小弟真是替大哥捉急啊
李光耀谈美国 on wall street journalI found myself engrossed this week by the calm, incisive wisdom of one of the few living statesmen in the world who can actually be called visionary.
The wisdom is in a book, "Lee Kuan Yew: The Grand Master's Insights on China, the United States and the World," a gathering of Mr. Lee's interviews, speeches and writings.
Mr. Lee, of course, is the founder and inventor of modern Singapore. He made it a dynamo. He pushed it beyond its ethnic divisions and placed a bet that, though it is the smallest nation in Southeast Asia and has few natural resources, its people, if organized and unleashed within a system of economic incentive, would come to constitute the only resource that mattered. He was right. When he took office as prime minister, in 1959, per capita income was about $400 a year. Last year it was more than $50,000.
He is now 89, a great friend of America, and his comments on the U.S. are pertinent to many of the debates in which we're enmeshed.
He is bullish about our immediate prospects but concerned about our long-term trajectory. He believes what made us great is the ancestral nature of our people—creative, inventive, original, inclusive.
Former Singapore Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew
His advice on immigration: Keep it up but keep your culture.
What threatens America? A political culture stuck in the shallows, and a mass-entertainment edifice that is destabilizing, destructive and injurious to the national character.
Is the United States in systemic decline?
"Absolutely not." It is the most militarily powerful and economically dynamic nation in the world. America faces debt, deficit and "tremendously difficult economic times" but "for the next two to three decades" it "will remain the sole superpower."
America has shown over its history "a great capacity for renewal and revival." It doesn't get stuck in "grooved thinking" but is able to think pragmatically and imaginatively. Its language "is the equivalent of an open system that is clearly the lingua franca" of all the economic and political leaders and strivers in the world. In the coming decades "it is the U.S. that will be pre-eminent in setting the rules of the game. No major issue of world peace and stability can be resolved without U.S. leadership."
A major factor in America's rise and economic dominance: All the brightest people in the world know "Americans will let you work for them in America and in their multinational corporations abroad." But America will lose its technological edge unless it is able to continue attracting talent.
The American advantage in coming economic and technological contests? A "can-do" approach to life. Americans always believe a problem can be solved. An "entrepreneurial culture" that sees both risk and failure "as natural and necessary for success."
The U.S. is still "a frontier society." "The American culture . . . is that we start from scratch and beat you." They would settle an empty area, call it a town, and say, "You be the sheriff, I am the judge, you are the policeman, and you are the banker, let us start." Not long ago the U.S. was losing to Japan and Germany in manufacturing. "But came up with the Internet, Microsoft MSFT +0.78% and Bill Gates, and Dell. . . . What kind of mindset do you need for that? It is part of their history."
America is great not only because of its power and wealth. After World War II its "magnanimity and generosity" helped it "rebuild a more prosperous world." "Only the elevating power of her idealism" can explain this. "The United States is the most benign of all the great powers."
What worries him about America? Our elections have become "a never-ending process of auctions" in which politicians outbid each other with promises. America's leaders seem captive to popular sentiment. They must break out of this and do what is necessary for America, "even if they lose their re-election."
Our consumer society and mass communications "have made for a different kind of person getting elected as leader." Politicians hesitate to speak needed truths: "A certain coyness or diffidence seems to have descended on American politicians."
Mr. Lee is "amazed" that "media professionals can give a candidate a new image and transform him . . . into a different personality. . . . A spin doctor is a high-income professional, one in great demand. From such a process, I doubt if a Churchill, a Roosevelt, or a de Gaulle can emerge!"
What worries him about the prevailing U.S. culture? A lot: "guns, drugs, violent crime, vagrancy, unbecoming behavior in public—in sum, the breakdown of civil society."
"The ideas of individual supremacy . . . when carried to excess, have not worked," and the world has taken note: "Those who want a wholesome society where young girls and old ladies can walk in the streets at night, where the young are not preyed upon by drug peddlers, will not follow the American model. . .The top 3 to 5% of a society can handle this free-for-all, this clash if you do this with the whole mass, you will have a mess. . . . To have, day to day, images of violence and raw sex on the picture tube, the whole society exposed to it, it will ruin a whole community."
Asians visiting the U.S. are often "puzzled and disturbed by conditions there," including "poverty in the midst of great wealth."
In spite of this, America often now exhibits to the world a sense of its own "cultural supremacy." When the American media praise a country such as the Philippines for becoming democratic, "it is praise with condescension, compliments from a superior culture patting an inferior one on the head." America criticizes Singapore as too authoritarian. "Why? Because we have not complied with their ideas of how we should govern ourselves. But we can ill afford to let others experiment with our lives. Their ideas are theories, theories not proven."
