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I don’t have sufficient experience or knowledge to call myself an Old China Hand, but I can claim to be something of an authority on China punditry—an Old “Old China Hand” Hand, as it were. I think I’ve read ’em all at some time or other in the past forty years, from Matteo Ricci and the Abbé Huc  to Bill Gertz and Richard McGregor.

The spectrum of opinion on China and her prospects is, and always has been, very wide. At one end of the spectrum is the “sleeping giant” school arguing that if China can get her sociopolitical ducks in a row and keep them there, she will bestride the world like a Colossus, at least commercially.

This view has deep roots in the Sinophilia that swept 18^th-century Europe (and was derided by the unfoxable Sam Johnson). Its present-day proponents include Thomas Friedman and practically all educated young Chinese people..

At the other end of the spectrum are the China skeptics. Forbes.com Asia columnist Gordon Chang holds the current franchise, but he has had many predecessors.

A personal favorite of mine among those predecessors is Rodney Yonkers Gilbert, a Harvard-educated American businessman and journalist who went to China shortly after the 1911 revolution and stayed through the ensuing two decades of chaos. Gilbert’s 1926 book What's wrong with China is a bracing antidote to Sinophilia; or perhaps, depending on your point of view, a sad record of “China fatigue”—a psychological ailment known to afflict many Westerners who stay too long in that country.

Gilbert leaves no positive stereotype unexploded. The hard-working Chinese?

The Chinese day labourer, working for another at a daily wage without adequate supervision, would furnish a striking cinema picture of slow motion. He will move no faster than he is driven, and it is no exaggeration to say that a dozen Chinese pick-and-shovel men, left to their own devices, will do less work in a week than two white labourers will do in a day.

(On the same theme, here is a scrap from the notes I took while living in China thirty years ago. It is extracted from an article titled “Studying in the United States,” which appeared in The World of English, a bilingual magazine published in Peking for advanced students, January 1983 issue: “Work in general is something that is highly valued in American society. Since hard work is believed to help people get ahead, Americans often work long hours and do not take afternoon naps as we do . . .” My italics.)

Gilbert was experiencing China at the lowest point of a dynastic cycle, though. For a cooler view, somewhere around the middle of the spectrum, I recommend Robert Fortune, an English botanist who traveled around China in the 1840s, in the lull between the Opium Wars and the Taiping Rebellion.

Fortune adopted Chinese dress and spoke the language well enough to pass himself off as a traveler from a distant province. His observations overlap somewhat with Gilbert’s of eighty years later. Both authors, for example, note how extremely rare it was to see a Chinese person reading a book for pleasure—another stereotype exploded.

Fortune is less bombastic and more just than Gilbert, though. Occasionally he is rhapsodic:

I fully believe that in no country in the world is there less real misery and want than in China. The very beggars seem a kind of jolly crew, and are kindly treated by the inhabitants.

One lesson I have taken from all that reading is that it is a mighty difficult thing to make accurate predictions about China. The Chinese themselves are not much good at it, as I noticed in the case of Liu Binyan five years ago. For foreigners it’s a mug’s game.

That game, though—let’s call it the Great China Guessing Game—is irresistibly fascinating to many of us, and new rounds of it are constantly being played.

Especially popular recently are debates about whether China’s managerial authoritarianism is competitive with,

 [On CPAC in 2012, see: “High Fences, Wide Gates”: CPAC Continues Immigration Cop-Out, by Washington Watcher]

 "Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket,” Eric Hoffer is supposed to have said.  Nowhere is this more obvious than with Conservatism Inc., the D.C.-focused parasitical congerie of corrupt interest groups which is now all that is left of the Late, Great American Conservative Movement that carried Ronald Reagan to victory in 1980. And nowhere is it more visible that at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference [CPAC], which begins pre-festivities with the Weyrich Awards keynoted by Senator Ted Cruz tonight (March 12).

CPAC is characterized by massive youth turnout and parties (leading to the popular slogan, “What happens at CPAC stays at CPAC”). This gives it a certain utility in gauging the grassroots mood—for example, VDARE.com Editor Peter Brimelow, observing the first post-Obama CPAC, predicted the fierce backlash that became the Tea Party triumph of 2010.

