陈凯论坛 Kai Chen Forum
不自由，毋宁死! Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death!
陈凯博客 Kai Chen Blog: www.blogspot.com
陈凯电邮 Kai Chen Email: elecshadow@aol.com
陈凯电话 Kai Chen Telephone: 661-367-7556
Using freedom to eliminate freedom has been done many times before, in Nazi Germany, in Russia, in China, in America on 9/11...
Those who view anti-freedom as some kind of freedom set the stage for the destruction of freedom. Freedom never means one can be free from his conscience, his mind, his choices and responsibilities. Freedom only means one is free to fully embrace these faculties and qualities as a human being. Unless we understand this fundamental point, human freedom is in jeopardy. --- Kai Chen
Freedom is God's license for one to do good. God is the short for "Good" --- Unknown
自由是上苍赋予人去行良为的执照。 God（上苍）只是Good（良知）的简写。 --- 无名者
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Dear Visitors:
Henry and I are trying to establish the first ever "Free Speech Corner" in a park in Alhambra, hopefully with the city government's help. If it is done, it will be the first ever such forum among the Chinese communities in the world, both in and outside of China. Since the "Mao Portrait Incident" in the Alhambra City Hall a few weeks ago, I have come to realize how important it is to clarify the concept of Freedom. "Free Speech Corner" is such an attempt to educate the Chinese who have little knowledge or none about what America stands for, or about what freedom entails.
Many in China, many in the world for that matter, still fear and loath freedom, for in their mind freedom means an absence of morality, rationality, choices and responsibility. Therefore, freedom necessarily leads to chaos and destruction. For them freedom is another word for excuse to do evil and harm to others. One often finds that people who hold this kind of definition about freedom are often the ones who are power mongers and power worshippers. They yearn to be either masters or slaves. Even in America with deep cultural tradition of individual freedom, some still view that promotion of hatred, murder and mayhem as one entailed in the concept of freedom.
Promotion of anti-freedom will never be included in the concept of freedom, for it advocates an absence of morality, rationality, personal choice and responsibility. Freedom is only meaningful when it not only recognizes these fundamental human qualities and faculties, but it compels an individual human being to adhere to these basic humanities that separate us from animals.
In the war monuments in Washington DC, an eye-catching sentence is etched on the granite:
FREEOM IS NOT FREE.
Unless we fully appreciate the meaning of this sentence, we, with our moral and intellectual confusion, will indeed put our own freedom in jeopardy.
上苍创造了邪恶吗? Has God Created Hitler, Mao? Is Freedom Free?
每日一语：
Is God a moral existence, or expedient existence? Is that Freedom never free, or is that Freedom entails freedom from morality, reason, choices and responsibility? Has God created Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Ben Laden.., or has anti-God (devil) created such evils? Does Freedom entail freedom to do evil, to promote evil, or Freedom is only God's license to individuals to do good?
These are some fundamental questions that the answers to which will lead to two opposite roads and consequences: One is human progress toward future and hope, another is human despair in a cyclic man-eating-man. America presents with us a model for the former; China and most ancient countries in the world present us with the contrast for the latter. The choice is yours. --- Kai Chen
Due to the Mao portrait incident in Alhambra City Hall, I have touched a very important topic, also a very sensitive one, that concerns a very relevant philosophical issue:
Is Freedom free after all? Has God created evil after all?
Many have voiced their opinions against my position, saying that anti-freedom is indeed entailed into the concept of freedom. Some even said that the freedom to destroy freedom makes the concept of freedom more meaningful and more valuable. Many think that Free Speech means one can say any un-truth to promote any anti-value. Many think that even evil ones like Mao and Hitler had their good points. "The world is all gray. We are all gray. We only exist in a never-ending shadows." Many cry.
Let me see: According to these points of views, Holocaust and the Cultural Revolution and other atrocities have all been created by God to somehow make humans better by testing their will to survive. In other words, God is using human lives in his own laboratory as guinea pigs for his own pleasure.
Do you truly accept this type of views? Or maybe you think differently.
Is God a moral being (Are we moral beings for that matter)? Does Freedom as a value (against non-value or anti-value) free us from our own conscience, reason, choices and responsibilities?
Your answers to the questions will lead to two more questions: Is God to be used for human evil? Is Freedom something to be feared, loathed and escaped from? Maybe after you have answered these questions yourself, in the dark, alone, with your conscience clean and your mind clear, you will end up agreeing with me more.
Is Freedom a self-defeating premise that makes American Constitution nothing more than a "Suicide Pact"? Is Freedom only leading us to destruction, misery and death?
I am here only to throw these seemingly remote, but in reality the most relevant philosophical questions regarding life's meaning out for you to ponder on. Your answers to these questions will, despite you intentions, indeed dictate the courses you will take in your life. And your true happiness is indeed at stake.
Jeff Jacoby曾经在专栏里说，大众抵制纳粹标志，却对共产主义镰刀斧头听之任之。他举了英国哈里王子（Prince Harry）在私人生日party上穿装饰有纳粹万字标志的纳粹军装的例子。哈里王子的照片在媒体公布后引起广泛的抗议，他在几个月后还在为这个行为道歉。然而美国NBC电视网《Access Hollywood》节目记者Tim Vincent多次穿上带有共产主义镰刀斧头标志（hammer-and-sickle）的T恤在电视镜头里露面，但从大众到媒体对此都不置一词。
China has never had private ownership of property, for China has never had any institution to ensure private citizens' rights to own and maintain their properties, since the beginning of the first Chinese dynasty. Since then all land in China has either belonged to emperors, or the so-called "public" under the communists.
In essence, the Chinese have never had any private property, not to mention private means of production, for they have never had any private land. Anybody from the government can take away any private citizen's property at any time, for it is on emperors' or public land, under varieties of lofty titles. Even the individual Chinese citizens have always been nothing more than emperors' and the dictators' private posessions. They can take away your life, your freedom, your rights to pursue happiness any time they want. They can experiment with your lives under the titles such as "revolution" or "reform" or "war with foreign devils". Terror and tyranny are the only words to describe the state under which the Chinese have always been subjected by their own government. More accurately, the Chinese have always allowed themselves to be subjected by their own government.
In absolute contrast, American society, since its beginning, has always been established on the very foundation of private ownership of properties and individuals' absolute rights to their life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, as explicitly stated in the American Constitution. In America, (with John Locke's notion of government to describe it) government, like people, is also under God, under God's law, not above it. Government is only by contracting with people, there to serve the people's interests, by ensuring liberty and justice for all citizens.
The first thing American government did when it first came into being, was to sell all lands to private citizens, thus to delegate all tasks of managing lands, properties and all state of affairs in the private sphere to private individuals. By selling the land to private owners, the American government could raise funds to manage the state of affairs that belongs to the public sphere -- to protect individuals' rights to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, to ensure that justice be done via due process, and to protect the country from any outside foreign threat. Economy belongs only to the private sphere. Individual initiatives, creativity and ownership of means of production are crucial to an ever-expanding economic prosperity. This is true intelligence by not only applying mind to reason and understand, but by observing God's law of nature via soul and morality.
With this guarantee of rights to private citizens, individual responsibility to his or her well being has been instilled into the very bones of the American society. Stability has ensued. Prosperity a result. With this fundamental rights firmly in private hands, and with government only as the guarantor and protector of these rights, hunger and poverty have been eliminated, for human productive and creative ingenuity and drive to excellence have been liberated and released from each and everyone to their maximum.
Imagine a society composed with only people with no private property and rights to own anything, for their rights to liberty, life and property can be trampled on anything the government wants to. What a horrific and terrorizing state of living it will be! Everyone is a slave of the state, for the state and by the state, and no one is responsible for anything regarding himself or herself. My possessions are also others' possessions. Others' are also mine. Private becomes public and public private. No wonder in China which is exactly such a society, corruption is rampant. Why not corrupt, since it is the only way of distributing wealth in such a total public sphere? And where is corruption, since everyone is only, and also a possession of the government, according to logic? Where is the public, since there is no private? Where is the government, since there is no private individual and everything is governmental?
