Comments on the President's Speech about Elitism versus Illiterate Revolutionaries

President Discusses War on Terror at National Endowment for Democracy

According to George W. Bush, “The murderous ideology of the Islamic radicals is the great challenge of our new century. Yet, in many ways, this fight resembles the struggle against communism in the last century. Like the ideology of communism, Islamic radicalism is elitist, led by a self-appointed vanguard that presumes to speak for the Muslim masses. Bin Laden says his own role is to tell Muslims, quote, "what is good for them and what is not." And what this man who grew up in wealth and privilege considers good for poor Muslims is that they become killers and suicide bombers. He assures them that his -- that this is the road to paradise -- though he never offers to go along for the ride. “ While he may be right on the elitism of Bin Laden, the Chinese Nationalist “elitism” is different. A very indelible figure, author Lu Xun 魯迅, internalized and embodied a figure, called The Autobiography of A-Q 阿Q正傳. He mocked and jeered this fictional Chinese man, with all of the confusion and flaws of an uneducated Chinese. It is so sad that it is not so much that he is illiterate that is tragic, but his capability to feel for his countrymen. Lu Xun deplored that some Chinese would watch the Japanese and the Russian colonialists openly punish the Chinese under their law, by chopping their heads off in execution style, and the Chinese mob would come to the market to watch as if a show. A-Q was such an unfeeling person. He was mistakenly taken into jail as a “Revolutionary Nationalist” who normally had advanced education and dared to say no and to challenge the authority, either the Qing Dynasty oppressive rulers or the foreign colonialists. A female martyr, a schoolteacher, Qiu Jin 秋瑾, and her hometown men were the typical revolutionaries who went to Japan to study. A revolutionary man from her hometown, Xu Xilin 徐錫麟, was murdered by the Qing army with his heart and liver poked out and literally cooked. She was executed and wrote a poem about the sad autumn prior to her death. A –Q was executed after he signed a forced confession with a circle and he was proud, and believed his grandchildren could do better than himself, as that was the first time he had written on paper with a pen. First point. The idea is that the Chinese Han people wanted to overthrow the suppressive Qing Dynasty for a long time, but were unsuccessful, because the Boxers in 1900 were a superstitious youth group who were mobilized to hate the foreigners, as the foreign invaders brought pain to the country in return. The Chinese Nationalists, in contrast, were highly educated and believed that violence was not the way towards progress. In this sense, the intellectual elitism was needed to organize and lead a democratic revolution to overflow the Qing. The consequence of killing a German diplomat was to invite the German Army to lead the rest of 7 countries (including the U.S.) to enter the Forbidden city in 1900, looting and burning for 3 days and nights, while the Chinese royal family escaped to Xian, and signed a treaty which rendered the Qing bankrupt, leading towards the revolution that took place 1911. . Second point. America can not solve the Sunni and Shiite problems, just like the racial split between Han and Qing. They need to resolve their differences among themselves. Bush’s words again: “This is a dangerous illusion, refuted with a simple question: Would the United States and other free nations be more safe, or less safe, with Zarqawi and bin Laden in control of Iraq, its people, and its resources? Having removed a dictator who hated free peoples, we will not stand by as a new set of killers, dedicated to the destruction of our own country, seizes control of Iraq by violence. “ In China, the communists got rid of Chiang, and gave us Mao, and then the Chinese had annihilation and persecution within for decades. Conclusion: When the Nationalists started, they were mostly of the elite class who studied hard and did not rob anybody, but they were robbed and did not know how to maintain their fortunes, so they ended up to have very little to pass on to their families. Though, they are not tycoons anymore, their deeds are forever like pure moonlight in its love spreading to the hearts who were longing for their protection, caress and care. I was blessed to know them, as I was their descendant. The world doesn’t know them, as only Mao and Chiang dominated the space and thinking, even for Roosevelt who sympathized with the left and mistakenly thought all nationalists were the elite right wing, and he might have been fooled as he had never been to China, didn’t know the language, and could not ever touch the love emanating from those figures. They gave everything they owned and their family life also suffered. They sympathized with the masses. When they had to evacuate and burned Hangzhou Bridge, they made sure that all the people were evacuated and were safely out with their belongings, before they ordered the bombing of the bridge. It was not wantonly done, as it was ordered by Chiang Kai Shek.