But Brimelow also noted CPAC’s tight control by a self-interested D.C. in-group. This in-group’s crude (if eccentric) exclusionary policies have now precipitated a number of quarrels even within the Beltway Right.

The exclusion has become especially totalitarian on the immigration issue. In the past, CPAC’s managers have pretended to be even-handed. This year, as POLITICO’s Jonathan Martin and Maggie Haberman report,

Immigration, too, is flaring up as a point of contention. [CPAC sponsor American Conservative Union’s head Al] Cardenas is an outspoken backer of immigration reform [a.k.a. amnesty plus immigration surge], and the CPAC panel on the topic is stacked with like-minded Republicans at a moment when the issue still divides conservatives. [Links added by VDARE.com]

CPAC muddle mirrors GOP mess, March 13, 2013. See also Does CPAC matter anymore? By Karen Tumulty, Washington Post, March 13, 2013. VDARE.com emphasis. 

In the short run, however, the CPAC managers’ biggest problem is likely to be with libertarians—CPAC is the ideal setting for the emerging “Liberty Movement” to flex its muscle. Indeed, the Beltway Right is on the verge of being displaced by what might be called Libertarianism Inc.

Immigration patriots don’t have a dog in this fight, but should watch it closely.

Conservatism Inc.’s remarkable collapse of morale following President Obama's re-election is no surprise. It has profited for years by transmuting the grievances of the core American population into an illogical agenda that has nothing to do with defending that constituency’s interests. It drew on the style of Pat Buchanan and Sam Francis, while eliminating intellectual substance, and purging anyone who thought differently. The result is that “conservatism” has become a chaotic morass of irrational (but oddly Politically Correct) conspiracy theories, alarmist rhetoric about foreign policy threats, fanciful historical revisionism, and maudlin nostalgia for a simultaneously traditionalist and anti-racist America that never actually existed.

The Stupid Party is rather, well, stupid. It is incapable of serious thinking on a host of issues, especially those surrounding immigration. The endless search for a vibrant non-white face to front the same platform cannot conceal the reality that Conservatism Inc. is intellectually exhausted. The well has run dry.

Thus, young dissenters against Leftism, who would have been “Movement Conservatives” in the Reagan Era, are looking for something new that can promise victory. They have found it in libertarianism, following the rise of Ron Paul.

Unlike contemporary conservatism, libertarianism provides a coherent worldview. It at least attempts to address the crises that Leftism has created and to provide (if I can be forgiven the phrase) final solutions. For that reason, it attracts much of the better human caliber of the young Right. These activists can at least make the case that if only “the state” is drastically reduced or eliminated, everything from economic recession, to war, to ethnic conflict will be eliminated. Youth is also inherently more attracted to movements with revolutionary overtones. And young libertarians see the problem as the “neoconservatives” who have infiltrated Conservatism Inc.

Beltway conservatives who are wondering what happened to their movement have only themselves to blame. For decades, these clever charlatans slapped Politically Correct “limited government” sheen of sophistry over the actual interests of their unmentionable white middle and working class supporters. Now, a new generation has grown up believing that propaganda.

Conservatism Inc. was shocked in 2010 and 2011 by Ron Paul's victories in the CPAC Presidential Straw poll—and also by the raucous reception supposed conservative “heroes” received. In one especially amusing incident, Donald Rumsfeld and was massively booed in 2011 while receiving the “Defender of the Constitution Award” from ACU head David Keene—as was former Vice-President Dick Cheney.

Conservatism Inc. responded with an elaborate effort to suppress the Paul vote in 2012. The paper ballot was switched to an easier-to-use computer ballot, encouraging more casual attendees to vote. CPAC managers also undertook reforms to prevent “stacking” by libertarians and actively promoted various neoconservative speakers. And there was wailing and gnashing of teeth about the lack of “civility” supposedly shown by Paul supporters.

The intended result was achieved: Mitt Romney won the 2012 straw poll—and, of course, went on to blow the Presidential election.

This year, the battle will be between Conservative Inc. favorite Marco Rubio and Rand Paul. CPAC's changed location to remote Maryland may be part of a deliberate effort to skew attendance and guarantee Rubio's victory.

