From: https://www.fff.org/2025/04/18/them-chinese-aint-my-enemy/

Them Chinese Ain’t My Enemy

by Jacob G. Hornberger

April 18, 2025

One of the most fascinating aspects of President Trump’s tariff attack on China has been the acceptance among so many Americans that China is now our official enemy or, if you prefer more benign imperialist terms, our “opponent,” “adversary,” “rival,” or “competitor.”

After all, wasn’t it just recently that our official enemy was Russia? Even when Trump was president the first time and through the Biden administration, the standard mindset of the American people was that it was Russia and Vladimir Putin who were coming to get us. The Russians were influencing the way Americans voted. They were conquering Ukraine on their way to worldwide conquest. “The Russians are coming! The Russians are coming!” It all brought to mind the Cold War decades when the Reds, including the Russian Reds, were our official enemy and coming to get us.

After the 9/11 attacks, our official enemy became the “terrorists” or the Muslims. “The terrorists are coming!” replaced “The Russians are coming!” That’s what generated the perpetual “war on terrorism,” the invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq, USA Patriot Act, the illegal telecom surveillance scandal, the illegal mass surveillance schemes, the TSA, official state-sponsored assassinations, torture, indefinite detention, and all the rest of the anti-terrorism measures to keep us “safe.”

Heck, I remember when Saddam Hussein was our official enemy. For eleven years, I had to hear every day, “Saddam! Saddam! Saddam!” Many Americans were convinced that Saddam was going to unleash mushroom clouds across America.

But today under Trump, China has been named as the new official bugaboo. And the mindsets of many Americans, especially Trumpsters, have seamlessly and effortlessly now replaced Russia with China as America’s newest official enemy. That helps these people feel okay about the economic devastation that Trump’s tariffs will inflict on the Chinese people. The idea is that we don’t need to care about them because they are the new big, bad enemy of the United States.

Permit me to issue a personal public declaration: While China might well be the new official enemy of Trump and his Trumpsters, along with the State Department and the U.S. national-security establishment, China is not my enemy.

In fact, I feel pretty much the way Mohammad Ali felt when he declared, “I ain’t got no quarrel with them Vietcong. No Vietcong ever called me nigger.”

Oh boy, did that make U.S. officials angry. Not only was it considered “treason” for an American to not accept an U.S.-designated official enemy as his enemy, the fact that it was a black man saying this compounded the problem a hundred-fold. They went after Ali with a vengeance, trying everything they could to incarcerate him and destroy his boxing career.

Oh yes, I fully realize that China is governed by a communist regime. As a libertarian, I dislike communism immensely. But that still doesn’t make China my enemy. I’m with President John F. Kennedy, who declared in his Peace Speech at American University in June 1963 that Americans and communist nations could exist in mutual harmony despite their ideological differences. Of course, it was that mindset that got him killed.

Moreover, it’s worth noting that the officials in the Chinese Communist Party are as unlikely to be adversely impacted by Trump’s tariffs as Trump will be by China’s retaliatory tariffs. The rich and the political elites don’t have anything to worry about when it comes to tariffs and trade wars. It’s the regular, ordinary citizens of both countries who will pay the price of the tariffs. It is regular, ordinary Chinese people who will be impoverished and bankrupted. I feel very bad for those people — as bad as I feel for the regular, ordinary Americans who will be impoverished and bankrupted by Trump’s tariffs.

Why do Americans so readily adopt the new official enemies that are declared by U.S officials? That’s where the success of America’s public (i.e., government) school systems come into play. For twelve long years, the minds of American children are shaped and molded by an environment of conformity, regimentation, obedience, and fear. By the time they graduate high school, most Americans have no conception of what was done to them through the power of state indoctrination. Thus, when a new official enemy is decreed, they don’t think it is strange that their mind immediately reshapes and conforms by accepting the new official enemy as their enemy as well. This mental phenomenon brings to mind the constant array of shifting enemies in George Orwell’s novel 1984. Like the citizens in Orwell’s fictional nation of Oceania, many Americans are also scared to death to question or challenge what the Trump administration is doing for fear of what it might to do them.

