Mad Rant: Freedom in the Far East

Recently, the eyes of the world have again been drawn to the Far East thanks to the antics of the Orwellian real-life nightmare that is North Korea. Such incidents make me think and that is usually not a good thing, at least not for any poor soul who happens to come see me in the aftermath and is subject to a long, manic lecture on my obsession of the moment. Well, you happened into this corner of the inter-webs so you get it too. When I look at Korea, I am reminded of a few things. For one, I am reminded of why I could never condemn all American intervention overseas. True, I look back on American military history and see no vital reason for most of the wars America has fought, but when I look at South Korea as compared to North Korea, I say, “well done America, Great Britain and all the other allies”. Too bad the whole peninsula could not be as prosperous as the south. It also makes me angry again at the U.S. government (or the Democratic Congress anyway) for the abandonment of South Vietnam, which could be just as successful today. However, after such a pat on the back, I also think about what an obvious nightmare it is that countries like Korea, China and the Indochinese lands broke from their own long established traditions to embrace the political feuds of the western world.

I think of the fallen dynasties and the whole populations nearly brought to ruin in wars driven by competing allegiances to totally alien ideologies, being used as proxies usually for the United States or Soviet Union. Not that those two were in any way comparable, as the contrast between North and South Korea clearly shows, but it is a crying shame it ever came to that in the first place. Now, usually, when I go on this tirade, someone will mention that it was from the west in general or the United States in particular that people learned about things like freedom, liberty or the great “gift” of democracy. Please, spare me the sanctimony. There were certainly things the east needed to learn from the west but there were also plenty of things the west could have benefited from learning from the east. On a moral level, each seem fairly well matched to me. The most basic traditional values of right and wrong were much the same in both parts of the world, and both have abandoned many or most of these in our time anyway. However, it positively infuriates me that so many people seem to think that before the era of republicanism all the peoples of the east were living in grinding poverty and near slavery. That, in a word, is idiotic.

You could say the same thing about the west. How everyone seems to think that before the era of the so-called “Enlightenment” and especially before the revolutionary era, everyone lived in oppression and ignorance. They forget all about the great universities established in the Middle Ages, the tremendous scientific, literary and artistic discoveries of the Renaissance or how, even in feudal times, most Europeans had more holidays from work and paid less to their governments than they do today. But in the east this same ignorant attitude has often also been combined with a disgusting dose of condescension and thinly veiled racism. I will never forget finding an old school book, written sometime in the 1910’s, that spoke with such arrogant, ignorant pride about the 1911 Revolution in China. This was from a contemporary American perspective of course, and the book spoke so smugly about how the Chinese had finally “grown up” and were embracing the idea of the republic which, of course, Americans were “smart” enough to have figures out two centuries earlier. One would think the very concept of “freedom” had only been invented in Philadelphia in 1776!

This is obviously garbage for anyone with even a passing familiarity with the facts. Under the Confucian monarchy, for example, Korea actually had a more meritocratic system hundreds of years ago than the United States has even today where your popularity can get you a high position even if your ability is nil. The imperial system in China certainly could not have survived for thousands of years and maintained a vast country with the largest population in the world without doing something right and the masses would not have just submitted for so many centuries if they were all living like slaves. The Mongol Empire, for example, had freedom of religion, vibrant commerce and laws protecting property and all without a written constitution or elected national assembly. Tell that to a republican today and blow their mind.

Human beings the world over had plenty of time to learn what worked and what did not and, unlike today without our collective safety nets, if something didn’t work the consequences could not be ignored. People learned from it, adapted and moved on. When a system was found that worked, they stuck with it until it became sacred tradition. Many attributed foreign influences with the establishment of the Japanese constitutional monarchy in the Meiji Constitution. However, it embodied the same values held by the Japanese going back at least to the Seventeen-Article Constitution released in 604 by Prince Shotoku. This document included such points as being tolerant of disagreement, not to be envious, not to conscript people at times that would prevent them from providing for themselves and that important decisions should be left to one ruler but taken after discussion. Those who believe that government which governs best is that which governs the least might also be surprised to learn that many Chinese came to the same conclusion a thousand years ago. In Imperial China there was the famous saying, implying considerable freedom through benign neglect that, “Heaven is high, and the Emperor is far away”.