Private ownership of land and housing is crucial to the stability of a society, since the private ownership motivates everyone to be a responsible citizen, to have a stake in the public affairs, to be interested in public safety and stability. A country composed of paupers and beggers and robbers is a country composed of parasites. These parasites will never produce anything of values and they are only interested of sucking and stealing values from those who are able to produce. Such a society is a dangerous society, a corrupt society, an unstable society, a society that indulges itself in irresponsibility, sometimes murderous and suisidal impulses....
To think of it, this state of absolute poverty and irresponsibility has some appeals to someone (however sick it is), for there is a false sense of freedom and liberty in it, though there is never a sense of dignity and self-respect in it. You never have to worry about anything anymore, no mending the roof, no paying the tax, no sending your children to school, no going to doctors to check on your own health.... You are absolute nothingness, and in that nothingness you are free of all burdens and worries in life, and all responsibilites as an individual citizen. Your only entertainment is to see others suffer. Your only feeling of existence is when you rob and beg and steal. Your only sure end is a corpse on the street or in jail or in war with others.
China is a such state composed of such irresponsible individuals without private property and property rights. Thus China is indeed a dangeous place for humans and for the world community. If China is ever going to be joining the world community of freedom-loving people and countries, it must first ensure its citizens' rights to private ownership and private property, and it must entirely scrap its outdated and corrupt system of public ownership of production means, and its absolute control of land in the government's hand.
True glory consists in doing what deserves to be written; in writing what deserves to be read; and in so living as to make the world happier and better for our living in it. --- Tyron Edwards
The Chinese scholar, Jiang, who, with two doctorate degrees in Canada, committed suicide has come as a big surprise to a lot of people. But to me, it is no surprise, for I have long concluded that Chinese education, or most of those Chinese who seek education, aim at only one thing -- producing Chinese style eunuchs whose only purpose of being educated is to get a position in the government, or to be admired by others, or to seek some fake glory for their own family.... Truth and happiness are alien to them.
Very few Chinese going to college are to seek their own fulfillment, interests and knowledge itself. In Chinese scholarstic tradition, there has been full of these unfulfilled, official position-seeking, petty officials. 孔子，屈原，李白，闻天祥，to name just a few. None of them are knowledge, interest, happiness-oriented. Everyone of them aimed at serving the state and the emperors. And the Chinese tradition, regrettably most Chinese even today, still honor them as saints and heros.
This says so much about the Chinese themselves, and you wonder why China has never produced any significant figures throughout its history, in natural and social socieces, in literature and music, in medicine and humanity, in sports and entertainment, that are worldly renowned. And you wonder why none of their contributions to humanity aimed at creating a better and happier world and tomorrow. They the Chinese are simply not interested in happiness and progress at all, period.
Most Chinese are interested in artificial glory designated by the state and emperors, or in official positions with power, or in their loyalty and devotion to the state and regime they serve, or the land they are born into. Truth, knowledge, interest, joy, fulfillment, reality, discovery, exploration, initiatives, creativity, challenge, breaking records, testing human limitations..., are not in the Chinese mind and vocabulary, not at all, period.
All the majory contributions nowadays by ethnic Chinese are from those who immigrated overseas and educated in another language tradition, in a free and open society, with an individual ambition and drive... Yet even among those who came out, like this Jiang in Canada, very few can entirely free themselves from the insidious and evil grip of Chinese "official eunuch complex". No matter how many diplomas they have acquired with their memorization and imitation, often by break-back hardwork, the Chinese intellectuals seem unable to achieve fulfillment themselves. Disappointment and under-appreciation often are the only results for them. Chinese history is full of these disappointed, under-appreciated intellectual eunuchs.
In my view, their premises to get educated from the very beginning is entirely wrong, so by logic, their own conclusion to the end will also be wrong. And the moment they wake up to their errors in their premises is the moment of big shock to them. It is too late by their own assessment, for they are already in their 40s and 50s. Life has flied past them and they have not tasted a single drop of happiness and fulfillment. These human tragedies will continue as long as the Chinese are in the self-deceptive mode.
Not just the Chinese intellectuals, the Chinese nation and tradition in general is a humongous mistake and a laughable joke in the course of human progress, for their premise from the very beginning is entirely off-base and wrong and evil. Unless they finally wake up to their ancestors' mistakes and change the course, they will continue to suffer from their own illusions.
I am only acting as an honest and innocent voice here to the Chinese and point out to them:
"The emperor has never had any clothes on, from the very beginning of time!"
The Chinese nihilistic, despotic cultural tradition that is based on a pictorial syllabic linguistic system has severely hampered the Chinese mind and spirituality, so much so that the majority Chinese (those without any knowledge of alphabetic language) are completely incapable of distinguishing reality from illusion, truth from falsehood, right from wrong. This is the root reason why China has long become a world of rumors, a machine to manufacture lies, and a haven for con men, thieves and bandits. --- Kai Chen
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Dear Visitors:
I now paste this article on today's Youpai.org opening page. It is about Taiwan's media being a fomenting ground for rumors.
Good article. It states a fact that we have all witnessed -- in the Chinese cultural tradition based on a faulty linguistic system, majority Chinese (those who have no knowledge of a foreign language) cannot distinguish what is real and what is illusion, what is true and what is false, not to mention what is right and wrong.
Superficial images and rumors dominate the Chinese lives. Even when you read Chinese, you have to read between the lines to guess what the writer is trying to say. Reading and talking and communicating with each other have forever become a guessing game. In all aspects of human relations in the Chinese life, guessing game is the one everyone has to play. Nihilistic culture and subjective language bear most of the blame.
When you read Chinese language newspapers, you can trust only half of it. The other half is up to your own imagination. "中“itself implies "half truth" or "half man and half devil" or "neutered reality -- Eunuchs". No one is responsible for what they say, precisely because the language itself they use always gives them a way to escape. The language itself is confusing, imprecise and ambiguous to say the least. It is devised that way so everybody can escape from reality, since the reality is too cruel, too ugly, too unforgiving, too deadly under dynasties of despotic regimes for anyone to face squarely.
Now the Chinese have to bear the consequences of obsessing with such a backward language. The sad reality is: They still refuse to see and understand that the true culprit of their cultural and social stagnation is the tool they have chosen to use and rely on for communication.
There is nothing evil save that which perverts the mind and shackles the conscience. --- St. Ambrose 最邪恶的就是那些败坏扭曲我们的头脑，奴役禁锢我们良知的理念。 --- St. Ambrose
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Dear Visitors:
Too often I have heard people, mainly from the American left, that communism the ideology is good or intended to do good, it is only people who used communism for their own ambitions are bad and corrupt. Many Chinese also claim that Confucianism is good, only the people who have practiced it are not pure enough to carry it through, or they have never entirely implemented Confucian ideals (They claim that they want to salvage the idea and re-implement a "neo-Confucianism" to restore the "Chinese way"). I have heard the similar claim from some German people who claim that Nazism was not bad and it saved the Germany from economic collapse. It is only that Hitler himself is bad. Today there is also noise from the same kind of cacophony that ideologies themselves are not to blame for the world-wide terrorism and mayhem, only people are evil to use these good ideologies for their own evil impulse... etc, etc... Enough is enough.
Ideologies themselves indeed have moralities in them and evil ideologies themselves are the roots of all evils in the world.
Confused and idiotic minds nowadays always argue with everyone about how to cook poisonous mushrooms, so people can avoid their deadly poison while enjoying their great taste. They suggest boiling them; they suggest baking them; they suggest broiling them; they suggest taking them raw, they suggest stir-frying them.... Somehow it is not the poison, but people with their method of cooking and ingesting that are the problems. So the deadly effect of poison inside the mushrooms is never the cause of millions upon millions of death in the world and unspeakable misery among the humanity. Even weirder among these confused and idiotic minds is that they claim somehow the daily fruit, grain and meat that nourish and strengthen their bodies and minds are somehow bad for them, for the idea of ingesting nutritious food itself is somehow bad. Total insanity, isn't it?!