What can destroy America is "multiculturalism," which he speaks of as not an appreciation of all cultures but a gradual surrendering of the essential culture that has sustained America since its beginning. That culture—its creativity and hardiness, its political and economic traditions—is great, and it would be "sad for America to be changed even partially." Will waves of immigrants from the south assimilate, or will America become "more Latin American?" America must continue to invite in all the most gifted and hard-working people in the world, but it must not lose its culture, which is the secret of its success.
And America goes the way of modern Europe at its peril: "If you follow the ideological direction of Europe, you are done for." There are always people who require help, but "addressing their needs must be done in a way that does not kill incentive."
"Americans and European governments believed that they could always afford to support the poor and the needy: widows, orphans, the old and homeless, disadvantaged minorities, unwed mothers. Their sociologists expounded the theory that hardship and failure were due . . . to flaws in the economic system. So charity became 'entitlement,' and the stigma of living on charity disappeared." Welfare costs grew faster than the government's willingness to raise taxes. They "took the easy way out by borrowing to give higher benefits to the current generation of voters." The result: deficits and dangerously high public debt. Lee Kwan Yew and his pathetic fellow Singaporean henchmen of the great American master are always bullish on the US and bearish on China.
Singapore, a country of zero significance. 二位转这种贴，先给翻译一下呗？
纳瓦谢里采夫 发表于 2013-5-7 12:22 static/image/common/back.gif
二位转这种贴，先给翻译一下呗？
不难啊。谈到美国的问题，以后的发展，对其他人的影响（其实是担心作为小弟的自己受影响） 本帖最后由 sadpig323 于 2013-5-7 17:11 编辑
pyongyangsaram 发表于 2013-5-7 11:01 static/image/common/back.gif
Lee Kwan Yew and his pathetic fellow Singaporean henchmen of the great American master are always bu ...
这个说法是错误的，
李光耀对中国的态度并不敌视，他在多种场合都提到过，中国现在已经崛起，沉睡的狮子醒了，大力号召新加坡企业去中国做生意，和中国做生意，而且在新加坡大力推行华文，还有专门成立一个＂通商中国＂的组织。你仔细观察就会发现，在中国做生意的新加坡公司很多
不过这不是因为他对中国有什么特别的好感，他是一个现实主义者而已，是站在新加坡角度来看问题的！
sadpig323 发表于 2013-5-7 13:15 static/image/common/back.gif
这个说法是错误的，
李光耀对中国的态度并不敌视，他在多种场合都提到过，中国现在已经崛起 ...
被几个马来化和伊斯兰化的国家包围，能守住自己的核心文化就不错了，没有大陆的移民输血，新加坡早被绿教占领了 李光耀前几年就有一个观点，理性对待中国的崛起，认为中国强大了对新加坡的发展也有好处。
他一直苦口婆心的教育国内的青少年，新加坡的繁荣并非理所当然，而是老一辈奋斗的结果，而新加坡作为一个华人为主的国家，却被穆斯林包围，实际上一不小心就有可能万劫不复，不过现在的年轻人根本不鸟他，还用各种段子来嘲讽这位老人。
新加坡现在的中层和底层民众对中国人的态度都不大友好，中层还稍微好些，至少表面的礼貌是懂的，底层阶级那是一个凶残，有些恨不能拉你直接去毒气室。反而大部分中产阶级和有钱人态度十分之友好。上次听一本地人说，除开拿绿卡的，中国人在新加坡就有100万之多。前段日子行动党的人口白皮书，在2030年之前，人口最多达到690万，被各路人马都喷出翔了，搞得政府还要专门出来解释，说这只是个可能性，不一定就要这么多人。这几年外面的移民形势和前几年没得比了，听说加拿大那边也是一样！ sadpig323 发表于 2013-5-7 13:15 static/image/common/back.gif
这个说法是错误的，
李光耀对中国的态度并不敌视，他在多种场合都提到过，中国现在已经崛起，沉睡的狮子 ...
No way. Lew Kuan Yew has always been wary of China's rise and he has nudged the US, implicitly or explicitly, on multiple occasions that China's rise and her growing influence must be checked, particularly by a continuing and even stronger US presence in the region.
Lee Kuan Yew has never liked China. pyongyangsaram 发表于 2013-5-8 03:27 static/image/common/back.gif
No way. Lew Kuan Yew has always been wary of China's rise and he has nudged the US, implicitly or...
