Dissecting an American Conservative Spin Master – Part 4/4

November 7, 2011

Did you know Dennis Prager wrote on Creators.com that, “Consider the facts (I’m surprised he used this word): Tibet, at least 1,400 years old, is one of the world’s oldest nations, has its own language, its own religion and even its own ethnicity. Over 1 million of its people have been killed by the Chinese, its culture has been systematically obliterated, 6,000 of its 6,200 monasteries have been looted and destroyed, and most of its monks have been tortured, murdered or exiled.”

All of Prager’s emotionally driven claims such as “killed, obliterated, looted, destroyed, tortured, murdered or exiled” have been proven wrong, but most of Prager’s Parrots are not interested in the facts. I say that Prager owes China an apology.

In fact, Tibet was not a nation until 1911 when the British convinced the Dalai Lama to declare freedom from China, after having been ruled by China since 1279 AD during the Yuan Dynasty, then the Ming Dynasty starting in 1368 AD and last the Qing Dynasty until its collapse.

All the “facts” are there for anyone willing to trust the experts and sources such as Sir Robert Hart (1835 – 1911) and a piece written for the October 1912 National Geographic Magazine by an expert Western trained medical doctor named  Shaoching H. Chuan, M.D. that happened to spend two years in Tibet starting in 1907 after the last Qing emperor ordered him there to deal with a cholera epidemic.

In addition, Prager forgot to mention that there are more than sixty spoken languages in China and one written one. China has 56 minorities and each has its own language as the Tibetan minority does.  It’s been this way in China for more than 2,000 years.

In fact, by not mentioning America’s native minorities, it is my opinion that Dennis Prager is a hypocrite and deceitful.

North American native tribes and nations were free and governed themselves for more than ten thousand years (much longer than the 1,400 years he claims Tibet governed itself before 1950) before Europeans arrived and drove them from their land.

If you visit Native American Nations, you will discover how many spoke their own languages and many still do — the only difference is today native Americans live on reservations and the US Department of the Interior is responsible for the administration of programs relating to Native Americans, Alaska Natives and Native Hawaiians.

One example is the Navaho Nation, the largest Native American reservation in the United States, which is in Arizona. The Navaho Nation covers 27,425 sq miles (71,000 km2) with a population of about 174,000.

The Navajo Nation, like Tibet, is a semi-autonomous Native American-governed territory within the United States.

Another example is the Cherokee Nation, which had its own written language developed early in the 19th century by a mixed-blood Cherokee called Se-Quo-Yah, so the Cherokee Nation would be considered educated, literate and capable of governing itself as an equal, independent nation.

However, this did not stop the United States from breaking treaties and waging war with the Cherokee Nation to exploit the natural resources of their land.  It’s called conquest and anyone that studies history knows this is a natural part of the evolution of all species including man.

How is this situation different from Tibet and China? Native Americans had their own religions too and were not allowed to practice them by the United States, while China allows Tibetan Buddhists to practice their religion within a semi autonomous territory, which is administered by a CCP government agency similar to the US Department of the Interior.

Another fact that Prager conveniently left out of his opinionated rant of an essay is that after 1976, China rebuilt many of the Buddhist temples in Tibet that were destroyed during Mao’s Cultural Revolution when religions in China were banned and the entire population suffered.

Today, there are seven-major religions in China including Christianity and Islam.


Rush Limbaugh, the host of the number-one conservative talk-radio show, explains how talk-radio works.

Michael Orion Powell writes, “Prager is a good example of what happens when a commentator ties himself to one side of the political spectrum permanently.” By Seattle standards, Michael Powell calls himself a conservative, but by actual conservative standards (as defined by talk show hosts such as Dennis Prager), he says he is a raving liberal.

In addition, decades ago, I too listened to Rush Limbaugh and then deserted him for Dennis Prager.

