Sir,
Your reporting on economic affairs – saturday’s article on the Ma administration’s CECA ‘framework’ with China was a prime example – leaves much to be desired.
Your report was entirely misconceived in its attention to the ‘impact’ of CECA on Taiwan’s sovereignty and democracy and the ridiculously named possibility of a ‘free trade agreement’.
Here is a fact: the concept of ‘sovereignty’ and also ‘authority’ properly belongs only to individual persons since the actions of a person can only be authored by a person possessing free will.
Here is a second fact: majoritarian democracy does not establish ‘legitimate’ national sovereignty. To force one person to abide by decrees made by others with which he disagrees in no way amounts to ‘national sovereignty’; it is in fact a veiled attempt to destroy the actual sovereignty of the individual person.
The ‘democratic sovereignty’ of any national government over my life or yours is a fictitious presumption. Ergo the sovereignty of either Taiwan or of China simply does not exist.
As a further consequence of this premise, it follows that any ‘free trade agreement’ that is either signed or not signed or is included in a ‘bi-lateral framework’ by the governments of Taiwan and China is a complete nonsense. A free-trade agreement signed by a government is like a birth certificate signed by a butcher.
Of course my words will read like nonsense – but that is merely a consequence of the nonsensical times we live in, not the veracity of the words themselves.
To the extent that anyone in Taiwan values his or her own life and freedom, it is imperative for them that their fellow countrymen come to view political and economic affairs on the premise of the free individual and not this ancient gibberish about democracy and national sovereignty.
As I have said before, the basic premises behind the Taipei Times’ outlook on the world are in grave error and it is high time that they are changed for the better.
Sincerely,
Michael Fagan
(Sent: Saturday February 28th 2009. Unpublished by the Taipei Times)