Today we smart, modern people in our republican world think that we have to have a small army of politicians at every level of government and all of these people always think they have to be “doing something”. Are these hordes of compulsive regulators really creating more freedom as compared to the traditional systems of the past where the Emperor of Japan just prayed for his people or where the Emperor of China was “far away” in Peking? In Imperial Vietnam there was a very old traditional saying that the authority of the Emperor stopped at the village gate. This was, obviously, not absolutely the case but it arose because of the considerable autonomy that existed from village to village. The Emperor in Hue or (prior to that) Thanh Long focused on the big issues while for the most part the people were governed on the local level by their own village elders with an occasional visit from an itinerate mandarin. They also had sense enough to appreciate the importance of saving for a rainy day whereas today we seem to have made a “virtue” out of not saving anything and even spending money we don’t have. Remind me again; who are the ignorant ones? Those people ruled by kings and emperors who actually produced things or the populations of today who have every minute detail of their lives regulated and have based whole economies on betting on the profit or loss of products that no one has even made yet? They had a government with one emperor and an economy based on real money and real goods. We have governments made up of thousands of parasites and economies based on moving around “potential” (imaginary) money no one has even earned yet.

People in the past, as I am so fond of saying, were not stupid and the Vietnamese who used to watch tigers and elephants fight in an arena were a hundred times more civilized than the people who watch “The Jersey Shore”. People in the East, as well as the West, were not living a nightmarish existence before the revolutionary republic was introduced and I have no doubt that all would be better off to return to tried and tested traditional ways, adapted for the modern world and technological improvements, while throwing away modernistic concepts that have so clearly and painfully failed. I think such a thing would be beautiful, but then I am, as any will say, just … The Mad Monarchist.

China and the Heavenly Mandate

The Mandate of Heaven or Tian Ming was the divine authorization to rule upon which rested the power of most Chinese emperors throughout their very long history as well as influencing the political systems of neighboring countries as well. The idea first developed prior to the unification of China in the Kingdom of Zhou and was early on most associated with the Zhou kings who were the first to call themselves the ‘Sons of Heaven’ and to claim to exercise power by holding the heavenly mandate to do so. However, today most associate the heavenly mandate with the political teachings of later philosophers such as Mencius and, of course, the great Confucius. Confucian scholars elaborated on the idea of the Mandate of Heaven and it first began to be a major influence with the rise of the Han dynasty in China. The rise of Emperor Gaodi, first monarch of the western Han after the downfall of the Qin dynasty, was pointed to by Confucian scholars as an example of the mandate of heaven passing from one dynasty to another in the traditional way. Western minds have tried for a long time to understand and explain the concept of the Mandate of Heaven, comparing it to everything from the Divine Right of Kings to the social contract of the Enlightenment era. In truth, it is both and neither, like so much else in the history and culture of the Far East.

The principle behind the heavenly mandate is that anyone can attain virtue, that virtuous leadership will cause a country to prosper and a prosperous country will be secure and content with such happiness and contentment serving as proof that the leader in question had obtained the heavenly mandate to rule. This principle can, and has, been stretched pretty far on certain occasions. However, the idea was never supposed to be about simply the ability to take and maintain power (though at times it became that and we cannot deny that) nor was it traditionally about popularity with the people. The Emperor, who the Chinese traditionally recognized as the legitimate ruler of the world, not simply China, even if other barbarian nations were too backward to recognize it, was to govern with moderation and virtue, not to be popular, but because this was his moral duty toward Heaven and as a pious believer in Confucian morality. He also had religious duties to perform that went along with the heavenly mandate, as the Emperor was the “Son of Heaven”; the pontiff between the Middle Kingdom and the Kingdom of Heaven. The most important of these came at the Winter Solstice when the Emperor would go to the Altar of Heaven to present offerings and pray on behalf of his people and to, as we might say, give Heaven a progress report on the reign of his dynasty.

Obviously, since the Mandate of Heaven is based on character rather than ancestry, anyone can theoretically “obtain” it by proving themselves worthy by their virtue and, usually, success in overthrowing the previous ruler and taking power for himself. The founding Emperor of the Ming Dynasty, for example, was a common peasant before leading the popular uprising that brought down the Mongol Yuan Dynasty. The fact that an Emperor has the mandate and rules as the ‘Son of Heaven’ means that those who rebel against him are traitors of the worst kind, even heretics to use a western point of reference. That is, of course, if the rebellion is unsuccessful. If a rebellion succeeds then it is taken as proof that the heavenly mandate had passed from the old dynasty to the rebels who would institute a new dynasty. Rebellion could be brought about by a lack of moral character on the part of an Emperor but, as often if not more so, by economic hardship, poverty, natural disasters, famines or plagues that were taken as signs that the heavenly mandate had passed from the ruling dynasty.