I eventually fled Prager too, after I questioned his emotionally driven opinions and compared them to the facts of experts discovering that he was often wrong and misleading.  Now that I’m an ex-Prager Parrot, I guess that makes me a leftist-liberal prone to hysteria that fears death even though I support the Second Amendment to the US Constitution, which guarantees the right to bear arms (weapons such as rifles and pistols).

So, we either trust the emotionally-driven opinions of conservative talk show hosts such as Dennis Prager (with a major in Middle Eastern Studies and History who also studied about Russia), or trust 1,500 of the world’s most distinguished senior scientists, including the majority of Nobel laureates in science.

And the truth is, there is a chance the experts could be wrong about Global Warming, since it is only a theory supported by facts, but are we willing to risk ignoring them as Prager and his Parrots argue?

Return to Dissecting an American Conservative Spin Master – Part 3 or start with Part 1

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

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Dissecting an American Conservative Spin Master – Part 3/4

November 6, 2011

Dennis Prager says that liberal and/or leftists tend to trust experts more, are more likely to revere and even “worship” nature, while fearing death more than a conservative. Does this sound like a stereotype?

Pay attention to the emotional words Prager uses to drive his fans to accept his opinions. To a conservative, born again Christian reading that someone “worships” nature over God is a mortal sin and unforgivable.

This is how Prager manipulates the emotions of those that believe what he preaches. Has any expert studied if conservatives fear death less than liberal-leftists? I doubt it.

Then in Why Liberals Fear Global Warming More Than Conservatives Do, instead of focusing on Global Warming, Prager changes tactics to play on the emotions of his fanatical followers to drive emotional support for his opinions.

He infers that if we allow the leftist-liberals to focus too much on reducing carbon emissions to deal with the potential threat of Global Warming, which he infers is a hoax, we will “lose the war” against “Islamic fascism” that threatens the free world.

Wow!  That is HUGE leap of flawed logic. Imagine how “lose the war against Islamic fascism” is going to inflame the emotions of his conservative audience driving them to believe his opinions.

In addition, how is this going to happen? Well, by too many of us wasting our time working to cut back on carbon emissions reducing pollution so Global Warming may not threaten the world we live in.

To discover more of Prager’s fraud, I suggest watching To Hell and Back and discover that only one percent of the American population is fighting the war in Afghanistan and Iraq—to stop Prager’s “Islamic fascism” from taking over the world.

In addition, if we develop alternative forms of energy and break our Middle Eastern oil habit, won’t that help defeat Prager’s “Islamic fascism” by cutting off the West’s money from flowing into the Middle East?


Prager Claims “Equality” Isn’t American (because controversy is the bread and butter of talk radio)

If only one percent of Americans are fighting the war against Prager’s “Islamic fascism”, then why can’t the other 99% deal with the potential threat of Global Warming “possibly” caused by carbon emissions as supported by facts gathered and interpreted by many experts—In 1997, Science Daily reported that more than 1,500 of the world’s most distinguished senior scientists, including the majority of Nobel laureates in science, signed a consensus declaration urging leaders worldwide to act and prevent potentially devastating consequences of human-induced global warming.

However, in his Global Warming essay, Prager urges us to ignore these experts—that is unless we want to be seen as a hysterical, death fearing leftist-liberal.

In addition, if you click on that link To Hell and Back, you will discover from the video that many of America’s troops believe the wars (in Afghanistan and Iraq) is wrong.

A recent Pew research poll found that a third of American veterans who served after 9/11 believe the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are not worth fighting.

Did you know that in Townhall.com, Dennis Prager wrote, “The president (of the US) does not wish to annoy China’s dictators prior to his upcoming visit to Beijing.”

However, Prager is wrong again. If we use the accepted definition of a dictator, one does not rule China. It is a one-party Republic and China’s leaders are selected by the consensus of 70 million Communist Party members—a decision based on the merit of the individuals running for the position (instead of the popularity contest of American politics), which I wrote about in Dictatorship or one-party-republic.

It is obvious why Prager used the word “dictator” to describe China’s government—to stir emotions driving his fanatical followers (Prager’s Parrots—used as a metaphor) to accept his opinions.

Continued on November 5, 2011 in  Dissecting an American Conservative Spin Master – Part 4 or return to Part 2

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

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The Hungry Ghost Festival – The Chinese Halloween – Part 1/2

October 29, 2011

Halloween in America is celebrated the last day in October.

However, in China, the closest celebration to America’s Halloween is The Hungry Ghost Festival, which is celebrated the 14th or 15th night of the 7th lunar month in August. For 2011, that was August 14. In 2012, it will be August 31.

The Ghost Festival, also known as the Hungry Ghost Festival, is a traditional Chinese festival and holiday celebrated by Chinese in many countries, in which ghosts and/or spirits of deceased ancestors come from the lower realm or hell to visit the living.

Buddhists from China and Taoists claim that the Ghost Festival originated with the canonical scriptures of Buddhism, but many of the visible aspects of the ceremonies originate from Chinese folk religion, and other local folk traditions (see Stephen Teiser’s 1988 book, The Ghost Festival in Medieval China).

In America, most children wear costumes and go door to door collecting free candy.  In China food is offered to dead ancestors, joss paper is burned and scriptures are chanted.

Chinese Culture.net says the Hungry Ghost Festival is “Celebrated mostly in South China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and especially in Singapore and Malaysia… It is believed by the Chinese that during this month, the gates of hell are opened to let out the hungry ghosts who then seek food.

By comparison, History.com says, “Halloween’s origins date back to the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain (pronounced sow-in). The Celts, who lived 2,000 years ago in the area that is now Ireland, the United Kingdom and northern France, celebrated their new year on November 1. This day marked the end of summer and the harvest and the beginning of the dark, cold winter, a time of year that was often associated with human death. Celts believed that on the night before the new year, the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead became blurred.”

Continued on October 30, 2011 in The Hungry Ghost Festival – The Chinese Halloween – Part 2

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

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On Troy Parfitt’s “Why China Will Never Rule the World”

October 28, 2011

After discovering Troy Parfitt’s obviously biased romp through China by watching the ten-minute YouTube trailer for his theory of Why China Will Never Rule the World (a book released by Western Hemisphere Press August 23, 2011), I thought, “Why would China want to rule the world? Only fools want to rule the world. What most cultures/people want is to be left alone.”

All one has to do is look at what such goals did for Imperial Japan, Hitler’s Germany, the British Empire, which no longer exists as an empire, and the United States—a nation deep in debt and on the edge of financial ruin.

In addition, I thought it strange that a traditional publisher would support a book trailer that runs for more than ten minutes as if it were a mini documentary, when the Book Trailer Manual clearly says, “Please. Shorter is better. You want some absolutes? Okay, no longer than two minutes max.

Even Publishers Weekly touched on the subject of book trailers and provided several embedded examples ranging from 26 seconds to less than 2 minutes.

In addition, Claudia Jackson at Book Buzzer says, “A book trailer is just like a movie trailer, except that it is a ‘preview’ of your book.”  The sample book trailer Jackson provides runs one-minute-fifteen seconds of John Locke’s novel, “Wish List”, and for advice, she says, “Try and keep the trailer as short as possible. It’s not easy but you don’t want to lose your audience.

Curious about the publisher, I then Googled “Western Hemisphere Press” to discover what else they had published and ended up at the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs, which is in the U.S. Department of State and says it is responsible for all of the affairs in South, Central and North America. The mandate of this office is to promote U.S. interests in the region by supporting democracy, trade, and sustainable economic development, etc.

One way to promote U.S. interests would be to support a book that denigrates China’s culture, institutions and people.

The second Google hit was Western Hemisphere Press, which leads to Troy Parfitt’s website for his book.  Google found no direct link to a Website for Western Hemisphere Press or any other book published by a company with that name.

After looking through more than a hundred hits on Google, I thought—Is Troy Parfitt, Western Hemisphere Press and the U.S. State Department connected in some way.

After all, Parfitt’s biography on his website says he was born in 1972, graduated with a major in American history and a minor in Canadian political science from the University of New Brunswick and then became a certified ESL instructor, went to South Korea where he taught ESL for two years and then taught ten more years in Taipei.

Before returning home to Canada, he spent a few months as a Western tourist running around mainland China boosting his poor impressions of China.

I was reminded of a quote from Sterling Seagrave’s Dragon Lady of Dr. George Ernest Morrison, Peking correspondent of the Times of London. Sterling says, “As journalism’s first China watcher, Morrison was responsible for many of the slanders and half-truths of China that persist to this day.

Although I agree with Parfitt’s thesis that China will not rule the world (a safe assumption since no one has ruled the world and the odds are no one ever will), his reasoning and evidence to support this thesis are further examples of the “slanders and half-truths” Sterling Seagrave reveals in his well researched book of the life and legend of the last empress of China.

I also read many of the Amazon reader reviews of Parfitt’s book, which reinforced my opinion that this book is another example of what Henry Kissinger wrote in On China that “American exceptionalism is missionary. It holds that the United States has an obligation to spread its (so called superior Western Christian and political) values to every part of the world. China’s exceptionalism is cultural. China does not proselytize; it does not claim that its contemporary institutions are relevant outside China.”

In fact, with that one quote Kissinger did a better job explaining why China doesn’t want to rule the world than the 424 pages of Parfitt’s book.

Discover more from Kissinger on NPR’s “Talk of the Nation” with Neal Conan and Ted Koppel

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

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Ah Bing and “Reflection of the Moon”

October 26, 2011

To understand another country’s history and culture, one should listen to the music, read that country’s novels and watch its films.

This summer, my wife and daughter returned from China with dozens of original Chinese films on DVD.

Then I saw Reflection of the Moon, (ISBN: 7-88054-168-3), which is about Ah Bing (1893 – 1950), a famous master of the Chinese Erhu, who overnight—in 1950 shortly before his death—became a national sensation as radios throughout China played his music.

Fortunate for me, Ah Bing’s story had English subtitles, which were not of the best quality and true to form for a Chinese movie filmed in 1979 (shortly after the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976), the plot was melodramatic with traces of propaganda that favored the Chinese Communists.

However, to be fair, in 1950, the Civil War was over and the Communists, with support from several hundred million peasants, had won.

Mao’s Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution would not begin for years and for those that survived the purges in 1949 and 1950 (mostly abusive land owners and drug dealers accused of crimes by the people they may have abused and victimized), Mao fulfilled his promises of land reforms.

To understand the era of Ah Bing’s life, much of China (including Tibet) was still feudal in nature, and the upper classes often took advantage of the peasants and workers as if they were beasts of burden treated as slaves.


This is one of Ah Bing’s masterpieces for the Erhu—Moon Reflected in the Second Spring (二泉映月)

Ah Bing’s real name was Hua Yanjun. His knowledge of traditional Chinese music and his talent as a musician went mostly unnoticed until the last year of his life in 1950, shortly after the establishment of the People’s Republic of China.

In 1950, two musicologists were sent to his hometown of Wuxi to record and preserve his music. At the time, he was ill and hadn’t performed for about two years. Six of his compositions were recorded that are considered masterpieces. It is said that he knew more than 700 pieces—and most were his compositions.

As “Reflection of the Moon” shows, the lyrics of some of his music criticized the KMT (Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist government), and he was often punished for speaking out through his music. If you have read of The Long March, you know that the peasants did not trust the KMT, but they did trust the Communists and that trust was earned between 1926 and 1949—a period covering twenty-three years, and most rural Chinese of that era still think of Mao as China’s George Washington.

Before the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, China’s Communist Party treated the peasants and workers with respect while the KMT did not earn that trust.

In fact, Ah Bing’s story and music is still so popular that the Performing Arts Company of China’s Air Force performed Er Quan Yin, an original Western-style Chinese opera, in 2010. Source: China Daily

To discover more of the time-period that Ah Bing lived, see The Roots of Madness.

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

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