Not with the program? Let's be "China for a day"!

In my most famous post to date, I stated this:

It seemed to [H. G.] Wells that democracy includes too many people who aren't "with the program"; there needs to be totalitarian control by "elites" to effect the correct Utopian system.

when musing upon Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism. (BTW, his book blog still going strong.)

Well, I just heard the "China for a day" comments from Thomas Friedman on the Mark Levin show last night, and thought they provided a pretty stark example of Wells's call for "enlightened fascisti". Excerpt:

FRIEDMAN: Well, China for a day is a fantasy, basically. What if we had a government here that could actually make decisions? Okay? That could actually come together, Democrats and Republicans, and make a long-term plan and pursue it?

COLBERT, with sarcasm: Are you saying the Chinese do that?

FRIEDMAN: Yeah, sometimes they do.

COLBERT: But that is a totalitarian regime.

FRIEDMAN: Mm-hmm, and it is a measure of the frustration a lot of people in the green movement have, certainly me —

COLBERT: So you say that for one day we should have a totalitarian government where some ‘benign person at the top’ [He makes quotation-mark fingers] says this is what we do?

FRIEDMAN: No. Basically what I'm saying is if only our government could get its act together and launch a green revolution with the same persistence, focus, stick-to-it-iveness and direction that China does through authoritarian means. If we could only do that through democratic means —

Although Friedman pays some lip-service to "democratic means", he decries the sad result of those means, viz., no "green revolution" because so many poor unwashed slobs like me don't see the need for one. Tim Graham, from the conclusion of the Newsbusters link above, insightfully dissects from Friedman's writing what he likes and dislikes about Democracy:

Late in his book, in his "China For A Day" chapter, Friedman explains his envy that China could effectively ban the thin plastic bag, and it is banned. Why can’t we be like that? But that takes not only a day of enactment, but an eternity of enforcement. Friedman isn’t worried about Day Two forward, because the liberal groups will enforce it (page 374):

...because if it is ignored by companies or local governments, a dozen public interest groups, led by the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council, will sue the violators (including the federal government) all the way to the Supreme Court. That is why being China for a day – imposing all the right taxes, regulations, and standards needed to launch a clean power system in one day – would be so much more valuable to Washington than Beijing. Because once the directions are given from above, we would be overcoming the worst part of our democracy (the inability to make big decisions in peacetime), and the next day we would be able to enjoy the best part of our democracy (the power of our civic society to make government rules stick and the power of our markets to take advantage of them.)

In a nutshell, the worst part of our democracy are the conservatives who prevent statism, and the best part of our democracy are the leftist lawyers who insure that statism is enforced.

Put more generally, the best part of our civil society is comprised by activist lawyers who march out and methodically sue corporations who won't bow to the whim of the bureaucrats, whereas the worst part of our civil society are those people who are always "gettin' in the way" by exercising their right to dissent from the prevailing do-gooder dogma. Personally, I always believed that loan sharks and used car salesman were the most worthy citizens, even more worthy than bottom-feeding lawyers and ambulance chasers, but to each his own.

[cross-posted]