted and passed money through to the Biden business. The Biden business opened more than 20 shell companies to hide payments and launder money, Comer said in July.
Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter @WendellHusebø. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality.
My colleague Peter Schweizer’s runaway bestseller, Red Handed: How American Elites Get Rich Helping China Win, first revealed that the Biden family received some $31 million from the highest levels of Chinese intelligence at the same time Hunter was paying the vice president’s bills. Schweizer believes that there is a slam dunk case to indict Hunter Biden.
Biden Admin. Senior Officials Visit China and Return Empty-Handed
When a president proves he's a toothless paper tiger.
[Editor’s note: Make sure to read Joseph Klein’s masterpiece contributions in Jamie Glazov’s new book: Barack Obama’s True Legacy: How He Transformed America.]
The Communist Chinese regime will do whatever President Xi Jinping believes is necessary to surpass the United States, which President Xi considers to be in decline. President Joe Biden is proving to be President Xi’s perfect patsy to help him achieve his grand ambitions.
President Biden remains under the dangerous delusion that China is merely a vigorous competitor, not the U.S.’s chief adversary that is determined to replace America as the world’s number one military, economic, and technological superpower. President Biden is on a fool’s mission to explore whether there are areas of mutual interest where the Chinese regime might be willing to genuinely cooperate with the United States. There are none. Nevertheless, in desperation he has sent so far three of his administration’s cabinet-level officials to China to restore fruitless dialogue with their high-level Chinese counterparts.
President Xi believes only in China First and views every issue through the lens of China’s national self-interest. This explains why his regime has had no problem welcoming U.S. business leaders to China with open arms, while not giving an inch to the Biden administration’s cabinet-level officials who recently visited China.
China needs American businesses’ investments, trade, and especially their technologies to help bolster its sagging economy. China loves doing business with American firms as long as these firms operate on China’s own terms, like submitting to state surveillance, handing over access to valuable intellectual property, and abiding by China’s censorship requirements. American companies interested solely in maximizing profits are only too happy to oblige.
China’s dealings with Biden administration officials are another matter entirely. President Xi has shown no respect for President Biden and that disrespect has filtered down to how Chinese officials treat their American counterparts.
For example, Chinese Defense Minister Li Shangfu rejected holding a meeting with U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin this spring on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue, an annual security forum. The Biden administration had hoped such a meeting between the two countries’ defense chiefs would lead to restoring military-to-military communications to reduce the possibility of unintended military conflict. But the reaction from the Chinese side was a rude snub.
The United States has good reason to be concerned about China’s military intentions. One of China’s jet fighters flew directly in front of an American surveillance plane flying in international airspace. One of China’s warships came within 150 yards of an American destroyer conducting a freedom-of-navigation exercise with Canada in international waters. In one of its typical lies, the Chinese regime blamed the United States for these near misses.
When Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken traveled to China in June and brought up the issue of military deconflicting, he got nowhere. His plea to keep the channels of communication open “to ensure competition does not veer into conflict” fell on deaf ears.
Secretary Blinken did not even succeed in getting China’s leaders to acknowledge, much less apologize, for China’s spy balloon escapade over the continental United States earlier this year, a clear invasion of U.S. sovereignty and national security. Why should they when President Biden said, shortly before Secretary Blinken’s arrival in China, that the spy balloon incursion was more “embarrassing” for China’s leadership “than it was intentional.”
U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen fared a little better than Secretary Blinken during her subsequent trip to China and meetings with China’s top economic officials. Maybe that is because she bowed multiple times to Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng in some sort of sign of respect that was not reciprocated.
While there was a softer tone coming from Chinese leaders during Secretary Yellen’s visit than during Secretary Blinken’s visit, nothing of substance was accomplished. There was no movement from either side on trade, investment, or technology issues that have divided the United States and China.
Treasury Secretary Yellen tried to assure her hosts that the United States was not seeking to decouple its economy from China’s economy, which would be infeasible anyway given the huge amount of trade and financial interrelationships between the two countries. But China’s leadership was not swayed by Secretary Yellen’s bows or conciliatory words.