That said, Conservatism Inc. itself is on the verge of cracking up. Some factions within the Beltway support the libertarian surge—provided they can stay in control.  They want libertarians to stay on the reservation, and not challenge the reigning leadership in policy (and donations).

For example, Open Borders shill/ CPAC grey eminence Grover Norquist has voiced support for Ron Paul and his movement. Both Rand Paul and his ghost-writer/ grassroots ambassador Jack Hunter have responded with warm praise.

And FreedomWorks, until recently the home of illegal immigration supporter and corporate lobbyist Dick Armey (there was a predictable dispute over—you guessed it—money) is a pillar of Conservatism Inc. but simultaneously a supporter of Paul, providing a home for popular libertarian activists on staff.

Finally, the Cato Institute occasionally takes time from hailing Open Borders to praise the libertarian revolution and give support to groups like Students for Liberty.

Both nominally anti-Establishment libertarians and Conservatism Inc. get something from this reciprocal relationship. The former gain access. The latter purge away some of the more subversive elements of libertarianism and restructure it to fit within Conservatism Inc. Both have an interest in transforming grassroots American conservatism into an “economistic” movement.

One problem: many younger libertarians do not want to be seen as being on the “Right.” Historically, Conservatism Inc. has been cunning enough to use middle class white Americans as useful idiots. But many of the emerging libertarians are so housebroken to Political Correctness that they can't stand to be in the same room as even implicitly patriotic movements.

Thus the forthrightly left-libertarian Students for Liberty recently attacked the idea of “fusionism”

The Beltway is buzzing over President Obama's likely nomination of Thomas E. Perez as the next head of the U.S. Department of Labor. But when Americans find out whom Perez has lobbied for most aggressively over the course of his extremist leftwing social justice career, they'll be wondering which country Obama's pick really plans to serve.

Press accounts describe Perez, currently the assistant attorney general for the Justice Department's civil rights division, as a "tireless advocate of worker and civil rights." The son of immigrants from the Dominican Republic, Perez was a former special counsel for the late illegal alien amnesty champion Sen. Ted Kennedy.

During the Clinton years, Perez worked at the Justice Department to establish a "Worker Exploitation Task Force" to enhance working conditions for ... illegal alien workers. While holding down his government position, Perez volunteered for Casa de Maryland. This notorious illegal alien advocacy group is funded through a combination of taxpayer-subsidized grants (totaling $5 million in 2010 alone from Maryland and local governments) and radical liberal philanthropy, including billionaire George Soros' Open Society Institute.

That's in addition to more than $1 million showered on the group by freshly departed Venezuelan thug Hugo Chavez's regime-owned oil company, CITGO.

As I've reported previously, Perez rose from Casa de Maryland volunteer to president of the group's board of directors. Under the guise of enhancing the "multicultural" experience, he crusaded for an ever-expanding set of illegal alien benefits, from in-state tuition discounts for illegal alien students to driver's licenses and tax-subsidized day labor centers. Casa de Maryland opposes enforcement of deportation orders, has protested

The conclave to elect Pope Benedict XVI’s successor begins today (March 12). As a traditional Catholic and an American patriot, I am mildly hopeful about the liturgical and theological outcome—but, frankly, not optimistic about the implications for the immigration debate.

Just over ten years ago, (January 22, 2003), the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops [USCCB] and the bishops of Mexico sent a Pastoral Letter to Catholic parishes throughout the US and Mexico entitled, Strangers No Longer: Together on the Journey of Hope. Complete with footnotes and definitions, it amounted to a Treason Lobby vade mecum, a blueprint that, for all its Biblical injunctions, primarily sought the amnesty of untold millions of illegal aliens currently in the US—the majority of whom are Mexican nationals (and nominal Catholics).

As VDARE.com readers are well aware, Amnesty attempts were twice defeated in Congress during the second term of President George W. Bush. But now the Obama Administration has made “comprehensive immigration reform”—the cowardly code word for amnesty—a top priority in its second term. The GOP Establishment is in obvious disarray and appears willing to cave on core issues, including amnesty.

