Wang Huning's America Against America [...]
Wang Huning's America Against America [...]From a historical perspective, Americans see freedom more than equality, and sometimes the pursuit of freedom manifests itself in the form of the pursuit of equality. After the end is achieved, what is preserved is often freedom. It cannot be said that some people do not aspire to equality, but they only aspire to political equality, and it would be difficult to accept it if they went further […] American political history tells us that the state governments precede the federal government, and the states already have a more orthogonal functioning mechanism. The federal government is established only to maintain the original status of the states so that they will not be destroyed and weakened. On the contrary, if there is a central government first and a local government later, the situation is very different. In the political development of different countries, there are local governments as the premise of the central government, and there are central governments as the premise of local governments. It goes without saying, I am afraid, that these two models lead to different results. The long-running U.S. social system has created a culture that accepts the current political landscape - the "Society of Fifty" - and is the main force that maintains it. To maintain an institution is, in effect, to maintain itself. The federal government is, in a sense, an institution that is coordinated and managed by people from the G50 […] To a large extent, county politics is the foundation of American politics. The process of county politics determines what kind of politics people can and cannot accept. At the county level, it has more of a managerial dimension. Class interests are more directly reflected in the federal and state governments. The county level of government takes more into account the actual interests of the residents and reflects class interests more indirectly, and is actually made possible by the electoral system. The county is small enough that everyone can see what the county officials are doing. If they feel dissatisfied, they will not vote for them next time. Anyone who wants to get more votes has to do real work. This is the basis for the secularization of politics. The managerial system and various other institutions prevailing in county politics reflect the degree of secularization of county politics. Many people see county politics as a technical issue rather than a political one. Of course there is some politicking in county politics, but it is just more necessary to use practical matters at the base of the system.