Confucius as China's Ideologue Today

At some point I was ashamed of being the only beneficiary of this flow of knowledge. Therefore, my book published online in weekly installments (www.levnavrozov.com) has a Forum where my readers’ letters are published to be read (and discussed) by all readers, and not only myself. Of course, those who do not want this public reading and discussion of their letters, but want to communicate with me personally, may continue to e-mail to my address (

The e-mail letter my book’s Forum received on May 6 is interesting enough to answer it not only in my book’s Forum but also in my regular NewsMax.com Friday column.

In those sections of my book that are devoted to China, I describe Kung, known in the West as "Confucius.” He lived in China from 551 to 479 B.C. Soviet Russia began with Marx, but slid into Russian nationalism. Post-1949 China began with Marx, but slid into traditional Chinese absolutism as it has existed for millennia, and its ideologue is Kung.

In his e-mail letter to my book’s Forum, a reader of my book online, Timothy D. Yokum, who signs his letter as "Tim,” writes:

1) You state that Kung was a master statesman. That he believed that only master statesmen should in fact be statesmen (please correct me if I am wrong). And yet:

1. Kung was never in the position of royal, absolutist authority. He advocated a system that should have put him, the master statesman, into a position of authority, and yet never seemed to work to achieve said authority. It sounds like, from your article, that he supported the Chinese authoritarian rule. Yet, his own belief should have caused him to oppose it, since these rulers were there by birth or by blood (war), and only secondly by schooling in the art of statecraft!

In my book I make no attempt to criticize Kung. My book is not written to enlighten the Chinese Communist admirers of Kung, but is intended for Westerners, who, including even Western Communists, understand how self-contradictory Kung is.

Why do I discuss Kung in my book? I want my Western readers to understand the mentality of those Chinese (possibly, the majority of the population of China) who believe in Kung’s absolutism.

Unfortunately, many Americans assume that the world is populated by various nations some of which look outlandish, but all of which are socio-psychologically no different from Americans. They are enslaved outside the West by local tyrants and, having been liberated from them, will become exemplary (American-style) citizens.

Quite recently, the Iraqis were liberated from their local tyrant. So? It was discovered that the Sunni on which Saddam Hussein had relied and which had dominated Shi’a are less fundamentalist, less anti-American and more Western than Shi’a, who constitute up to 65 percent of the Iraqi Moslems. So now we have the Shi’a majority liberated from the Sunni minority and hating the United States far more than Sunni did.

Similarly, the mentality of the majority of the Chinese population is unknown to many members of the U.S. political establishment. Hence they believe that absolutism is quickly vanishing and will soon completely vanish in China as it did in Russia (for how long?) in 1991.

Then Tim announces that I "seem to advocate” Chinese absolutism. Does he take me for a high-ranking member of the Communist Party of China who admires Kung and believes in his absolutism? Have I come from China to convert the United States to Kung’s absolutism?

(Not saying that you SHOULD butt out. Far from it!) It is exactly the Western system we have, rather than the absolutist system Kung advocated, that allows you to speak, with any sense of credibility, on the whole issue!

And I’m not talking the "freedom” to speak it. I’m talking about the "credibility,” the "regard” we should have for your words, you who are not schooled in statecraft.

The difference is that Kung insisted that the heads of state and government must be political thinkers, while the West of John Stuart Mill’s time had them as independent nationally or internationally known figures.

The last internationally known American political thinker was Sidney Hook, who used to tell me that my message – the mortal threat to the West – is the most important message of today. But after his death, Hook himself has been disappearing from reference books.

Nevertheless, I am aware of the importance of the freedom of the press as a result of what John Stuart Mill called in 1859 "the protection of the country against the tyranny of the political rulers.” I hardly need Tim’s tutorial on the subject.

In Soviet Russia I could have become a top Soviet journalist, writing in the major Soviet newspapers and the author of the all-time best seller, winning Stalin’s and State prizes. Not to prostitute myself in this way, I translated Russian classical literature into English, which earned me the most sumptuous villa outside the palaces of the dictator himself.

At the first chance to emigrate (in 1971) we dropped everything and rushed in search of the freedom of the press – in which I, and later my son, could freely express ourselves. In the United States, I warned the West from 1972 to 1991 (at the risk of being assassinated by the KGB) about the Soviet development of post-nuclear weapons. Since 1986 I have been warning the West about the same in China.

Yet Tim writes that I "seem to advocate” Chinese absolutism.

The very end of his letter is also worth quoting:

Comments are welcome, and kudos to your work so far!

To understand, for example, the one-third of Italian voters who voted for Communism (and not just for Socialism), it is necessary to understand Marxism. To dismiss it without understanding it is to condemn the United States to insular global ignorance. To understand Marx does not mean to "advocate” Soviet absolutism.

Tim’s approach suggests that knowledge is subversion or treason and, to be safe, a "patriot” should know just one garbled or misunderstood quotation from the Declaration of Independence.

The political establishment of the English-speaking countries dismissed Nietzsche without reading him. As a result, it is only through several accidents of history that Hitler did not destroy these countries. To understand Nietzsche does not mean to "advocate” German Nazism.

The same applies to Kung. Yes, the "ridiculousness” Tim cites above follows from Kung’s theory of 25 centuries ago. And if Tim has noticed this "ridiculousness,” certainly the Chinese admirers of Kung will also notice it – with glee and as the best proof that Kung’s "system” now in China is incomparably better than the elections in the West and will lead to Chinese world domination, with the annihilation or surrender of the West.

A product that might interest you: