This is the Friends of History Debating Society. I'm John Bachelor and I welcome Thaddeus

McCotter, writing in American Greatness about the Cold War I and lessons learned for the

adversaries in Cold War II. Thadd is a very good evening to you. As I

recall the Cold War in the 20th century, the Soviet Union was not prosperous

and the People's Republic of China was very very poor to the point

of starving to death tens of millions of its own people and having no

industrial base whatsoever except perhaps a

blacksmith in the backyard. They've learned from the mistakes. How so? Good

evening to you.

Good evening to you, John. First, the premise is that we are currently engaged in a second

Cold War due to the failures of the policy, establishment, the corporations, and others in the

elite, quote unquote, community over the last 30 years.

What you're talking about makes perfect sense because when you think about the

Soviet Union, it was a clear adversary, it was understood it was a strategic threat and rival model of governance.

We defeated them with a containment strategy and eventually a rollback strategy that carried through

multiple administrations over a bipartisan basis,

excluding a bipartisan consensus in Congress

that we have to win.

Today, we do not see that type of consensus in fact from Republicans and Democratic

administrations as well as the corporate community. China learned the

lessons they became through the openness to foreign investment, to foreign business,

they used their captive population as a means of enticing foreign capital, foreign investment,

...