The Chinese regime wants relief from U.S. tariffs and from limits the Biden administration, to its credit, imposed on exports of the United States’ most advanced semiconductor technology. China has placed restrictions of its own on the export of two metals essential to the production of computer chips. China produces more than ninety percent of the global supply of one of these metals.
Treasury Secretary Yellen’s visit did nothing to ease any of these economic tensions. Her takeaway was to “expect that this trip will help build a resilient and productive channel of communication with China’s new economic team.” But dialogue as an end in itself accomplishes nothing other than to give the Chinese regime a platform to berate the United States.
President Biden’s climate czar John Kerry was the next cabinet-level Biden official to make the journey to China. The purpose of Kerry’s trip was to persuade the Communist regime to do more to cut its emissions of greenhouse gases, especially from its use of coal. He failed.
China is.by far the largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world and is continuing to build more coal-fired power plants than the rest of the world combined. The United States, while being the second largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world, emits less than half as much greenhouse gases as China does today.
After three days of climate negotiations with senior Chinese government officials (but no meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, who makes all the final major policy decisions), Kerry came away empty-handed.
All that John Kerry said he managed to accomplish was “having long and very detailed meetings with a lot to catch up on.“ In other words, more hot air was emitted into the atmosphere.
Mr. Kerry added that “we came here to break new ground … and it is clear that we are going to need a little more work to complete that task.”
While Kerry was failing to “break new ground” with President Xi’s subordinates on climate change policies, President Xi put a total damper on the discussions.
Xi told a national conference on environmental protection that China will tackle climate change in its own way. China, he said, will reach its announced goals via a “path, method, pace and intensity…determined by ourselves and will never be influenced by others.”
The U.S. climate czar chose not to argue the point.
What are China’s goals? They allow China to keep increasing its carbon emissions until 2030, which would supposedly be the peak year after which China’s carbon emissions would finally start to decline. China would have until 2060 to reach carbon neutrality (net zero greenhouse gas emissions), ten years later than the Biden administration has set as the deadline for the United States.
China’s dependency on coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel, is rising dramatically. The Communist regime is rapidly adding new coal-fired plants. More than many countries that mine coal, the Chinese are also mining coal underground, which releases excessive amounts of methane. Methane “is a much more potent greenhouse gas” than carbon dioxide in terms of its global warming impact, according to the International Energy Agency.
As the New York Times reported, “The United States, which emits far less greenhouse gases than China, is headed in a different direction. It has not built a new coal-fired plant in a decade, while nearly halving its coal use and increasing natural gas use instead.”
The Communist Chinese regime is playing the Biden administration. China has the second largest economy in the world. It is a major nuclear power with highly advanced military capabilities, including the world’s largest navy. Nevertheless, China’s leaders insist that their country continue to be treated by the United Nations as a developing country that should be accorded more latitude in the time it takes to move away from fossil fuels than developed countries.
This travesty needs to end. But the gutless Biden administration is standing aside while China pretends to be a developing country in the eyes of the UN and other multilateral inter-governmental organizations such as the World Trade Organization. Accordingly, China continues to receive undeserved preferential treatment. Instead of turning a blind eye, President Biden should be demanding that the UN, the World Trade Organization, and other multilateral inter-governmental organizations start treating China as a developed country with grown-up responsibilities.
The Chinese regime points to China’s global leadership in the production of renewable energy products and the use of solar and wind power as evidence that it is taking the issue of climate change very seriously. But this is misleading. “China’s biggest wind and solar projects tend to be in sparsely populated western and northwestern regions,” the New York Times reported, “far from the provinces near the coast where most of the population lives and where many electricity-hungry companies are.”
Coal is still king in China and considered essential to the protection of China’s national energy security, not green energy.
In short, while paying lip service to combating climate change, the Chinese Communist regime is putting its national security and economic growth first. President Biden, on the other hand, has committed the United States to a left-wing progressive green energy agenda that will impose a huge economic burden on the American people through massive inflationary spending programs and oppressive regulations.
