CHAUTAUQUA–Let’s start with an analogy to sports.

When your team is the top team, many other teams’ biggest game of the year is when they play your team.

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Over the course of the last century, America has become the world’s top team. To put it more precisely, the principles upon which America was founded have become the world’s top team.

Not in the sense that they predominate everywhere, or even in most countries, but in the sense that they are principles, grounded in individual liberty, to which people from across the world aspire.

What an anomaly it is in world history that these principles include:

¯ All power originates with the people, and

¯ Government has only those powers that “We the People” surrendered to government in the first place.

As these principles, over the course of the last century, have become the world’s top team, many have sought to challenge the primacy of America and, by extension, the primacy of these principles.

Such challengers have come from many corners of the world, including from within the United States.

Rather than accepting these principles, such challengers believe power originates with government, while the people have only such liberty and such power as government, by its grace, grants unto them.

To borrow a phrase from Humpty Dumpty, many such challengers believe “the rule of law” means whatever they say it means whenever they choose to use it.

But the rule of law, so distorted, is no rule of law at all. It’s the rule of will. It’s the rule of the will of whoever holds power.

It’s no wonder–no wonder at all–that those opposed to the principles upon which America was founded want these principles no longer to be the world’s top team.

That goes for such opponents from other corners of the world and for such opponents from within the United States.

After all, where would such opponents–from other corners of the world–be if America’s founding principles prevailed in their countries?

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Sometimes those who have special connections to places that have endured the rule of will are those who well understand and can well articulate how precious not only the rule of law is but also the danger that America, these principles, and the world face from those promoting a malignant form of the rule of will.

In that light: Meet Dr. Gordon Chang.

His father emigrated to New Jersey. Whatever culture shock that must have been, he came to appreciate and love his adopted country, and instilled that appreciation, that love, in his son.

After graduating from law school in the United States in the 1970s, his son worked in law firms in mainland China and Hong Kong for two decades.

He — with a father from Taiwan–has since become an internationally recognized China expert who has briefed the National Intelligence Council, the Central Intelligence Agency, the United States Defense Department, and Congress. His broadcast appearances include Fox News, CNN, CNBC, PBS, and the BBC.

He shared insights with Advocates for Balance at Chautauqua, or ABC, on July 24.

Chang recalls Chinese emperors’ belief that Heaven compelled them to rule the world.

To put it mildly, Chang sees China as a danger to the United States.

China and Russia, he says, view the world similarly: Both want to take down the international order.

He cites Chinese President Xi Jinping as having told Russian President Vladimir Putin on March 22, 2023: “Change is coming that has not occurred in 100 years, and you and I are driving the change together.”

“We don’t have a moment to lose,” Chang says.

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On its website, https://www.abcatchq.com, ABC posts videos of all of its speakers, including Chang.

ABC was formed in 2018. Its mission is “to achieve a balance of speakers in a mutually civil and respectful environment consistent with the historic mission of Chautauqua” Institution. ABC is its own Section 501(c)(3) organization, legally separate from the institution.

Dr. Randy Elf’s Aug. 20, 2020, ABC presentation, on “How Political Speech Law Benefits Politicians and the Rich,” is at https://works.bepress.com/elf/21.

COPYRIGHT ç 2023 BY RANDY ELF