Some people continue to stick to their possession of the poisonous mushrooms and defend them to death, because they are native grown and treasured by all of their ancestors. Some people try hard to abandon the nutritious food simply because they are from foreign lands. Some people nowadays try to force everyone in the world to ingest their poisons by claiming they cause everlasting ecstasy in heaven for their delicious tastes and orgasm-producing magic, before they blow themselves to smithereens.
This analogy is to depict exactly what is happening today in the world: Somehow communism, fascism, nazism, Islamic fanaticism all are excused from their innate deadly poisonous effect on humans. At the same time, American ideals of freedom and capitalism are under constant attack, strangely and mostly, by people who benefit from them the most. What a curious and dangerous obsession on illusions!?
Is there morality in the ideologies themselves? Of course there is. All the ideologies that artificially and arbitrarily divide humans into groups and treat them discriminatively are by definition, Evil indeed. The American ideology of individual freedom is fundamentally congruent with the way humans are made by our creator, with each and everyone of us endowed with inalienable rights to pursue life, liberty and happiness. Therefore, it is indeed fundamentally Good.
Nazism and fascism divide people artificially and arbitrarily by race and ethnicity; communism divide people artificially and arbitrarily by their economic classes; Confucianism arbitrarily and artificially claims the superiority of the emperor, the male, the husband, the father..., and treats people as rulers and subjects; Islamic fundamentalists claim all infidels should be eliminated. Today's leftists and liberals in the West also tend to obsess over how and where to divide humanity into categories according to their income, their race and ethnicity, their gender, etc, and treat them with discrimination and favoritism. History has already proven through hundreds, even thousands of years of human suffering and misery, that these ideologies only lead to tragedy and death. No matter how and where you ingest these poisonous mushrooms, or how good one's intention is, the result has always invariably the same -- deaths and destructions. Poisons in the ideologies themselves are indeed one and only to blame.
American ideal with Christian values of truth, moral absolutes, tolerance of differences, combined with institutions of limited government, open-market based on capitalism and individual sovereignty and freedom have been proven, through the last 300 years, a progressive ideology that not only works, but liberates and nourishes human mind and spirit. Many under Americanism lead a fulfilled, productive and creative lives with liberty, joy and happiness. Yet, the thorough success of Americanism also breeds a weird phenomenon, mostly through it being able to afford people with time to think and experiment, of Anti-Americanism. In their illusory and delusional mindset, people somehow are bored with their affluence and prosperity, forgetting and taking for granted the fact and truth that what they have achieved is mainly due to the ideology of Americanism.
I have met so many who have made their fortune via an open-market and capitalism but turned around to attack the very system and country that enabled them to do so in the first place. And also somehow they harbor a tremendous wishful idea that there must have been something better than America and Americanism. So they dig into other cultures and past human history to look through the garbage laden with human tears, blood and corpses, claim that they have found something better than America, better than democracy, better than capitalism, better than individual liberty, better than joy and happiness. No wonder Osama Bin Laden claims the Islamic Fascism is superior to the West and American Ideals, for "It values death more than life."
Those who claim that cultures and values and morals are all relative should experience all the human misery and deaths before they spread their poisons around to destroy humanity. They should go back to the Nazi concentration camps, or the Soviet gulags, or the Chinese Laodai camps, or the Pol Pot's killing fields..., before they open their fat mouths, burping with pungent odor after a lobster dinner, driving their BMW home, claiming there is a better way.
Before you listen to the nonsense uttered by the leftist and Chinese tradition-worshippers, check your mental faculties to make sure you are not poisoned already beyond salvation. Then, and maybe then, you can come around to American way and enjoy every moment of your individual's precious life.
Spinning like a top, the morally relative, virtuously confused Chinese who worship "center", "middle", "no judgment" will never understand this point: Only the development in human mind, soul, spirit, the development in human "Software" with the help from a reliable moral compass is the essence of "Progress". Self-deceiving notion of "walking forward" without a moral compass will only lead the Chinese into another vicious Dynastic spin-cycle their ancestors trapped themselves into for the last thousands of years. This is because "walking forward" is a notion founded on physical and hardware build-up. The Chinese don't know this hardware increase (Dynastic TNT) may only mean more destructive power for another cycle of violence and mayhem. --- Kai Chen
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Dear Visitors:
I have often said that the most wealthy man is not one who chases after money. His wealth comes only as a result of his passionate pursuit of his own interest and self-fulfillment. His wealth only comes as a result of his endless creation of values.
By the same token, America's wealth and power come not as a result of its pursuit of money and weapons, but as a result of liberating human creativity, human mind and spirit by always observing moral absolutes -- the moral compass established by Christian values and Christ teachings. America's wealth, power and success come only as a result of individual human beings' freedom -- free from big government, free from others' interference, free from ignorance and fear, free from prejudice and injustice, free from moral confusion, free from hatred and group-think, free from stagnation of mind and spirit....
It is no wonder nowadays as always, what the Chinese are only capable of doing is copying, stealing, robbing, cheating, inheriting, exhausting, polluting to increase their hardware accumulation, for they have effectively castrated themselves of any morality, any creativity, any human decency, any spiritual and intellectual pursuit. It is no wonder nowadays, as always, the Chinese walk around like zombies, looking only to destroy and devour the slightest values another individual human being can muster himself to produce.
Such a society and state is a powerful "spiritual black-hole". Anything of existence will be eliminated. Any individual's life and meaning of his life will be sucked into the eternal oblivion. Any joy and happiness will become only a fantasy and an illusion produced by powerful narcotics propagated by the state and the despotic culture via an enslaving language.
The hardware accumulated in China nowadays can only serve as the potential "Dynastic TNT" for another round of killings and destruction, more powerful and destructive than anything we have witnessed before. Isn't this always what China has been -- build and destroy, build and destroy, build and destroy... with more and more and more victims?
Unless you open your eyes in your mind and soul, you will deny what I have just pointed out here is true. So do you only have the fleshy eyeballs without vision and foresight?
Moral confusion is the beginning of moral corruption. Taking anti-freedom as part of freedom to worship and appreciate is a reflection on one's moral corruption. --- Kai Chen
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Dear Visitors:
I and some friends of mine from youpai.org have recently paid a visit to the Alhambra City Hall to protest some paintings exhibited there. The exhibition was in the name of celebrating the Chinese New Year.
In one of the paintings, the painter put George Washington and Mao side by side to indicate China is as great as America. In some other paintings, Red Guards of the Cultural Revolution era were the images in celebrating the Chinese New Year. Anyone who sees such images and doesn't feel outrage and indignation should reexamine their moral faculties.
I now paste a protest letter I wrote and sent to the Alhambra City Hall, so you readers can see and judge what is right and wrong:
The City Hall eventually removed the painting on which Washington and Mao were together. The paintings with Red Guards images may still be there.
In the name of celebrating the Chinese New Year, a painting including portraits of American hero George Washington and the notorious mass murderer Mao Tse Dung side by side is on exhibition in the City Hall’s lobby, with Alhambra City government’s permission. If this were to happen in China, I would not be surprised. As a matter of fact, I would expect it. But in America, the land where freedom-loving people find hope, justice and righteousness, I am outraged to have found such a display sanctioned by the City of Alhambra, a city where many residents have settled after enduring political persecution and unspeakable cruelty under Mao and the Chinese Communist regime.
Can you imagine what the reaction might be if Hitler’s portrait were exhibited to celebrate a Jewish festival? I do not understand why such an insensitive exhibition can happen in Alhambra where many Chinese came to find their American dream.
America treasures freedom of expression. But the City Hall is a public place and you have made it a matter of public policy.
I as an American citizen of Chinese descent, protest this exhibition in Alhambra City Hall, and urge the appropriate authorities to take down the painting and put it in its rightful place – the garbage bin of history.
The triumph of the evil is because of the silence from the good. --- Unknown
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Dear Visitors:
Though a small victory, it is nonetheless a significant one.
My friend Henry Zhang and I protested in Alhambra City Hall over the portrait of Mao side by side with the image of George Washington resulted in the removal of the paintings. I urge all of you, the good people with soul and conscience, to battle evil whenever and wherever you see it.
I now paste the LA Time's article (2/24/07) here for all of you to read. I hope you will post your own views and opinions here about the incident.
After a complaint, Alhambra evicts a Warhol-style painting of the communist leader. It inspired anger, amusement.
By David Pierson, Times Staff Writer February 24, 2007
Mao Tse-tung's image has received the iconic Andy Warhol treatment. It's been plastered onto tens of millions of kitschy cigarette lighters, medallions, watches, T-shirts and snow domes.
Yet when a painting bearing the former Chinese communist leader's visage was displayed this week as part of a lunar new year celebration in Alhambra, it set off a debate in Southern California's Chinese community about ghosts from the past and the promise of the future.
A former basketball player for China's national team demanded the city remove the painting, saying the display romanticized a despot responsible for the death and suffering of millions of Chinese. The artists behind the exhibit agreed that Mao was a tyrant but countered that Mao brought about a new era of Chinese nationalism, one that would springboard the nation into modern times.
The debate bounced from holiday dinner banquets to Chinese-language talk radio after organizers of Alhambra's Chinese New Year festival — set to begin today — decided to remove the artwork from City Hall.
Many of the immigrants, who make up America's largest Chinese community, arrived in the San Gabriel Valley to get away from the repressive thumb of the Chinese communist government. And for decades, the community had an undeniable anti-communist bent.
But with the economic rise of China and the passing of generations, Chinese Americans have come to admire what the country has become while still being wary of the government.
Two years ago, a Chinatown businessman raised the red Chinese flag atop a building — a move that just a few years earlier would have certainly generated protests but ended up causing little rancor.
But the Mao paintings touched a chord.
Although some admit they have a conflicting view of Mao — not only recognizing the suffering that occurred under his rule but also his role in guiding China into becoming a global power — most are wondering what the fuss is all about.
They see the spat as overblown and are questioning how a single complaint could result in the removal of the artwork.
"We live in America. We see caricatures of George Bush and George Washington all the time. What's the big deal?" said Philip Young, president of the Chinese American Citizens Alliance Los Angeles Lodge. "I'm for free speech."
Some say it's too late to change the perception of Mao.
"He's such a pop icon, like the image of Che Guevara, that it has less meaning," said Patrick Lam, owner of Munky King, a toy art store in Chinatown.
The store recently sold out of a vinyl bust of Mao with Mickey Mouse ears. Lam tried to give the $200 item to his mother as a gift, but he said she was uneasy with the piece knowing that her parents had lived through the Cultural Revolution.
Charlie Woo, a toy manufacturer and a member of the influential Chinese American organization Committee of 100, said China's economy had taken more of the sting out of Mao's legacy.
"With China's turnaround, I think his harsh image has been softened," said the Hong Kong native who remembers nothing but vitriol for the communist leader when he lived in the former British colony. "I saw the story about the art exhibit in the Chinese Daily News and wasn't sure what to make of it. I'm just watching with amusement."
In November, John Kong and a crew of three other artists — all from various Beijing art schools — started creating 35 silk-screen paintings playing off a Year-of-the-Boar theme with Andy Warhol-inspired renderings. At the request of a festival organizer, the paintings were put on display Feb. 1 at City Hall and were set to remain there until today's new year parade.
The exhibit went on without a hitch until last week when someone walked into the lobby and noticed among all the paintings of pigs one that depicted Mao and George Washington's images on piggy banks.
He told Kai Chen, the former basketball player who is now an author and real estate owner. Chen was so livid to learn that Mao was being displayed in a municipal building that he called the assistant city manager and demanded the artwork be removed. A day later on Feb. 16, the painting was gone.
"We didn't mean to upset anyone," said City Manager Julio Fuentes. "There's a lot of history in this city, and we want to respect everyone's rights."
Kong and the other artists were so appalled by the decision that they drove their van to City Hall on Tuesday and reclaimed all their paintings.
"We didn't even ask for this show; the show came to us," Kong said from his Canoga Park studio Thursday.
He said artists in China had been experimenting with Mao's image for nearly two decades, the beginning of a period in which confidants and aides were coming forward to humanize — mostly in a negative light — the late dictator who had otherwise been portrayed divinely.
"Time passes on," said Kong, 54. "There's no more big brother in China. You can't do magazines or launch a private paper, but other than that, you enjoy freedom of speech."
Chen, the 6-foot-7 basketball player who fled China nearly three decades ago, said that's beside the point. "I can't demand Americans who view Andy Warhol to understand what Chinese have been through," he said. "But I do demand Chinese not to forget what Mao did."
Chen said that speaking out about the paintings was important, especially at a time when the prominence of China is rising both in the Chinese American community and the United States as a whole.
"There's a very unhealthy tendency to water down what the communists did," said Chen, 53.
When asked about how his family suffered during the Cultural Revolution, Chen said, "Read my book."
The synopsis to Chen's "One in a Billion: Journey Toward Freedom," on Amazon.com said his family "endured political persecution during the most oppressive years of Chinese modern history — the Cultural Revolution."
Chen, who immigrated to the U.S. in 1981 after falling in love with an American exchange student, said he and his family were exiled to Manchuria in 1965 because of their ties to the toppled Nationalist regime and Taiwan.
"This is a moral issue. You cannot commercialize Mao," he said. "They will repress Mao's true image to save face and for national pride. This is a perversion."
While not all the time one is responsible for his own misery and misfortune, he is always responsible for his own happiness. --- Dennis Prager
虽然一个人并不总对他自身的不幸与痛苦负责任，他却永远对他的幸福承担全部责任。 --- Dennis Prager
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Dear Visitors:
Think a little more about the above quote from the conservative talk show host Dennis Prager, maybe you will have better understanding of the conservative philosophy.
All the despotic society's philosophies promise the people under their rules happiness if they walk the line: Nazi Germany under Hitler promised 3,000 years of great Reich with prosperity and happiness if German people observed the Nazi doctrine. Communist societies such as China and USSR also promised their people great happiness if they followed the communist and socialist morality of individuals being nothing and the collective being everything. Now the Islamic fundamentalists guarantee their followers if they die for Allah, they will have 72 virgins waiting for them in heaven. Leftists in the West also often promise the poor and the unfortunate that if they vote for a big government, they will have happier lives.
In Contrast, free societies and the conservatives have never promised and will never promise individuals their happiness if they observe the principle of freedom, justice and human dignity. They only make sure that individuals in a free society are truly free - free from others' obstruction and interference. This is to ensure that one's misery and misfortune do not come from other entities and individuals. And one's happiness will never be the result of others' pity and handouts from government and will always be the result of one's own virtue, character, talent and hardwork. As a result, proven by empirical evidence, people who treasure freedom will often find their own happiness. And people who dream of happiness as the result of government's benevolence and power elite's sympathy are often the people of great misery and misfortune.
Freedom will NOT always result in individual's happiness, for freedom entails danger and risk-taking, and most of all, freedom entails personal responsibility. Yet without freedom, one will never have any possibility to be truly happy. No matter how comfortable one is in a cage, fed by some masters who control one's life and destiny, one will never have a chance to find the unique meaning of his own existence, to find his true love and happiness. Only free people can be truly creative, productive and progressive. Only free people can be truly happy.
Yes, indeed, Mao and his cohorts of Chinese communists, despotic Chinese cultural tradition, and the Chinese language itself have caused the Chinese individuals a lot of confusion, misery and suffering. But should these entities be also responsible for our happiness? Are they able to give us happiness? Should we expect them to give us happiness? If we have expectations that others, be it an ideology or some people (people in our family or some self-claimed saviors), should promise and guarantee our happiness, does that imply we are ultimately the roots of our own problems and unhappiness??
I have sensed now in China there is an emergence of Neo-Nazism and Neo-Collectivism that promise the Chinese people their happiness if they walk the line of self-deception. And culture-wise, the Chinese are very vulnerable to such a deceit. That is part of the reason the Chinese have never accepted the principle of freedom and individual responsibility. They have yet to grasp the truth:
"While one is not always responsible for his own misery and misfortune, one is ultimately always responsible for his own happiness."