And, as if prompted by the Obama Administration, on the Feast of the Epiphany (January 6), the USCCB's Migration and Refugee Services Committee, which is headed by Archbishop Jose Gomez of Los Angeles—himself a Mexican immigrant—launched a postcard campaign calling on Congress to pass bills that

provide a path to citizenship for undocumented persons in the country; preserve family units as a cornerstone of our national immigration system; provide a legal path for low-skilled immigrant workers to come and work in the U.S.; restore due process protections to (illegal) immigrants, and address the root causes of migration, caused by persecution and economic disparity.

As a Catholic, I can only say sadly that it is all too understandable why critics see the USCCB merely as a wing of the Democratic Party. (Of course, the leaders of many Protestant denominations have taken positions on immigration similar to the Catholic Bishops—and their parishioners have responded in similar ways to their Catholic brethren, by rejecting them.)

Within USCCB, the current President, Timothy Cardinal Dolan of the New York Archdiocese, has become the “go-to guy” in articulating the Church's position on immigration.

In February, 2012, upon returning from Rome where he had received his red hat as a cardinal, Dolan was quoted by the NY Times in which he said:

[H]e first wanted the church to be more effective locally and nationally in its outreach to immigrants, particularly Latinos, who are no longer in Catholic schools in the numbers they once were.

“The church has been the engine of welcoming people, caring for them and getting them settled as happy, productive citizens who are loyal citizens and loyal Catholics,” he said. “It bothers me that for the first time in American Catholic history, we may not be responding well to the needs of immigrant children in our Catholic schools.”

Cardinal Dolan Sets Agenda for Return to New York, By Sharon Otterman, February 20, 2012

On his own Diocesan blog, Dolan wrote

"Comprehensive immigration reform" is a logical, long-overdue expression of the true "sentiment in our national soul...of welcome and embrace to the immigrant."[Immigration Reform, April 27th, 2010]

(Appallingly, Dolan is now being mentioned as the next Pope—for example

At the recent left-libertarian Students for Liberty Conference, Ann Coulter called a room full of libertarian students “P*ssies” for constantly talking about drug legalization.

In response, the famously verbose young libertarian movement took to its home base on the internet to bash her. But, true to form, it cowardly dodged her main question.

Coulter asked:

We’re living in a country that is 70-percent socialist, the government takes 60 percent of your money. They are taking care of your health care, of your pensions. They’re telling you who you can hire, what the regulations will be. And you want to suck up to your little liberal friends and say, ‘Oh, but we want to legalize pot.’ You know, if you’re a little more manly you would tell them what your position on employment discrimination is. How about that? But it’s always ‘We want to legalize pot.’

Coulter’s jibe hits especially hard because she is clearly referring to one person in particular—Rand Paul, the junior Senator from Kentucky.

During his campaign for the Senate, Rand Paul plainly stated the axiomatic libertarian position on employment discrimination–namely, that businesses should have the right to exercise freedom of association in defiance of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

But within hours, Paul reversed himself and performed a ritualized grovel. And during his maiden speech on the Senate floor, Paul took care to bash Kentucky statesman Henry Clay for not backing abolitionism.

Since entering the Senate, Paul has made sure to appeal to powerful constituencies within the conservative movement. He's taken a strong stand in defense of traditional marriage. He was even rebuked by the head of the Family Research Council for joking that he didn't think President Obama's position on marriage “could get any gayer.”

Unlike his father, he has made his peace with the neoconservatives, declaring “An attack on Israel will be treated as an attack on the United States.”

Paul also aggressively pressed Hillary Clinton during the Senate hearings on Benghazi. The scion of an “isolationist” Congressman emerged as an almost Jacksonian nationalist.

Even Senator Paul's advocacy of defense cuts fit  in with the Beltway Right's new focus on limiting spending.

Many libertarians were becoming uneasy with Senator Paul’s regression into seemingly standard Republicanism.

However, Rand Paul's 13-hour filibuster on Wednesday has brought home his libertarian base and established him as a national leader. Paul held the Senate floor, and America’s attention, by demanding the Obama Administration answer whether the President has the right to use drones to kill Americans on American soil. He was initially joined by Senators Mike Lee and Ted Cruz, but over the course of the day also won support from Marco Rubio, Mitch McConnell, and Reince Priebus.

