Lopez Lomong Us Soft Power - Road to the Middle Class

OUR LIBERAL friends, led by Joseph Nye and his book Soft Power, have been making a big deal lately about the importance of “soft” power, the influence of culture and diplomacy, against the “hard” power of Bush-Cheney military force.

So what do you make of Lopez Lomong, the native of Sudan’s Darfur region, an American for just 13 months, who will be carrying the US flag at the opening ceremony?

You call it soft power at work.

Even on the US Olympic team, according to Elizabeth Merrill, most people didn’t know Lomong’s history of exile from his native land and a childhood in a Kenyan refugee camp. But by the time they got to Beijing, they did. Not that Lomong was reticent or anything.

When he boarded a plane for China last week, [Lomong] told a handful of his peers, "Man, I would like to be the one carrying that flag." On Wednesday night, when team captains from each sport met in the village — some in person, some by conference call — Lomong was selected.

It’s a great American story, isn’t it? Immigrant struggles to get to the US, and then overwhelmed with pride when his country accepts him and honors him. Sends a little soft power message to the Chinese government on the question of Darfur.

Maybe Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) should spend a moment with the young athlete, who will be competing in the 1,500 meters. Said Obama to a young person earlier this week:

"America is no longer what it could be, what it once was... And I say to myself, I don�€™t want that future for my children."

But this is what Lopez Lomong says about America:

�€�Now I�€™m running for America and I�€™m grateful for that,�€� he said. �€�America is a land for everybody.�€�

Sen. Obama, please get a clue.

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

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Action

The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness... But to make a man act [he must have] the expectation that purposeful behavior has the power to remove or at least to alleviate the felt uneasiness.
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

China and Christianity

At first, we thought [the power of the West] was because you had more powerful guns than we had. Then we thought it was because you had the best political system. Next we focused on your economic system. But in the past twenty years, we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity.
David Aikman, Jesus in Beijing

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[In the] higher Christian churches� they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a string of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it every minute.
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

Civil Society

“Civil Society”—a complex welter of intermediate institutions, including businesses, voluntary associations, educational institutions, clubs, unions, media, charities, and churches—builds, in turn, on the family, the primary instrument by which people are socialized into their culture and given the skills that allow them to live in broader society and through which the values and knowledge of that society are transmitted across the generations.
Francis Fukuyama, Trust

Class War

In England there were always two sharply opposed middle classes, the academic middle class and the commercial middle class. In the nineteenth century, the academic middle class won the battle for power and status... Then came the triumph of Margaret Thatcher... The academics lost their power and prestige and... have been gloomy ever since.
Freeman Dyson, “The Scientist as Rebel”

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Conservatism is the philosophy of society. Its ethic is fraternity and its characteristic is authority — the non-coercive social persuasion which operates in a family or a community. It says ‘we should...’.
Danny Kruger, On Fraternity

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What distinguishes true Conservatism from the rest, and from the Blair project, is the belief in more personal freedom and more market freedom, along with less state intervention... The true Third Way is the Holy Grail of Tory politics today - compassion and community without compulsion.
Minette Marrin, The Daily Telegraph

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James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

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I mean three systems in one: a predominantly market economy; a polity respectful of the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and a system of cultural institutions moved by ideals of liberty and justice for all. In short, three dynamic and converging systems functioning as one: a democratic polity, an economy based on markets and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is plural and, in the largest sense, liberal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

Drang nach Osten

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