Democracy based on individual freedom is a process that is gradual, often slow, but soft-ware oriented, substantial process of progress. America is the great example of such a directional, substantial progress. On the surface, it looks and feels slow, yet due to its essence of moral direction, it leads to the solid and long-lasting progress we have witnessed that surpasses all. The democratic history of America's less than three hundred years of substantial progress is a sharp contrast to the other societies in the world in their pursuit of "hardware progress", via expediency, violence and bloodshed, via peasant rebellion, revolution, political coup, etc. --- Kai Chen
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Dear Visitors:
The Chinese way of thinking can often be summed up with descriptions such as "expediency, shrewdness, power-struggle, quick-grab, superficial..." Yet most Chinese often jeer the American (Western) way of thinking and doing things, saying that it is too slow, too stupid, too inefficient.
On the surface, the Chinese way of unity under despotic rules often looks more effective and efficient. Everyone moves in sync, in unison under the threat of punishment by the authority. But nothing substantial has ever been achieved as exactly the result of such a way of thinking and doing things.
Expediency is not intelligence, and is often the opposite of intelligence. Rebellion, revolution, coup to grab power, all look efficient and quick in achieving a superficial result, as Mao deeply believed: "With political power, you gain everything, without political power, you lose everything." However, these morally degenerate beings without soul will never understand that they are deceiving themselves by ingesting a dose of powerful cultural narcotics. They, with their warped sense of reality due to the drug, will never understand the difference between progress and walking in a vicious "dynastic cycle". Chinese history of stagnation and degeneration of humanity proves my point.
Even today, the majority of Chinese still pursue a "quick fix" to the Chinese problems, namely, borrowing Western technology and know-how for a hardware development, but they entirely ignore and disregard how American and the West have achieved these progresses. The Chinese simply cannot, or refuse to, see the defective nature of the Chinese culture and language. They simply want to pluck the fruits from the West and America to artificially install them on their dried-up, lifeless, poisonous tree left by their ancestors. They simply want a democracy under an emperor, a modernity under the ancient rule, a freedom under despotism, a strong nation under the leadership of a bunch of self-castrated, inept eunuchs whose only goal is never pursuit of happiness and freedom, but castrating everyone in sight to feel a little consolation themselves.
"Americans are stupid, you see," the Chinese often tell you. "They argue and fight in their congress for months only to change a word in their law. What a waste of time and effort!" The Chinese always admonish their offsprings: "Do it the Chinese way -- whatever is quick and convenient, whatever works at the moment, whatever our ancestors have taught us."
These expedient and shrewd Chinese will never realize that they are only walking into the vicious cycle their ancestors have destined them to follow: A "quick-fix" without intelligence, without moral direction, without progress, just to "feel" good, just to save "face". Vision and morality are forever lost.
The Chinese still only have those fleshy eye balls, but they still cannot see.
只有邪恶的人，邪恶的文化与制度才将人作为无灵无智的血肉存活。 中国对“人”的物化就是中国文化邪恶性质的写照与证实。 --- 陈凯 Only evil people, evil cultures and evil systems take individuals human beings as mindless, soulless, nihilistic zombies. The fact of the Chinese "physicalizing" the world demonstrates the evil nature of the Chinese culture and the Chinese social and political system. --- Kai Chen
In the past the Chinese sold their natural resources for a living, then they sold their labor and muscles for a living. Now they are selling people's living organs and blood for a living. These are all the result of the Chinese selling their souls to the devil. --- Henry Zhang.
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Dear Visitors:
Today in LA Times there is an article about China admitting harvesting organs from death-roll prisoners. China counts for 80% of executions in the world, some estimate the figure is between 2,000 and 10,000 executions a year. The Chinese officials admit there are 1,770 executions in 2005. 90% organs for transplantation is from death-roll prisoners. The Chinese claim that most organs are bought by the foreigners with exorbitant price. They are setting the trap to blame the foreigners for their own evils.
With the facilitation of the Chinese pictorial, syllabic language as the major culprit to this Chinese "physicalization" of human beings, communist "material dialectics" and the Chinese despotism being the other sources of this evil "physicalization" and dehumanization, the Chinese have never taken human beings, themselves included, as the beginning and the end of an entire intact, sacred universe to treasure and appreciate. This dehumanization by physicalization of human beings has been going on since the beginning of the Chinese civilization. And with the communists' atheist and materialistic ideology, this evil (of dehumanization by physicalization) has been carried to a new height and reached to an unspeakable degree of insidiousness and utter disregard of human life. (Forced abortion and sterilization to serve the state's interests is another such dehumanization by physicalization widely practiced and accepted in China today.)
Organ harvest in China has been an open secret for many years, but the tolerance of this evil practice among the Chinese population is so detestable that any person with a shred of conscience will conclude that there must be something terribly wrong in the Chinese culture and among the China's masses. Zombies walking around looking for humans to devour until everyone in China becomes just another zombie has become so common place that the masses are utterly blind to such even they have physical eyes, and utterly numb in their soul to feel any outrage even they have a physical body.
This is because the Chinese have long lost their sight in their mind and soul, since the corrupt Confucianism took hold on the land of East Asia. Individual human lives have become nothing more than meaningless "passing time" and the despotic hierarchy and officialdom have become everything that overwhelms the Chinese consciousness. Power to dominate others, be it another human being or another group and nation, preoccupies most Chinese. They have long been devoid of their own individuality, dignity and humanity. They have long been devoured by their own ethnicity, skin color, ancestors, emperors, face and vanity. Everything superficial, everything artificial, everything material, everything physical, everything power-related, has become their "God".
I hope you read this article and feel the outrage about the Chinese "Dehumanization by Physicalization" of individual human beings. Maybe this outrage will prove that you are not just another zombie, that you still have some remnant humanity, remant dignity, remnant mind and soul in you.
When the wife of a friend of mine died of ovarian cancer, by refusing surgery and instead only using the traditional Chinese medicine, I wonder exactly what killed the woman: The cancer? The Chinese medicine? The ignorance? The superstition? The belief in the Chinese ancestors' witchcraft? --- Kai Chen
Today in LA Times, there is an article about Western medicine vs. Chinese medicine. Of course this article is from the left, accusing American health system as evil and expensive. Many Chinese who want to guard their ancestors' traditional witchcraft in medicine against Westernization of medical field often find advocates in the West, particularly among the left.
Toward the end of the article, a Chinese person lamented with great admiration, not toward Western culture and medicine, but toward Western power:
"If we have the power as great as that of the West, we will spread the Chinese medicine around the world." (not the exact quote, but something to that effect)
Can you imagine forcing people of the world at the muzzle of a gun to gobble down some turtle soup to cure cancer? The tendency of the Chinese to deny truth and reality has never ceased to amaze me. If among 100 cancer patients treated with Chinese medicine, only one survived, the Chinese with their pride in their ancestors, will claim the greatness of the Chinese medicine. But if among the same 100 cancer patients treated with surgery and Western medicine, one died, the Chinese will shamelessly claim the ineffectiveness of the Western medicine, regardless the constantly improving nature of the Western medicine. What an amazingly sick mindset!
The same thing can be alluded with the example of the Chinese language and English language. If there is an accidental achievement in the Chinese linguistic system after 4.000 years, the Chinese traditionalists will claim the greatness of the Chinese culture and language, such as four great inventions in 4,000 years. But they will be entirely blind to the achievements in the less than 300 years of American history of astonishing achievements with millions upon millions of inventions and scientific discoveries, pointing out only some defects to deny the progressive nature of the Western culture, such as slavery, auto-accidents and gun-related violence. What an amazingly sick mindset!
I now post the LA Times' article here for you to ponder what I have just said.
An attack on the traditional healing arts has inflamed adherents and sparked a debate about Western healthcare.
By Mark Magnier, Times Staff Writer January 8, 2007
Xikou, China — THE fur is flying, not to mention the acupuncture needles, the firewort and the $15,000-a-pound bull gallstones. China's ancient healing arts, as integral to national identity as the Great Wall or steamed dumplings, have become embroiled in the country's struggle to balance tradition and modernity.