In sum, the Biden administration has grossly mishandled America’s relationship with its number one adversary, putting the American people’s security and economic welfare in significant jeopardy. Instead of exploiting all means of leverage over China from a position of strength, the Biden administration hopes to manage the Chinese regime’s “competition” with the United States while vainly seeking common ground on global issues like climate change.
The Art of War by Sun Tzu provides lessons useful to understanding the Communist Chinese regime’s modus operandi. The first lesson is that “The whole secret lies in confusing the enemy, so that he cannot fathom our real intent.” The second lesson is that “To secure ourselves against defeat lies in our own hands, but the opportunity of defeating the enemy is provided by the enemy himself.”
The Biden administration is falling into both traps, thereby handing the Chinese Communist regime too many gains at the expense of the American people.
Joseph Klein
Joseph Klein is a Harvard-trained lawyer, and the author of Global Deception: The UN’s Stealth Assault on America’s Freedom and Lethal Engagement: Barack Hussein Obama, The United Nations & Radical Islam.
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CUT AND PASTE YOUTUBE LINKS
Bidens don't seem to 'cover their tracks' in alleged China money web: Curley
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQkbnOO-mbM
SERVING RED CHINA: JOE BIDEN AT WORK
Biden admin is ‘enormously dangerous’ to the survival of America: Newt Gingrich
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dB8YNrfbD_E
Did Hunter Biden Sleep with a Chinese Spy?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kn83Uk9pX2k
Hunter Biden faces possible subpoena after missing deadline to turn over docs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6hxjrGHJ8I
VIDEO
CUT AND PASTE YOUTUBE LINK
Watters: I guarantee you Satan went to law school
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6Ln2aXLqWw
THE BIDEN KLEPTOCRACY
American people deserve to know what China was up to with Joe Biden, especially when Beijing had already shelled out millions of dollars to Biden family members — including millions in set-asides for “the big guy.” What else is on that infamous Hunter Biden laptop? The conflicted Biden Justice Department cannot be trusted to engage in any meaningful oversight on this issue. We need a special counsel now.
TOM FITTON - JUDICIAL WATCH
Breitbart Political Editor Emma-Jo Morris’s investigative work at the New York Post on the Hunter Biden “laptop from hell” also captured international headlines when she, along with Miranda Devine, revealed that Joe Biden was intimately involved in Hunter’s businesses, appearing to even have a 10 percent stake in a company the scion formed with officials at the highest levels of the Chinese Communist Party.
Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter @WendellHusebø. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality.
Hunter has reportedly sold five paintings worth $75,000 each to an anonymous buyer. Hunter’s art dealer, Georges Bergès, has previously boasted he had strong ties to businessmen in Communist China, which has concerned many due to the Biden family’s business ventures abroad.
“We are 95% sure that that artwork went to China,” Comer said. “We don’t know where exactly that went to in China, but we’re going to try to find out when we get subpoena power.”
Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter @WendellHusebø. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality.
Biden family business dealings with China is a ‘national security issue’: Schweizer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Hew-Pm1d-0
Peter Schweizer’s new book Red-Handed: How American Elites Get Rich Helping China Win tells the story of how Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s (D-CA) husband Richard Blum was part owner of a Chinese firm that allegedly sold computers with spyware chips to the U.S. military. The military has never been able to calculate how much sensitive data these computers allowed China to steal.
THE BIDEN KLEPTOCRACY
RIDING THE DRAGON: The Bidens' Chinese Secrets (Full Documentary)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRmlcEBAiIs
Kevin McCarthy Pledges Subpoenas for 51 Intel Agents in Wake of Hunter Biden ‘Twitter Files’
11 Dec 20220
2:26
House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy said Saturday on FNC’s “One Nation” that he will bring the 51 intel agents that signed a letter that said the Hunter Biden information was Russia collusion to testify at a congressional hearing.
Host Brian Kilmeade asked, “We saw the revelations coming out of Twitter as Elon Musk is unmasking the corruption that existed there and the denials that they testified about. So for you personally you have another move you want to make. Not only do we want to hear from the former executives of Twitter and the other entities, but you have something else you want to say.”