Color me treasonous, but the fact is that I ain’t got no quarrel with them Chinese. They’ve never done anything bad to me. I wish I could say the same thing about the U.S. government. It has done lots of bad things to me, including destroying my freedom and privacy with its income tax, IRS, welfare state, monetary debasement, mass secret surveillance, conscription, out-of-control federal spending and debt, managed/regulated economy, drug war, national-security state, denial of due process of law, denial of trial by jury, foreign invasions and occupations, attacks on freedom of speech, tariffs, trade wars, sanctions, embargoes, travel restrictions, immigration police state, and much, much more. In fact, if truth be told, the U.S. government has proven itself to be the real enemy of American liberty and privacy.

If you are unhappy with where you got your start in life, then you must take it up with your parents since they are responsible for bringing you into this world. The sins of your parents are not your sins. Likewise, the injustices suffered by your ancestors give you no right to reparations from anyone other than your parents.

I am thankful for what my parents did for me, and will not seek reparations.

Alternative way to say the same thing.

Anyone suffering from an injustice that occurred before they were born has ethical claims only against their parents. Their parents are the proximate cause for them being alive and therefore are responsible for how they started in life.

In my theory of justice there can be no crimes or aggression against you before you were born. All theories of justice have problems with initial distribution of property. My theory attempts to persuade people to live a peaceful and happy life without envy.

Life is a journey, not a destination. People can have joy and a good life no matter where they start.

Click here for an extended text version.

From: https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/infrastructure/target.cfm

The 37,700 mile interstate highway system was supposed to cost $23.2 billion.

That works out to $615,000 per mile.

Latest I-75 construction near me:

When did construction begin: Early 2023
Length of road under construction: 1.3 miles
Construction cost: $97 million
The expected completion date: Summer 2026.

That’s about $75 million per mile.

The inflation adjustment factor 1955 to 2025: 32.09

So $615,500 should cost $19.75 million today.

The projection is only 97/19.75 = 492% off.

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President Trump is concerned with trade imbalance. While many seem to praise the Buy Local idea. Here is a modest proposal that should satisfy everyone.

Trump’s solution is to impose tariffs or non-tariff barriers on foreign imports.

The President’s tariffs make the government a middleman, separating willing buyers from willing sellers, and giving the federal government a piece of the action.

Sometimes middlemen perform important services, but at other times middlemen just raise costs.  How often do we hear about companies trying to cut-out the middlemen.

We don’t need to have the government be the middleman, raising costs without providing any tangible benefits to consumers. We can have thousands of middlemen doing the job.

There is no reason to have the government involved in commercial transactions and negotiating deals for favored companies with foreign governments. Instead, the government should more rigidly take our natural right to buy from anyone, and force everyone to buy locally.

First, we have to define local. I’ll leave that to the politicians – they are good at making arbitrary rules. For now, lets define local as the distance people can drive and return in the same day. So a 500 mile radius around each person’s home would define local for each person.  Don’t worry, the politicians will also define local for homeless people.

My proposal would do away with mail order, phone purchases or internet sales, and require that all purchases be done face to face. The plan would both help the trade imbalance, and make everyone buy local.

If you want goods or services produced more than 500 miles from home, you would buy from a middleman who lives not more than 1,000 miles from your home. You would meet near your 500 mile border, and exchange your dollars for the goods. But since, the middleman is local, there is no trade imbalance.

This plan would make items produced a long distance from home more expensive. To buy a car produced 3,000 miles from home would take 3 or more middlemen. Each middleman would add a markup. It might workout that someone will build a plant closer to your home, to cut-out some of the middlemen. Of course, the new producers would have to live within 500 miles of their plants, and all the raw materials used by the plants would have to be bought from someone who lived within their 500 mile boundary or bought from a middleman on their border.

But at least the costs imposed by the middlemen would not be arbitrarily set. Middlemen would compete for business, with rates set by the market. If the middlemen make their markup too high, that will give local businesses an advantage. Just like tariffs.

Such a plan would also eliminate a lot of long distance business travel. You could only do business with someone less than 500 miles from home. There would be no reason to travel to distant parts of the world for business. All you have to do is deal with your middleman.

People living in places like Hawaii that are more than 500 miles from the mainland will especially like this plan since it will probably discourage people from moving there. If they need things not locally available, they would have to find middlemen willing to live on ships. Those ships would have to stay within a 500 mile radius of their base.