A relatively obscure professor at a regional university kicked off the controversy in October with an online petition calling for traditional medicine to be stripped from the Chinese Constitution. It has a protected status here that, at least in theory, guarantees it equal footing with its Western counterpart.
Professor Zhang Gongyao and fellow critics have blasted Chinese medicine as an often ineffective, even dangerous derivative of witchcraft that relies on untested concoctions and obscure ingredients to trick patients, then employs a host of excuses if the treatment doesn't work.
For adherents of the 3,000-year-old system, this borders on heresy. The Health Ministry labeled Zhang's ideas "ignorant of history," and traditionalists have called the skeptics traitors bent on "murdering" Chinese culture.
Ironically, the firestorm dovetails with a growing embrace of Chinese medicine abroad as an antidote to the perceived soulless, money-obsessed nature of Western healthcare.
On a trip to China in mid-December, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt said the two countries planned to trade lessons on how to integrate Western and Chinese medicine.
"It's an area of interest for China and the U.S.," he said.
Many Australians, Europeans and Americans see the limitations of advanced science, said Rey Tiquia, an expert in Chinese traditional medicine based in Australia, even as more Chinese view their traditions as old-fashioned.
"For Chinese," he said, "it's still the lure of something new and shiny, like riding a car rather than a bicycle."
Since 1949, the number of traditional doctors trained in China has fallen by nearly half to 270,000, while the number of Western-trained doctors has jumped twentyfold to more than 1.7 million.
Criticism that traditional medicine is not scientific dates back centuries. But Zhang's prescriptive remedies — including an end to national insurance coverage for traditional medicine, rigorous scientific standards and obligatory Western training for traditional doctors — have hit a nerve at a time when traditional Chinese medicine is increasingly on the defensive.
At Beijing's prestigious Xiehe Hospital, cardiology, gynecology, internal medicine and other Western specialties are housed in a new six-story building filled with shiny equipment, well-maintained halls and renovated toilets. The traditional medicine department is relegated to eight consulting rooms and a therapeutic facility in an outer building with peeling green paint, water-stained walls and a foul smell emanating from a dimly lighted toilet.
Some blame skewed financial incentives and a government that is forgetting its roots.
"The Health Ministry is actually the Ministry of Western Health," said Lin Zhongpeng, a researcher with the Beijing Tianren Yiyi Traditional Medicine Institute. "It's also shocking that doctors get 15% kickbacks selling Western drugs."
TRADITIONAL remedies tend to be less expensive than Western ones. At the Tongrentang traditional pharmacy and clinic along Dashila alley in Beijing, a dozen people waited for football-sized bags of herbs for a few dollars each.
"Give me some deer sinew," said one customer, asking for a traditional cure for arthritis. "Large or small?" a clerk in a white coat asked, grabbing several from a tray.
But there are some notable, more expensive exceptions. In glass cases, beneath an ad touting an herbal tonic for avian flu, shelves brimmed with dried snakes, sea horses, ground-up pearls and deer horn powder, used for ailments such as rheumatism, paralysis, asthma, epilepsy, gastritis and acute infantile convulsions.
Nearby sat an ornate green box lined with red satin holding a shriveled deer penis and testicles ensemble for $63 — nature's apparent answer to Viagra. "That's to improve male function," an employee explained helpfully.
Deer privates at nearly a month's average wage hardly top the price list.
"The most expensive would be bull gallstones," a clerk said, pointing at a yellowish shrink-wrapped object the size of a nickel, used for fevers and inflammation.
In an adjoining building, third-generation traditional doctor Guan Qingwei examined several patients, prescribing different herbal combinations for insomnia, high-blood pressure and rashes.
Unlike Western medicine, which focuses on the disease, traditional medicine takes a holistic approach, he said. Adherents of "ZangXiang," one of the discipline's fundamental tenets, believe the body gives external clues to the imbalance of internal organs, which can be rectified with herbs and acupuncture. This makes knowledge of anatomy unnecessary, he said.
Both systems have their strengths, Guan said, but judging traditional medicine according to Western scientific theory and using "double blind" tests on herbal remedies is inappropriate.
"Not only is it unfair, it's laughable," he said. "It's like judging hamburgers based on the taste of dumplings."
Although Chinese schools pump out thousands of traditional medicine graduates each year, nearly half never practice — they chose the specialty because other departments were full.
This is in contrast with the United States, where most people who study medicine are mature, highly motivated students.
A Chinese government delegation on a recent visit to California said the U.S. could surpass China soon as the best place to learn traditional medicine, said Lixin Huang, president of the American College of Traditional Chinese Medicine in San Francisco, the nation's oldest such graduate program.
Traditional medicine in China tends to be more popular in rural areas and among older people, in part because of its lower cost.
Each day here in the farm village of Xikou, traditional doctor Liu Huade, 92, sees as many as a dozen patients suffering from ailments such as kidney failure, "women's problems" and liver tumors. Until a few years ago, he picked all of his own herbs in the nearby mountains.
Liu Qiuyao, 59, stopped by to have his pulse checked. Privacy was hardly a concern as a dog wandered in and out of the one-room consultation area accompanied by several villagers eager to chat or buy pills.
Two years ago, Liu, an impoverished farmer, spit up blood and was told to go to a Western medicine hospital, but he couldn't afford it. So he came to the traditional doctor, who cured him with herbs.
"I'd rather come here," he said, his right eye fused shut beneath a shock of unkempt hair. "When a prescription is too expensive, Dr. Liu tells me where to pick the herbs myself."
A common criticism of Chinese medicine involves its often-unregulated ingredients.
"Many herbal medicines considered innocuous are actually very toxic," said Fang Zhouzi, a biochemist, columnist and founder of a website that targets academic fraud. "But practitioners and proponents cover this up using various excuses."
THE U.S. Food and Drug Administration banned products marketed as Chinese herbal medicine during the 1970s and '80s after they were implicated in several deaths. In 2004, the FDA issued a ban on the controversial herb ephedra after it was linked to heart attacks and strokes.
Chinese traditional experts blame misuse. They point to guan mu tong, which has been used for centuries to treat urinary tract infections. Problems surfaced only when Westerners used it incorrectly as part of a weight loss therapy, they say.
Nor are Western drugs free of powerful side effects, others counter.
"Why don't people talk about Western medicines that cause problems?" said Zheng Jinsheng, a professor at the Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences in Beijing, who thinks both disciplines have their place. "Why is traditional medicine always blamed?"
Chinese medicine's use of endangered animal and plant ingredients also has been cause for concern. Officially, China forbids trading in the items, but rising incomes and old habits threaten species worldwide.
Only about 30 Chinese tigers, hunted for their bones and other parts, remain in the wild, experts estimate, compared with tens of thousands a few decades ago. Tiger parts are used for rheumatism and to increase virility.
Substances such as bear gallbladder bile are legal, but the cruel conditions under which they are "farmed" have attracted worldwide criticism.
"People in China need to change their values," said Mang Ping, associate professor at Beijing's Central Institute of Socialism. "And most of the time there are replacements in traditional medicine."
Dog bones, for example, are now recommended in lieu of tiger bones, buffalo horns for rhinoceros horns.
Western medicine was introduced to China by missionaries in the late 16th century, though it remained largely a curiosity for centuries. Starting in the early 19th century, missionary hospitals became more widespread as European nations elbowed for influence in a weakened China.
"There was a proverb that the door that couldn't be opened with a gun could be opened with a single surgery knife," said Zheng, the professor at the Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences.
In 1914 and again in 1929, pro-Western governments tried unsuccessfully to ban traditional medicine as backward and unsafe, spurred by the likes of intellectual Liang Qichao, who had his healthy right kidney accidentally removed by Western-trained doctors but still sung their praises.
Traditional doctors, threatened with the loss of their livelihoods, spread rumors that Western doctors removed Chinese organs and stored them in their churches, using children's hearts in demon rituals.
"We must never forget our roots," said Li Jian, 46, a business consultant, accompanying his father to a traditional doctor for a liver ailment. "Western medicine always tries to judge traditional medicine from its perspective. Maybe if China becomes very powerful one day, we'll return the favor."