McCarthy said, Yeah, I do. This is egregious what we are finding. They should not have section 230 to start out with, but we also have to go further. What did Facebook and Google do as well because they became an arm of the Democratic Party and an arm of government.”
He continued, “Those 51 intel agents that signed a letter that said the Hunter Biden information was all wrong — was Russia collusion — many of them have a security clearance. We are going to bring them before committee. I’m going to have them have a hearing. Why did they sign it? Why did they lie to the American public? A Clapper, a Brennan? Why did you use the reputation that America was able to give to you more information, but use it for a political purpose and lie to the American public?”
In 2018 and 2020, Breitbart Senior Contributor and Government Accountability Institute President Peter Schweizer published Secret Empires and Profiles in Corruption. Each book hit #1 on the New York Times bestseller list and exposed how Hunter Biden and Joe Biden flew aboard Air Force Two in 2013 to China before Hunter’s firm inked a $1.5 billion deal with a subsidiary of the Chinese government’s Bank of China less than two weeks after the trip. Schweizer’s work also uncovered the Biden family’s other vast and lucrative foreign deals and cronyism. Breitbart Political Editor Emma-Jo Morris’ investigative work at the New York Post on the Hunter Biden “laptop from hell” also captured international headlines when she, along with Miranda Devine, revealed that Joe Biden was intimately involved in Hunter’s businesses, appearing to even have a 10 percent stake in a company the scion formed with officials at the highest levels of the Chinese Communist Party.
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN
According to the article, Falun Gong and its associated media, including the Epoch Times, have engaged in "conspiracy narratives" targeting Democrats and the Chinese Communist Party and of "links" between Joe Biden and the CCP. In fact, a great deal of evidence is emerging in the Comer investigation to show that those links are far from being conspiracy narratives. (See also a 2020 New York Times article, which labels Falun Gong "a leading purveyor of right-wing disinformation.")
The Group the Chinese Communists Fear the Most
I have rarely heard it mentioned in the mainstream media, but, according to reports, during the 1990s in communist China, thirty thousand members of Falun Gong were rounded up and executed. The founder of Falun Gong, Li Hongzhi, fled China and now lives in the U.S., while in China members of the order went underground. According to Freedom House, "Falun Gong practitioners across China have since [July 1999] been subjected to widespread surveillance, arbitrary detention, horrific torture, and extrajudicial killing — abuses which continue today." Nonetheless, there are still some 100 million practitioners worldwide, and the movement continues to grow.
Information concerning the repression of Falun Gong is a Chinese state secret, with severe penalties for anyone attempting to obtain data. As the Falun Data Infocenter puts it: "The CCP has also used political and financial influence around the world to either keep journalists silent, or drive false narratives about Falun Gong." With total control inside China and compliance by foreign journalists, the Chinese Communist Party has driven a false narrative that minimizes the number of Falun Gong practitioners and hides data on the number of those abducted, tortured, killed, and killed for their organs, thus totally obscuring the record. At the same time, Chinese and foreign media continue to suggest that the victim is the abuser: the false idea that Falun Gong is a cult with dangerous potential.
For anyone who has studied the history of or practiced Falun Gong, the enormity of this continuing abuse and misinformation is obvious. Falun gong is a benign practice of meditation, exercise, and moral instruction with no political ties of any sort, but it is often represented, even by well-meaning Western journalists, as a "cult" or as a right-wing anti-CCP organization, as in a recent article in the Guardian, relying heavily on statements by Media Matters. According to the article, Falun Gong and its associated media, including the Epoch Times, have engaged in "conspiracy narratives" targeting Democrats and the Chinese Communist Party and of "links" between Joe Biden and the CCP. In fact, a great deal of evidence is emerging in the Comer investigation to show that those links are far from being conspiracy narratives. (See also a 2020 New York Times article, which labels Falun Gong "a leading purveyor of right-wing disinformation.")