When the Ming dynasty was overthrown by the Manchu coalition of forces, establishing the Qing dynasty, it was accepted that the Ming had lost the Mandate of Heaven and that the Manchu Emperor had acquired it. This was reinforced by the extent to which the Manchus adopted Chinese traditions and emphasized Confucian ethics and social order. Over the centuries, the heavenly mandate of the Qing began to be questioned as rebellions became more serious and foreign nations gained stronger footholds in China. The wave of nationalist, republican revolutionaries rejected the whole concept of the Mandate of Heaven, officially, while unofficially arguing that if such a thing did exist the Qing had lost it anyway. When the Qing dynasty was overtaken by the 1911 Revolution the act of abdication which brought an end to the ancient imperial system stated that the dynasty was bowing to, “the Mandate of Heaven as expressed through the will of the people” which was quite a novel concept in and of itself. Since that time, the successive nationalist and communist regimes have been a little uncomfortable dealing with the principle of the Mandate of Heaven. Again, they officially scoff at such a traditional belief but also would like to use it to legitimize their own positions. So, most effectively say that, one shouldn’t believe in the mandate but, if you do, believe that they hold it.

Some have tried to make the argument that Chairman Mao and the Communist Party, by defeating the nationalists and establishing the People’s Republic of China, demonstrated that they obtained the heavenly mandate to rule. They do not claim this as the source of their legitimacy of course, but the argument is still put out by some to encourage the more traditionally minded to support the Red regime. This sort of thinking is what I like to call, “crap”. The communists cannot legitimately claim something which they do not acknowledge to even exist. I am sure some might try to explain this away by arguing that it exists whether they acknowledge it or not but that holds no water either. The Communist Party is officially atheist and if they do not believe in Heaven they cannot very well even pretend to claim the heavenly mandate. Nor can this be something they simply believe privately as one of, if not the, most paramount duties of the emperor as the “Son of Heaven” was performing the rites on behalf of the Middle Kingdom at the Altar of Heaven, something which no Communist dictator has ever done. The last time these rites were performed was in 1915 by President Yuan Shihkai of the Republic of China who wanted to become the Emperor of China and founder of his own dynasty (which didn’t work out well).

Given the number of natural disasters that have befallen China in recent years, some might suggest that this be taken as evidence that the CCP has lost the heavenly mandate and therefore that rebellion against them is justified. As stated, I think rebellion has always been justified because they never even claimed the mandate in the first place nor have they ever shown the slightest interest in ruling according to Confucian morality. This is the same regime, after all, that even in its youth enacted programs which caused the deaths of tens of millions of people and even as millions were dying Chairman Mao took it as no great tragedy, seeing it simply as so many less mouths to feed. If one wanted to argue the case, I am sure the communist sympathizers would in any event point to the higher levels of public education, the growing power of China and the burgeoning middle class (which only emerged after they started to wise up and cut back on the communist economic policies) as “proof” that, now more than ever, they hold the mandate.

The basic fact is though that the communist regime is illegitimate and has been from day one. No one else needs to make the case that they represent a total rejection of traditional Chinese government and a firm break with the previous thousands of years of Chinese history. They have made that a boast from the very beginning of their existence. Today, becoming more “establishment” at home and accepted abroad, they might not be as stridently opposed to the Confucian order as they once were but, make no mistake about it, they are still opposed to it. One can no more apply the principle of the Mandate of Heaven to the current bandit government in Peking than one could apply it to the republic in Paris or the Castro regime in Cuba. The communist government in China has just as much about it that is “Chinese” as any of those governments, which is to say; none at all. Regardless of how far they have moved away in practice, at their core, they are a government based on the radical, utopian ravings of a self-hating German-Jew of Nineteenth Century Europe. It is totally foreign to China (and all of Asia for that matter) in every possible way and therefore traditional Chinese perspectives cannot be applied to it; it is totally alien.

In my view (though of course they can not claim it now even if they wanted to) the heavenly mandate still rests with the Qing dynasty by default, simply as the last traditional dynasty to have held it. This has always been my position, both because of my admiration for the culture of the Qing Empire as well as the unalterable fact that no one since has even claimed the Mandate of Heaven. From the fall of the Qing the history of modern China has been unprecedented in every way. Yes, I readily admit, it could be argued (obviously, given the disasters that overtook them and the fact that they were forced to renounce power) that the Qing lost the mandate but, as I see it, if so, it remains right where they left it. Certainly no government that came immediately after could claim the mandate, the country fell into utter chaos and ruin. Whether the communists desire to or not, they could never claim to hold it as that would undermine their very foundation. Will the Qing be restored? The lessons of history say “no” (though they had some very real opportunities in the past). That is why I say the mandate resides with the Qing only by default, waiting to be picked up again or claimed by another. Obviously, I very much hope that day will come and come soon, but the China of today is a totally different animal from the China of history. They have imported something formerly unknown; mass politics and ideological fanaticism, into China and that alone, even without all the power they have accumulated recently, is sufficient to mean that any future change in “dynasty” will likely be a very, very traumatic and violent affair.