From Zhang Yimou's "To Live" to his "The First Emperor", from Chen Kaige's "The Big Military Parade" to his "Farewell My Concubine", the Chinese collectivist eunuch artists and intellectuals are using their despotic instincts and products to espouse the typical Chinese pathology and paranoia that is in essence an evil, corrupt, despicable virgin-whore complex. The cowardice, constant complaint about life and a deafening silent desperation over existence are powerfully fueling the Chinese illusion and delusion to recover their old imperial glory. After the WWII and the crushing defeat of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and Militaristic Japan, the Chinese are stepping into the same old mode of revenge against the West and revival of their old glory of imperial despotism. Tragedy and self-destruction will ensue as history repeats itself for those who have never learned. --- Kai Chen
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Dear Visitors:
As we deplore the Chinese eunuch artists and intellectuals for their soulless pursuit of glory for the state and the collective, we have to recognize the fact that such a phenomenon of desperation over life fueling illusions over recovering past glory is not uncommon among old civilizations in the world. We have to recognize the fact that today most Chinese are essentially corrupt and degenerate in their mindless pursuit of illusory glory for their despotic party-state.
I have just met too many Chinese who constantly complain about life in China under the communist rule, while secretively wishing the communist success in recovering the Chinese ancient glory of imperial domination over weaker neighbors, not to reveal to you such a common Chinese mindset.
Such a pathological complex has a lot to do with the Chinese syllabic language and its dominant popular culture under Confucianism. Departure from reality, cultural atavism, degeneration into the past are all symptoms from the evil roots of Confucianism assisted by the pictorial, syllabic Chinese character-based language. Without knowing this essential fact, any attempt to address the issue of Chinese recurring despotic dynasties will be like applying castration to cure infertility, or using poison against poison. The end result will always be tragic and disastrous.
This detachment of the Chinese from reality, truth and universal morality has been continuing. The language they use, the terms they formulate, the remedies they propose, the methods they apply all reflect the deep-root corruption and perversion in the Chinese soul.
I hope you will take a moment to examine your own daily behavior, making sure you are not just doing the same.
Not only "Middle Kingdom"implies "center", "middle", "neutral", "half man half devil", "void of moral judgment", "void of value", "Monkey King Syndrome", "Middle Kingdom", based on its pictorial image of a top, implies "being whipped", "spin", "stagnation", "dynastic cycle", "self-centered", "no initiatives"... "Middle Kingdom" has caused tremendous harm and damage to East Asia for the last few thousand years. It is time to put "Middle Kingdom" at rest. --- Kai Chen
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Dear Visitors:
The current Chinese leaders' "harmonious society" scheme 和谐社会 is nothing but the continuation of the old Chinese mindset of "Middle Kingdom", aimed at numbing people's mind and maintaining despotic control:
With this "harmony scheme", anyone who has a soul and moral core will be labeled "disturbing harmony". Anyone who initiates anything will be called "causing trouble" to society and harming harmony. Anyone who seeks truth and reality will be put in jail for "harmony" is the most important value in society, not progress, not truth, not freedom, not happiness, not joy, not meaning. Harmony is nothing but a stinky pool of decadent human degenerates. Harmony is nothing but the central theme of Confucianism aimed at maintaining the emperor's despotic power and an oppressive society.
Harmony is the opposite of human progress, opposite of truth-seeking, opposite of human creativity, opposite of anything of moral value, opposite of human nature. Harmony is at the center core of the Chinese "Middle Kingdom" psyche. Harmony will pull China back toward the dark ages.
Unless the Chinese start to realize the poisonous effect of Confucian "harmony", they will forever be mired in a cycle of self-deception and self-destruction.
The Chinese are obsessed with the notion that only the collective, such as a nation, a race, a religion, etc., can define an individual and therefore endow an individual with meaning. It is the opposite in the West and America. Here in a culture of freedom and on the land of freedom, only the individual's free and full expression of himself gives meaning to the collective he is in. Therefore, it is the individual who has the ultimate power to instill meaning in the collective. Where is comparison between China and America?? There is none. Between China and America, there is only CONTRAST. --- Kai Chen
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Dear Visitors:
Yesterday I went on the internet and glimpsed over the recent Chinese documentary movie "The Rise of A Great Nation" 大国崛起. I didn't know if I want to laugh, I want to cry or I want to vomit.
Cultural and spiritual narcotics has seeped so deep into the Chinese souls that in everything they do and in everything they say, you can smell, taste, hear, see and touch the decay, the addictive poison and the rotten corpses that are walking around, pretending to be alive.
There is no doubt that this movie has been made under the tutelage and tutorage of the Chinese communist party, in their desperate attempt to establish its legitimacy among the Chinese and to regain its footing in maintaining their unchallenged, though wavering power. This is another form of political propaganda, not quite by wielding a gun above the Chinese heads to stuff it down the Chinese throats, like Mao did before. But this is done in a more insidious and pernicious way, much like what the Confucius did to the Chinese. This form of propaganda is done by appealing to the weakness and using the addictiveness of the Chinese people themselves to cultural opium. By using the susceptible Chinese psyche and mindset to all kinds of cultural and spiritual narcotics, the Chinese communists seduce the Chinese with the glory of a "Great Nation", the omnipresent obsession of the Chinese "Face" to bring all the Chinese into their fold. The communists understand the Chinese, understand their total lack of "self" and the concept of "individual", understand their yearning for saviors, understand their fear of their own greatness as individuals, understand their obsession with maintaining a stagnant social order, understand their thirst for collective domination in the world, understand their deep Confucian mind-set.... The Chinese communists are thus secure.
Power and security are the only things the communists care about, and unfortunately, they are the only things the Chinese people themselves care about. Freedom, individual, joy, happiness, meaning, spirit and soul, conscience..., are not in the Chinese mindset, are not in the Chinese vocabulary. They are infatuated with their "great nation" and "great civilization". Each Chinese individual lives in a quiet desperation, yet they get a daily dose of potent cultural narcotics to keep them going, to keep them in a state of orgasmic euphoria - a ecstatic fantasy that Buddhist monks spend their life time to reach - by emptying their mind. That is why the Chinese individuals need to be with crowd all the time, need to stay away from seclusion with peace and quite all the time. They need "messiness and noise", 热闹，to numb their own mind so they can be oblivious to their own true existence. Even in their quiet moment, their own mind is not on searching for the truth and meaning of their lives, but on how to escape from these fundamental and inescapable human issues and attributes. So they meditate and do "Tai Chi", drink and play "Majiang", NOT to be in touch with reality, but to escape reality.
Now the Chinese communists supply them with another dose of narcotics -- "The Great Nation" 大国, and the Chinese are just too willing to swallow it, for their old fix is less and less potent. Money, sex, power, material things can no longer fully fill their void. They need something more potent, and the communists are just too willing to oblige.
Isn't this the essence of the Chinese dynastic cycle? The drug addicts keep wanting more drugs, the drug manufacturers keep supplying them with more and more potent narcotics, the drug sellers (the eunuch Chinese intellectuals) keep inventing all the schemes to sell the Chinese all kinds of "designer drugs".... Over and over again, until the Chinese mind goes entirely dark, with the Chinese soul entirely missing, their physical existences entirely devoid of nutrition, their mind entirely empty from meaning. Then, these "Monkey Kings", 孙悟空们，will pull out their "Magic Club", 金箍棒，from nowhere to smash everything around them when they realize that they are dying. Then an old dynasty comes to an end, and a new dynasty starts to come into being.... Over and over again, till the end of time.
Between "a great nation" and your individual freedom and dignity, what do YOU want? Choose. And you will have to take all that comes from your own very individual choice.
Poverty of possessions may easily be cured, but poverty of soul never. --- Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
财富上的贫穷并不难医治，但精神与灵魂上的贫穷却无法医治。 --- Michel Eyquem de Mongtaigne
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Dear Visitors:
Too often we hear the leftist slogans such as equality of opportunity which often mount to fostering a government policy to equalize wealth among the population. It is self-deceptive to demand equalization of opportunity and wealth, for such demand is based only on jealousy, and jealousy is an essential part of sin in human souls. To appeal to the human urge to be just like those on top is an effective yet evil trapping device commonly used by the socialists and the leftists in the world for their power-mongering.
