But while he is there, he deserves a chance just like everybody else for the Great Plutocracy purports to be based on merit, and not on skin color or middle name.

I think the “rise up” of the American people would have happened long ago had America as a whole forced herself to stop “getting something for nothing”. I actually think Obama immensely sympathizes with middle americans – much more so than McCain or Bush. But as long as America, as a whole, gets to print welfare cheques to out-of-manufacturing-jobs middle americans to “buy” things from Walmart that American again in essence, “gets for free”, how likely do you think you’d see a “rise up” out a an untenable situation?

And therefore, my central contention to your well-written, concerned article is that perhaps the real opium here is the American dollar hegemony. The question is not whether the proposed Import Certificate is a good idea. But whether or not America has the will to execute it.

Weaning off of this “getting something for nothing” will instantly NECESSITATE it.

And rest assured, there are non-Americans out there who can see for themselves that someone such as Ron Paul is a REAL American patriot.

Just that his time has not yet come.

BTW, just as the “buying for nothing” has hollowed out parts of America, the “selling for nothing” has corrupted China.

But that’s another topic.

I think that the US will have to quit its addiction to cheap(er) goods from Asia when the citizenry rise up to the occasion when their livelihoods are destroyed. Actually, I think it would have happened if Barrack Hussein Obama was not elected. Saying that, Obama is actually a false hope. They put a black face into the white house thinking it would quell civil unrest. God help us all if he gets re-elected.

That is a Faustian bargain because other countries would also want you to give up something in return for acquiescing to using “your” money as the means of all international exchange.

So in essence, there is this partially valid impression that perhaps America “paid” for the privilege of getting something for nothing by sacrificing their own middle class jobs.

Let me compare America to a person – me, and her bread-and-butter middle-american manufacturing to my “day job”.

If I get to print my “own money” to pay for everything necessity and luxury in life, simply because everybody looks at me in awe and openly concedes that I am the most gifted, the most blessed of all; and they all darn well know that I carry the biggest stick ever graced the planet village – so big that it’s bigger than all others’ combined, then why do I need to force myself to toil at an unglamorous day job?

Therefore, to me a simple fact is that America as a whole (unlike Europe or Japan for example), has deemed her middle-class manufacturing to be expendable because she can more easily get what they produce for “nothing” from China.

The “nothing” here is a pile of electronic US dollars, of course, which is unrepayable – a fact clearly know to both sides of the Pacific.

Even though this monetary “hegemony” comes at a real and undeniable cost to the middle American families, to me, a naturalized Canadian originally from China, America as a whole has deemed this trade-off to be acceptable.

A real cynic may point out that at least China paid for her opium in the 19th century with real silver. But America these days are getting her opium essentially for “free”.

so why would a addict to “free” drugs quit?

Essentially, IMHO, PRC was given “preferential” access to the US market for “playing nice” with the prevailing international order, with acknowledgment of the US$ as the reigning supremo.

Going forward, IMHO, a barter, or a balanced “basket-of-currency” based medium of trade will be inevitable. Exactly what are American middle class getting out of the American currency being the world’s reserve currency these days anyways? Someone please answer my question.

Unfortunately Charlie, you are only half-right about the opium of labour “rights”. I don’t think the people behind this website are champions of cultural marxism.

The Chinese “chose” Communism for its faux egalitarian appeal. Just as every other people who either “chose” or had militant socialism imposed upon this, they were bitterly disappointed in the end.

A “Jesus” reform is the only reform that will save China.

It’s time westerners get a taste of their own medicine. Labour rights have priced western factories out of competition for too many goods and will soon posh western factories out of a lifeline. It is choking on its own opium. China won’t make the mistake of buying western narcotics to poison its own people again – down with western style labour ‘rights’.