Mad Rant: The Westernization of Asia

The news lately has seen a number of volatile developments in Asia. We have read about the increased tensions in Korea, the spreading influence of Communist China, the unrest in Thailand, the terrible situation in Nepal and the ongoing troubles with Afghanistan, Pakistan and India and so on and so forth. There are a myriad of reasons for this in each individual case, however, overall I cannot help but lament the westernization of Asia. This does not mean that I (like many) am blaming “the West” for all the problems of modern Asia and it is certainly not a swipe at western civilization for those whom I hold to be at fault for this are enemies of western as well as eastern civilization -they are the enemies of civilization period. It only happens that the vile disease now infecting the Far East came from the west.

When I look at how western civilization dealt with the people of the east there are of course good and bad items to consider. However, for all we hear about the triumphalism and xenophobia of traditional western culture from modern-day liberals it was this same culture in Europe that was far more tolerant of traditional Asian culture than that of today. When the British took over India they did (justly) get rid of a number of unsavory groups and practices that were part of Indian culture. However, they kept the traditional local princes in place. When the French colonized Viet Nam there is much to criticize them for but they kept the local monarch in place, traditional values and styles and so on did not change. Yet, when the liberal revolutionary forces came to Asia, whether by Soviet puppets in Mongolia or leftist indoctrinated Chinese workers from France, they started a culture war against everything that had defined Asia for all her previous thousands of years of history.

One of the earliest examples was one of the worst and that was the communist takeover of Mongolia where the traditional culture and religion in particular was almost completely wiped out. It happened on the largest scale in China but just as fiercely in Indochina and other countries. We still see the sharp divide most vividly in Korea where the traditional form of government was pushed aside as north and south fought each other ferociously over which western form of republicanism would prevail in Korea, whether they would be capitalist or communist. Who would have ever imagined that half of Korea, Vietnam and even the massive “Middle Kingdom” of China, after thousands of years of history with their own systems of government, their own Confucian culture, would all be ruled by an ideology dreamed up by an anti-Semitic German Jew writing in London in the 19th Century?

What seems even more incredible is that most of these movements tried to wrap themselves in the cloak of nationalism. Both sides of the civil wars in places like China and Vietnam did this, despite the fact that they had overthrown their own traditional systems and embraced some form of government that was of foreign design and had absolutely no history in their own countries. In many ways they displayed more bigotry against their own culture than did the foreign imperialists who had ruled before them. Their leaders were almost invariably foreign-trained and in some cases spent most of their lives in the west. This was certainly the case with men like Sun Yat-sen and Ho Chi Minh. Contrast the cases in their countries during the “colonial period” when Great Britain lent assistance to the Qing Emperor in putting down the Taiping Rebellion or how even the French republic maintained the Vietnamese Emperors as nominal rulers and after 1948 even supported the return of the last Emperor who had been forced off the throne by the communists.

I reiterate that this is not then a matter of east vs. west or one culture against another. Western monarchists are only too aware of how their own culture has been sabotaged, suppressed and how the revolutionaries have and are using every means at their disposal to stamp it out. Yet, western monarchists (who are not bigots or Eurocentric) often have a hard time getting very emotionally involved in events on the other side of the world. This is for understandable reasons; the cultures are so different, the religions are very different and so on. However, I would ask western monarchists to keep in mind the anguish, the outrage and the frustration at how western traditions are being stamped on and then consider how you would feel if this revolutionary movement were something of totally foreign origin that had been imposed on you and poisoned the minds of your people. This is why traditional monarchists of all backgrounds should be able to understand and sympathize with each other and stand together in a united front against the plague that is out to destroy us all. I feel that I understand the sentiment very well and that is why I remain…The Mad Monarchist.

Happy Lunar New Year!

Today the nations of the far east celebrate the start of the lunar year. In Vietnam it is celebrated as the Festival of the first day or Tet Nguyen Dan. In the old days, as with all major cultural events, the place of the monarch was absolutely central to the celebrations. The Imperial Palace and all major buildings and monuments within the Holy Citadel in Hue would be decorated with the dragon emblem of the Nguyen dynasty in preparation for the Tết holiday. In the early morning hours offerings of tea, fruit, incense, rice and peach blossoms would be set out at the altars of the imperial ancestors and in the imperial temples and pagodas. The Imperial Family, high ranking mandarins and other assorted dignitaries would assemble in front of the Palace of Perfect Peace where the Emperor sat on the Golden Dragon throne. After the Emperor accepted their best wishes for happiness, prosperity and longevity they would kowtow before him five times. From the citadel walls cannon salutes were fired, bells rang and the imperial court musicians began to play. Efforts are made to obtain good fortune throughout the year to come and everyone, from the monarch to the common subject, hoped that their home spirits would make a good report on their behalf to the Jade Emperor in heaven so that blessing would come in the new year.

A happy Year of the Tiger to everyone! Chúc mừng năm mới!