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While I agree that it isn't a good idea to have a trade embargo of China because we don't like how they run their country, I will quibble with the idea that at least my grandfathers and great uncles didn't know what they chose to fight and, if necessary, die for.

" we in this island and in the British Empire will never lose our sense of comradeship with the French people. If we are now called upon to endure what they have suffered we shall emulate their courage, and if final victory rewards our toils they shall share the gains, aye. And freedom shall be restored to all.

We abate nothing of our just demands—Czechs, Poles, Norwegians, Dutch, Belgians, all who have joined their causes to our own shall be restored.

...the Battle of France is over ... the Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization. Upon it depends our own British life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire.

The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be freed and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands.

But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new dark age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science.

Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves, that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, This was their finest hour. "

This was Churchill, June 16, 1940, when it was not at all obvious that there was any way to win the war. My grandfathers and great uncles volunteered anyway, as did tens of thousands of others. They did not want to, but knew they had to. As Churchill said, it was '...let us brace ourselves to our duties...'.

As for China, it is our duty to show that there is another way to organize a society. Give them full exposure, through trade and visits. Then, as they figure things out, be there to help them through the process.




WW2 was an existential threat for Britain/Europe/"Christian civilization". I don't mean to diminish your forebears' bravery; I'd probably have been one of those men who was paralyzed with fear on the beach and never even fired a shot.

My point is just that facing an existential threat to your country, and by extension most of the people and places you've ever loved, is clear and highly motivating – and unusual for western countries in the last 60 years.

It's very different from the Korean War, Vietnam War, Falklands War, Gulf War, War in Afghanistan, etc. Those were not existential threats; they were mostly geopolitical posturing. I'm not making a statement on whether those were good or worthy wars (posturing can be necessary), but it's at least an arguable position that most casualties in those wars died "because delusional leaders sent them into battle," not because they were choosing to fight and die for some grand idea.


If you're going to cite WW2, remember that we were on the same side as China at the time. Well, part of China.

The surrounding point in this discussion is that if we're going to talk up the values of freedom and democracy we have to live them as well. That would include the US giving up its little gulag in Guantanamo and applying the rule of law there as well, among many other things.


We weren't exactly paragons of virtue in WWII. Women, people of colour, LGBT - if you were any of those, your freedoms were a pale reflection of those enjoyed by the broader society. However, as is now clear, the basic values of human dignity and our shared humanity allowed for processes that made things better for those, and other, communities. We have a way to go yet, but we are making progress.

The issue is not to let perfect become the enemy of better. Just because we fall short of an ideal of freedom does not mean we are therefore not in a free society. Just because our society in the WWII era was not as free as our own, does not mean it wasn't dramatically freer than the alternatives.

Even Churchill's promise to fight until all Europe was free was only half kept, for half of Europe fell behind an iron curtain until nearly fifty years after WWII. It was the right decision not to continue to war to free the other half of Europe. Time and exposure to another way to organize society did the job, without millions more dead or nuclear weapons.

It will be the same with China, with Cuba and even with North Korea. All we have to do is stand fast with our freedoms, and advance them where we can. Time and exposure will do the rest.


>Even Churchill's promise to fight until all Europe was free was only half kept, for half of Europe fell behind an iron curtain

And in the other half minorities such as homosexuals were persecuted. Including Alan Turing, who in WW2 helped break the ciphers of the German military.

>All we have to do is stand fast with our freedoms

Yes, our freedoms (see above)...


True, western democracy is limited and not what it should be.

However you are missing the bigger point, western democracies are almost always leading the way with more rights than any one else. For how homosexuals were treated in Germany see here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_homosexuals_in_...




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