If those journalists would do their homework, beginning with studying Falun Gong websites and the book Zhuan Falun by Li Hongzhi, instead of relying on the well funded Chinese "zero out" campaign, they would realize that Falun Gong is an uplifting instruction based on traditional, conservative Chinese practices.
The story of the Chinese government crackdown on Falun Gong is a classic example of totalitarian intolerance of competing ideas, and it involves both propaganda and physical terror. A careful examination of the record proves that the response of the communist Chinese regime is not very different from that of ancient regimes toward their own enslaved peoples. Despite their vast power, totalitarian leaders are fearful and at times even paranoid, as was Stalin, and the flip-side of fear is repression.
In reality, Falun Gong is a complex spiritual practice involving qijong-like exercises, positive thinking, and moral belief based on truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance. As a practitioner myself, I know how Falun Gong can transform an individual from illness to health, confusion to knowledge, and intolerance to open-mindedness. It is obvious to me how a totalitarian regime would view Falun Gong as a threat, as indeed it would be to any form of deceit, corruption, or intolerance. As Falun Gong spread in China during the 1990s, at one point with 60 to 100 million followers in China alone, the practice became a threat to a government that had once encouraged it as a healthy "money-saving" vehicle and a social safety valve for a dissatisfied citizenry. Yet within months, beginning in July 1999, perhaps 100,000 followers were arrested and 30,000 executed. Even now, nearly 4,000 practitioners were arrested in 2021 (latest figures).
It is critical to consider the magnitude of this repression, with between two and four million Falun Gong followers "detained" in forced labor camps between 2000 and 2008 alone. Chinese policy toward Falun Gong is similar to the more widely publicized repression of Uyghurs, 1.5 million of whom have reportedly been detained in China, with hundreds of thousands of others subjected to forced sterilization, forced abortion, and religious suppression, and with the razing or damaging of 16,000 mosques. Like totalitarian regimes of the past, the CCP appears willing to employ the most ruthless tactics in order to secure its hold on the country.
Though Falun Gong is not a political movement, the exponential growth of Falun Gong during the 1990s might well have pressured authorities to change, and as soon as China's leaders recognized this threat, they suppressed Falun Gong with a heavy hand. One could hardly be truthful, compassionate, and forbearing and lend one's support to a communist regime governed by a few thousand members of the political elite intent on benefiting from their rule at the expense of the general population. Falun Gong teaches a form of gentleness and goodness that threatens the lies and violence of any totalitarian government.
One must ask: if the Chinese communists are willing to imprison millions of ethnic and religious minorities and to murder tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, what are they capable of in the future? How many lives are they willing to expend in a takeover of Taiwan? And once Taiwan is taken, how many Taiwanese will they imprison and execute? In the event of a war with Japan or with the United States, how many are they willing to see die, on both sides? And if Chinese communism were ever to achieve world domination, what kind of future could we expect? As Christians, probably something not unlike what the Uyghurs and Falun Gong have already experienced.
At the same time, the specter of Chinese repression should open our eyes to the remarkable value of our own system of democratic capitalism. The CCP has diminished Falun Gong in China, but, like all religious and spiritual practices, Falun Gong has found a safe home in America, at least in principle, though the Biden administration continues to restrict religious practice, to challenge religious rights in the courts and in agency practices, and to unleash the power of agencies like the Justice Department and IRS against the open practice of religion. Many of the same tactics adopted in communist China are accepted by progressives in our own country, including the encouragement of birth control and abortion, even late-term abortion and infanticide after birth.
For the present, there is still a difference between totalitarianism and democracy as practiced in the USA. Now is a time when American citizens, media, government, and corporations need to see clearly that communist China is a totalitarian government and to recognize what it is capable of. China's record toward Falun Gong, a violent repression that continues today, is one element in a string of crackdowns and arrests. We do not need to send a balloon over China to understand the nature of their regime, but we do need to recognize the enormity of its abuses and take appropriate actions to defend ourselves.
Jeffrey Folks is the author of many books and articles on American culture, most recently Heartland of the Imagination (2011).
Image: tookapic via Pixabay, Pixabay License.
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