Even libertarian critics disgusted with Rand's respectability have expressed their support. Paul finds himself the head of a bipartisan coalition in defense of civil liberties. [#StandwithRand | The libertarian moment has arrived – thanks to Rand Paul, by Justin Raimondo, AntiWar.com, March 8, 2013]

The Treason Lobby's favored Republican sons, John McCain and Lindsey Graham, neatly fell into the trap. They attacked Rand Paul and his “impressionable libertarian kids.”

The Amnesty duo, of course, were literally dining with President Obama during Rand's filibuster.

Conservatives hungry for confrontation reacted with fury against McCain and his Mini-Me. Rush Limbaugh slammed them as the “old guard playing footsie with Obama” while Paul was making a stand.

Rand Paul's political masterstroke nailed down conservatives, brought home libertarians, and embarrassed (and intrigued) liberals.

In response, Paul is being refreshingly frank (for a politician) about his plans to exploit his position to run for President in 2016.

Only one obstacle remains on the horizon—the battle over amnesty. How Rand Paul handles this determines whether he will be the Republican favorite for the nomination…or just another false start. There is both cause for hope—and cause for despair.

Rand Paul took strong implicit stances on the immigration issue during his campaign. According to spokesperson Jesse Benton in 2010:

Rand Paul will secure our border by any means needed as our current open border is a threat to national security and economic well-being.

Paul made the common sense observation that Mexican immigrants

As you read through a book, as the pages clock by, hints of the author’s underlying attitudes accumulate until, by halfway through the thing, you have a clear picture of those attitudes.  In the case of a certain type of author—a person with not much power of imagination or self-examination—you may have a clearer picture of his attitudes than he has himself.

So with  Immigration Wars, the new book by Jeb Bush and Clint Bolick.  I just got through reading the book on Kindle: the square brackets in what follows refer to locations in the Kindle text.

Yes, there are two authors there, and you can speculate for yourself about who did how much of the writing. But, given that Jeb Bush is an ambitious politician, and that now is about the right time for ambitious politicians to lay down markers for the 2016 election, I doubt there is a single sentence here that Jeb Bush didn’t sign off on—whether he actually wrote the book or not. So I am blaming him for it.

So what insights into this possible 2016 presidential candidate do we get from  Immigration Wars? 

The main one I got: Jeb Bush just doesn’t like Americans very much.

Immigration boosterism always has a whiff of this about it.  “Jobs Americans won’t do”—because they are too spoiled and lazy!  “Skill shortages”—resulting from Americans being too dumb! 

Bush packs both of those into a single sentence:

It is essential that we have an ample supply of workers both for labor-intensive jobs that few Americans want and for highly skilled jobs for which there are inadequate numbers of Americans with the skills to fit them. [1207]

Business-wise we’re not up to much, either: “Like most immigrants, Hispanics are tremendously entrepreneurial.” [2206] As opposed to those dull, risk-averse non-Hispanic and non-immigrant Americans!

 As VDARE.com readers know, this last assertion is demonstrably untrue.  Indeed, Bush’s book abounds in long-debunked falsehoods—so much so that, by fifty or so pages in, the well-informed commentator can’t resist doing a search on “44 percent.”  Yep, there it is!—“Whereas Republicans had won 44 percent of the Hispanic vote …” [2067] 

When not telling outright porkies, Jeb Bush offers assertions superficially friendly to his case, while omitting taboo-related explanatory factors: 

El Paso, Texas, is one of the nation’s three largest safe cities. [990] 

Yes, because the black population is unusually low: 2.8 percent, only a tad higher than Salt Lake City’s 2.5 percent.

The deficiencies of us actual citizens of the U.S.A. are even spiritual.

Immigrants are unlikely to be complacent about the freedom and opportunity that for them previously was only a dream and was gained only through great effort and sacrifice.  Our nation constantly needs the replenishment of our spirit that immigrants bring. [834]

The accumulating impression left by Jeb Bush: Americans are not much good for anything.  Only immigrants, with “their energy, vitality, talent, and enterprise” [992] can overcome the lassitude, torpor, mediocrity, and complacency of the native-born.

We get a revealing metaphor here, one that