这个是以偏概全了，首先，李光耀作为一个新加坡人，虽然是华人，但本身也没有理由喜爱中国，甚至可以这样讲，他除了对新加坡，其他任何国家都没有喜欢这个感觉，包括可能很多人觉得的美国。一切都是以新加坡利益出发的，他这样的领导人，在无数场合讲过无数的话，个人认为不必过度解读一些带有感情色彩的言论，看其所制定的政策也许更能了解其想法。
国内外有些媒体总在谈什么中国威胁论，这个属于搞话题，每个国家都接受乐中国地崛起，而且中国崛起也有外资的帮助，我觉得外资对中国的帮助一定程度的超过了国内很多大企业。自从邓小平的改革开放后，现在外面主流社会对中国基本上没有什么敌意，最多是某种程度的不信任，敌视的人肯定也有，我们改革都这么多年了，薄熙来以及好多人不还有文革思想吗？讲敌视，以前国外对我国的敌视程度高多了。
李光耀对新加坡的预期就是做中国和美国之间的桥梁，因为新加坡可以算一个两种文化融合的地区，可以大力发展第三产业，为中国和美国提供服务，而获得最大的利益。实际上新加坡能做到两种文化还比较有效的融合，正是资政的功劳。
R：我在这里空讲可能也没有意义，手上还是有些资料文献可以参考的，这几天上班，无法上传，过几天我弄下。
新加坡历史上也曾经有我们党的身影，不知可谈否？不涉及到贪污什么的，和政治斗争有联系，但不涉及到现任任何一位国 内党员。
sadpig323 发表于 2013-5-8 08:25 static/image/common/back.gif
这个是以偏概全了，首先，李光耀作为一个新加坡人，虽然是华人，但本身也没有理由喜爱中国，甚至可以这样 ...
每个国家都乐见中国崛起？那是不可能的。敌视谈不上，警惕，hedge是人人都有的。我理解美国，日本，印度，哪怕是越南为什么整天琢磨着怎么对付中国，我真的可以理解。
我不求李老头喜欢中国，我不明白的是，对于新加坡这种芝麻大小，八杆子打不着的地方，中国招它惹它了？中国是和新加坡有领土纠纷呐，还是要输出共产革命啊？李老头整天在那里呱噪，中国的发展如何给本地区造成威胁，美国如何要加强存在，联络和各国的关系来制衡中国等等，烦不烦啊？
做中国和美国的桥梁？别开玩笑了。新加坡算个屁，要它做桥梁？中美建交是巴基斯坦搭的桥，中美现在之间有什么问题也轮不到新加坡这个东西说话。李老头对中国说过什么话我不清楚（八成是谄媚的，不真心的话），他对美国说的有关中国的话我是略知一二的，一向是给美国人出谋划策来制约中国。
李老头怎么还没老年痴呆呢？
pyongyangsaram 发表于 2013-5-8 10:15 static/image/common/back.gif
每个国家都乐见中国崛起？那是不可能的。敌视谈不上，警惕，hedge是人人都有的。我理解美国，日本，印度， ...
朋友，别动气，也别讲什么配不配的话，我们内地和台湾的很多次会谈就是在新加坡，也是老李联络的。
新加坡小是小，但也有很重要的战略意义。有没有资格这种话就过了，老李对美国讲过什么我也的确不清楚，但是他在新加坡对新加坡人讲过什么我是很了解的，并非对中国献媚，因为不是对中国讲的。
中国和新加坡还是很有渊源的，老李也根本不敌视中国，或者说实际上老李最警惕的还是周边国家，我这样讲也是有论据支持，过几天我再开帖，大家可以研究下，也不是说谁对谁错，提供多方面的角度参考吧！
鼻屎一样的国家----阿扁一针见血 sadpig323 发表于 2013-5-8 11:31 static/image/common/back.gif
朋友，别动气，也别讲什么配不配的话，我们内地和台湾的很多次会谈就是在新加坡，也是老李联络的。
新加 ...
朋友，且不说咱们观点上的异同，只想说：你一向的理智和冷静让我钦佩！ 纳瓦谢里采夫 发表于 2013-5-8 11:35 static/image/common/back.gif
鼻屎一样的国家----阿扁一针见血
采夫真是性情中人啊！爱恨的情绪都如此强烈。 pyongyangsaram 发表于 2013-5-8 11:41 static/image/common/back.gif
朋友，且不说咱们观点上的异同，只想说：你一向的理智和冷静让我钦佩！
呵呵！以前也很冲动的，只是后来发现这样并不能达到自己的目的，而且弄到不开心。
而且这个世界不也真因为多元化才精彩么？有不同观点才有讨论的空间和交流嘛！真要观点一样有时可能也无趣。
不过也不是一向冷静，昨天就被阿震给整怒了，之前也有冷嘲热讽论坛会员的行为，呵呵！
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