From: nguyen@drutx.ATT.COM (Christopher Chu)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.vietnamese
Subject: Re: Normalization w/ Hanoi
Summary: Reader's comments :-)
Date: 1 Oct 92 00:43:08 GMT
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories - Denver, Colorado

Dear Van Dao MAI:
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| From: becherer@suna0.cs.uiuc.edu (Max Becherer)                            |
| Newsgroups: soc.culture.vietnamese                                         |
| Subject: Re: Normalization w/ Hanoi                                        |
| Message-ID: <9209291714.AA21912@suna7.cs.uiuc.edu>                         |
| Date: 29 Sep 92 17:14:40 GMT                                               |
|                                                                            |
| Van Dao MAI writes...                                                      |
|                                                                            |
| >I smell this American fascist as a very typical little North American     |
| >who understands everything but what beyond his nose. With all the         |
| >illnesses of the so-called Western democracies, North American will       |
| >be soon sold out on their American dream.                                 |
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I think economical pressure or blockage are not the characteristics
of the facists but the capitalists in the New World.
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| >A country like Vietnam cannot afford a democracy of the Western style.    |
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What do you think the differences are? It is clearly possible if people
understand what western democracy is. I think you have democracy in Australia,
don't you? Democracy should distinguish no people, color or countries, don't
you think?
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| >Looking what Western companies have done to Thailand, the Philippines,    |
| >etc ... The human condition of an average American or Australian or       |
| >French is simply pathetic. This is condition is infinitely better than    |
| >what many Westerners plan for third world countries.                      |
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I think we have to be able to work as peers with foreigners; if we did not,
complaints do not have significant effects. We may always expect other people
to care for us as much as their family members, but we have no rights to
demand them so. Think about how you would make the living condition for
everyone outside your home be better than that inside your home: is this
possible for you to do?
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| >.................................................... I have seen          |
| >young Australian kids becoming empty-headed. They knows only how          |
| >to look for Coca Cola, food and sex. As I believe that Australia is       |
| >still a much better country for kids to grow up in, I have little         |
| >doubt that other countries like the US, France, Italy, etc ... are        |
| >much worse.                                                               |
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This is your reasoning: "Australian kids are bad. Thus, I believe that
American kids are worse!" You know, you have not proven a point. Even though
I am not trying to prove anything, I really want to tell you that I have
seen many of my colleagues' children, from 6 to 22 years of age, who are as
good as or even better than the Vietnamese kids in general.
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| >Plato has pointed out clearly that democracy has many illnesses. The      |
| >major illness is that it is characterized by the wish of the mobs who     |
| >do not necessarily know what good for them. Therefore democracy tend      |
| >to suffer disunity, selfishness, and waste of resources.                  |
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I am becoming so doubtful whether we have the same definition of democracy.
What does this concept have to do with, first, economics, and, now, social
illness, disunity, selfishness and waste of resources? I also wonder why
you used Plato's philosophy: don't you believe that that, today, an A-class
undergraduate student majoring in philosophy at UCLA can think better than
Plato did? Don't you think the problems that you have cited are much more
closedly related to the results of American individualism and capitalism
instead of democracy?
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| >....................................................... Third world       |
| >country cannot afford a democracy of Western style. They need to lift     |
| >their intellectual ability higher to equal or better than that of the     |
| >most advanced Western society before a democracy becomes practical.       |
| >Japan did not advance because of Democracy! she advanced because of       |
| >nationalism, humility and hatred for the Western arrogance. Germany       |
| >did not advance by democracy. She advances by the will to sucdeed and     |
| >the strength of the German hearts and minds.                              |
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Democracy has never meant any money, from beginning to end, ever! To put
it in other words, a democratic country is not necessarily a rich country
or vice versa. The question that you should consider in this essay is: can
Vietnam be a better country without having democracy - but not capitalism,
materialism, nationalism, facism, or individualism - that is modeled after
the Western world? Forget about Vietnam being rich for a few decades,
wouldn't ya?
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| >Vietnam may suffer humility now. However, she will rise! She will         |
| >learn the best of the skill that Western cultures can offer. She will     |
| >maintain her poetic culture. She cannot afford the rotten kind of         |
| >democracy of the West. She may have her own form of democracy that        |
| >will goes beyond the taste for flesh and bones of the Western facists.    |
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I do not want to repeat the same comments and questions for you. Please
read my conclusion below.
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| >She will not be the play ground of the West similar to what Thailand,     |
| >Philippines, South America, etc ... have always been. The regime          |
| >in Vietnam may not be the most desirable on Earth now. However they       |
| >have the interest of the motherland at heart. The old generations         |
| >are dying out rapidly. The younger generation will be better. Let's       |
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Don't you think that the Vietnam Co^.ng Ho`a government and many of its
officials also had the interest of its motherland at heart? Of course, the
new vietnamese generations will be better the old ones; however, they will
also be slower than their peers in rest of the world!!! Do you think that,
in order to be competitive with other people in the world, it's enough for
the vietnamese to move the their country with only the waiting hearts; in
this scenario, by the time the vietnamese would start to exercises democracy,
the rest of the world would have been playing a super exponential function
of democracy already!!!
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| >hope that they will not learn all the illnesses of Western cultures       |
| >(the North American culture in particular).                               |
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They won't learn the bad things if there are someone who can distinguish
the good things from those bad ones to teach them. If there are vietnamese
in well-developed countries who still do not understand what democracy means
after being there for over a decade, please tell me, what can we expect from
the people from our mother land? @#$%$#@ 
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| >                                                                          |
| >Van Dao MAI                                                               |
| >Wollongong University                                                     |
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After going through this article, I am no longer sure about the main points
that you wanted to discuss. I think you have failed to distinguish the values
of democracy from a number of the familiar American national issues. You may
use any up-to-date dictionary to find a concrete definition of democracy.
Also, there are many social, economical and political concepts that are
responsible for the countless ways in which people live in the United States
of America; for me, democracy is a significant part in all of these and this
concept can be used independently from all others.

Sincerely Yours,

Chris
Newsgroups: soc.culture.vietnamese