It is easy for anyone who is born poor to fall into this evil trap. But if anyone with an adequate intellect and a decent soul will recognize the truth that opportunities in the world will never be equal among humans, because we are born different with different talents and endowments:
Even if we all start at the same starting line with Carl Lewis in 100 meter dash, we are not equal in opportunity with him. Carl Lewis will always win, for he has an unique talent and interest in this event. Is this unfair? No. For even Carl Lewis can't beat Mike Tyson in the ring, because Mike Tyson has an unique talent in boxing. These colorful and talented people are the very reason why this world is full of excitement and passion that benefit us all. An equal-oppotunity world would be a colorless and boring place where everyone is oppressed and depressed, for everyone is forced to be just like the other, even if he does not want to be.
Equality can only be meaningful under and by the value of freedom. It is Freedom of Opportunity, not equality of opportunity, that human beings truly value. Freedom to create, freedom to look for values, freedom to improve oneself, freedom to stay and leave, freedom to choose or not to choose..., these freedoms are what make human lives meaningful. In these freedoms we can truly realize our own individual values in life, for each and everyone of us is responsible for our own free choices. We take credit and bear consequences for the free choices we make ourselves as individuals.
Freedom of opportunity means that if I can't beat Carl Lewis on the track or Mike Tyson in the ring, I can start a new event, create a new opportunity for myself that maximize my talent and chance to succeed. Bill Gates is only one such example: A school drop-out at a very young age, he could not see the opportunity for himself individually if he just travel the road most people travel. So he started his own business with his own unique concepts in electronic software. And by travelling a road others had not seen or dared to travel, he created his own starting line that most people at the time would never want to stand behind.
Freedom of opportunity means taking rare initiatives and bear bigger risks. Many fail in the beginning but a few tenacious ones will continue to initiate, learning from their past mistakes. They will eventually succeed and become the unmovable movers to push history forward. America has a high percentage of such risk-takers than any other place in the world, so America takes the lead in pushing history forward among the wrold communities.
America is a land of opportunity, not because it gives people equal chance to succeed. By assuming equality of opportunity, government, not individuals, become the paramount factor in a society for only government can decide what is an equal or unequal opportunity. With such a premise, we all inevitably become the subjects of our government and creatures of our own environment.
America is a land of opportunity, because it respects and guarantees individuals their freedom to create their own opportunities, according to their own talents, endowments and comparative advantages in any particular field, some of these fields are still yet to be defined and created by these individual inventors, explorers, adenturers and initiators.
So don't just follow the slogans shouted by the majortiy led by a few power mongers. Use your brains and souls to direct yourself to comprehend reality, to create your own opportunity, to progress with your own pace and to succeed with your own terms.
One man with courage makes majority. --- Andrew Jackson
[size=18]一个有勇气的独立个体本身就是多数。 --- 杰克逊[/size]
In America, majority is composed of independent, free individuals. Such majority's only goal and purpose is to protect and preserve the freedom, rights and the sacred sovereignty of each and every individual in it. In China, majority is composed of slaves under thousands of years of despotic rule with a constant indoctrination of a despotic culture (namely Confucianism), and each such slave is under total submission by his own ignorance, weaknesses and cowardice. Such majority's only goal and purpose is to protect and preserve the interests of the rulers and the despotic polity through an absolute suppression of freedom, independence and dignity of each and every individual in it. --- Kai Chen
When we talk about the essential component in a democracy, namely Majority Rule, we can never forget the nature of such majority and who compose such a majority. To lose sight on such an important definition is to lose the guidance of our own conscience.
I often hear those despotic countries wanting to use the concept of national sovereignty to override human rights and dignity. In such a rhetoric, any moral concern in human affairs will be reduced to only a farce. Individuals and their freedom and dignity become only subject under and secondary to the interests of tyrannic governments.
So when you talk about majority rule, don't forget that in American Constitution, the Bill of Rights is the essential component of such a document and thus it makes such a document legitimate. In China and all the despotic countries, their fake constitutions are only pretenses for the ruling class to subdue individuals in such societies, making them nothing but tools and slaves to serve the tyrannical majority represented by governments with guns.
You must distinguish the essential difference between American Majority and Chinese Majority, between American Constitution and Chinese Constitution. You must maintain that moral compass in your heart -- your conscience by God.
用社会主义赚资本主义的钱是中国目前极度腐败的特色与本源。 --- 陈凯 The times without monetary economy have been the darkest, the murkiest era of human history. The Chinese Cultural Revolution was only one of such examples. Can we say that using "spying on others" and "sleeping with officials" to acquire city residential status or college entrance was not a form of extreme corruption? Can we say that after Mao abolished official insignia from the PLA uniform, the class distinction henceforth was eliminated?
The current extreme corruption in the Chinese society is only because of the introduction of a monetary system into the Chinese society that has thoroughly exposed the extreme corruption of the Chinese traditional culture since its beginning two thousand years ago. Contrary to the views of most Chinese with heavily "physicalized mindset" because of the Chinese language and culture, capitalist monetary economy is never the origin of the Chinese corruption, it only makes the society more transparent so people can quantify the extent of the corruption that has always existed in the Chinese culture. The Chinese corruption was originated long ago since the first emperor and Confucianism with their emphasis on "unity", "passivity", "centralized power in the government" and "middle-road" approach to justice. This traditional corruption has only accelerated since the Chinese communist policy of "one country, two systems" and its drive toward "socialism Chinese style". The subsequent result is that China does not have a real capitalist economy, but a government controlled "modern mercantilism" and a "bureaucratic atomized market" aimed at only to strengthen the central government's total control of the society under the communist party.
Using socialism to make capitalist money is the essence and origin of the extreme Chinese corruption today. --- Kai Chen
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Dear Visitors:
Many Chinese, due to their using the pictorial Chinese language and their toxicant Chinese mindset instilled by thousands of years of Confucian brain-washing, blame capitalism for today's China's extreme corruption in society. Even among some of my youpai.org colleagues, people blame money as the origin of evil and capitalistic self-interest as the origin of corruption.
They are extremely mistaken.
Is the Chinese corruption caused by Capitalism? Or Socialism? Or Socialism using Capitalism? Is the Chinese corruption caused by money? Or by soulless and mindless people brainwashed by Confucianism and Communism for a long period of time?
To answer such questions, one needs not only mind, one needs courage and conscience. One simple example can illustrate my point. Which society is more racist? American society or Chinese society? Simple glimpse on the surface will show you that there is more mention of racism in American news media, while in the Chinese media, there is a total lack of such a mention. What is the reality here?
A "physicalized" Chinese mind will conclude that there is more racism in America. But a conscientious and mindful view will be that America, due to its freedom of speech and press, exposes racism to its bones, even the smallest occurrence, while in China, the lack of freedom and a homogeneous population tend to obscure the most obvious injustice and evil, racism (often extreme in the form of Chinese xenophobia) included.
Another example is that in absolute figures, America tends to have more auto accident and gun-related crime. But if one dwells on the facts and essence of occurrences, it is not difficult to see that per-gun crime and per-auto accident rate in America are very low, in comparison with that of China.
I would like to show you one more extreme example that only the drug addicts could concoct: During the Cultural Revolution, Mao abolished all the official insignia from the military uniforms. Only the red star and red lapels remained to indicate one was in the army. Did this mean that in China, since there was no such thing as military insignia, there was no class distinction? I was in the PLA for ten years and I know that the truth could not be further from that. People would find the smallest reason to show their superiority, to show that they have power over you. By not reflecting the truth openly and hiding the truth from people's consciousness, the communists and Mao made things immensely much worse, much more damaging, much more insidious.
So when you truly want to see reality and search for truth, strip the superficial phenomena and drill into the core of things. Then you may discover what you have been taught from the day you were born has been totally false and opposite of the truth. And then you have to pluck your courage to break free from Chinese traditional thinking, its syllabic language and the most insidious brain-washing by Confucianism and Communism.
Fri Oct 14, 2011 7:10 am
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