Shipping oil would be discouraged, since the oil would have to be off loaded at sea onto another tanker. Although middlemen could arrange to buy the ship with oil, and then sell it back on the return trip.

Want to take a vacation in a far off location. You would take a plane that goes, no more than 1,000 miles, and then land and change planes owned by another airline.  Entrepreneurs may build airports in locations not currently served by airports, but if you live more than 500 miles from an airport, you will just drive to your boundary, and then take a bus, or taxi from your border to a site closer to an airport. Eventually you will get there.

This plan would be cumbersome, and it would make things more expensive than how we live today. But expense is not the issue. It is about having more local jobs, and not having a trade imbalance.

Banks, phone companies, stock markets etc would all have to be local. Just think of all the jobs that would be created.

You want to talk to aunt Sarah 1,500 miles from home. Your phone company would have to connect to a phone company whose base was less than 500 miles from your border, who would then connect to another phone company, and eventually connecting to aunt Sarah’s local phone company.

Someone suggested that since Starlink satellites orbit less than 500 miles from earth you could use them. But each 500 mile cluster of satellites would have to be owned by a different company.

Maybe doing business this way would cost more, but everyone would feel good knowing that whether they like it or not, everyone will be buying locally.

On February 26, 2025, a reception was held at the home of Marlene Mieske and Neal Goldman in Naples to meet Mark Rienzi the President and CEO of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty and Julie Riggs its Director of External Relations.

Stephanie Lips invited Anina and Ben to attend.

Click here to view photographs taken at the event.

Click here for information about the Becket Fund.

Klara Edith Meyers, beloved mother and a multi-talented window treatment designer, tailor, and seamstress, passed away February 14, 2025 in La Plata, MD.

She lived in White Plains, MD for 55 years, where she and her husband Clifford Eldon Meyers raised their three children.

She was born in 1938 in Szombathely, Hungary to Sandor Palmai, a Hungarian Cavalry officer, and Ilona Molnar Palmai. Her family escaped Hungary by walking through a minefield TWICE during World War II and they lived for many years in a refugee camp outside Salzburg Austria, where she attended school at Nonnberg Abbey, the convent from the movie, “The Sound of Music.” While there, she apprenticed to be a tailor and met her husband Cliff, who was in charge of the Armed Forces Radio Station. She and her parents resettled in Sweden in 1954 with other members of their refugee community, who remained close family friends for the rest of their lives. Klara loved telling everyone about her life during those years of their history, hardships and funny stories. She felt for people who were likewise impacted by more recent wars in Europe.         

She married Clifford Eldon Meyers in December 1956, and they had Arthur (in Morocco) and Helen (in Spain). They lived in Europe until 1964, when the family returned to America aboard the SS United States. They moved to White Plains, MD in 1970. Their son Alex was born in Maryland in 1976. Clifford worked as an electronics engineer for the US government, while Klara worked as a seamstress for Robert Hall, Fred’s Mens’ Shops, Davis Bridal and Formal, JC Penney’s and Peebles Department Store. She established her own window treatment business and her work is showcased in some of the finest homes and businesses in the Charles County Area. She volunteered at her childrens’ schools, and was one of the original members of the Samuel A. Mudd Society, recruited personally by the founder, Mrs. Louise Arehart. She and her son Alex cared tirelessly for her disabled husband at home until his death. In her later years she travelled back to Europe 3 times accompanied by her children and grandchildren. In her final years, Alex cared for her fulltime.

She leaves behind three children: Arthur Meyers of Gainesville, VA, Helen Meyers Erslev of Silver Spring, MD, Alexander Meyers of Newburg, MD, their spouses, Sami Meyers, Rita Meyers,  and Henrik Erslev; her 5 grandchildren: Clare and Emilie Erslev, Leah Meyers McKinley (Matt), Jackie Richards (Stephen), Kyle Arnold and 7 great grandchildren: Logan McKinley; Sean, Ashlyn, Sadie, Colton, Ryder, and Bentley Jo Richards.

The family requests that any donations be made in her honor to Last Chance Animal Rescue of Bensville MD. https://www.lastchanceanimalrescue.org , or World Central Kitchen  https://wck.org  serving food to families in the US, Ukraine, Baltic nations  and other nations in need around the world.