My Concerns with Taiwan

Prof. Michael Hunzeker Expressed It Sharply, Clearly, and Almost Completely

This morning’s work on TRP takes me to CATO events I hadn’t gotten to this past Spring. This one from March 2024 on Tawian’s defense was what I centered my time on this morning.

The former Marine who is now a professor at George Mason had a great presentation starting at minute 19 that I found myself, like a black church congregant, audibly agreeing with there in my home office, saying “yes,” and “AMEN” and stuff like that.

I’m not going to summarize his work. I will only point out the coat rack that holds all the hangers.

That is this: Taiwan’s vulnerability is Taiwan’s culture itself. This is the key point. He defends that point with several lines of evidence that he himself witnessed first-hand.

What he did not mention, and I will, is that the most important indicator of Taiwan’s problem being itself is its attitude toward bearing arms among citizens. They do not have a Second Amendment equivalent in their public law. They have strict gun control laws with no functional equivalent of a 2a check. I mean, we have strict gun control laws, as well, perhaps just as many or more, but we have a vibrant political and legal culture fighting back against that, a functional check in the Second Amendment that doesn’t work as smoothly as we’d like, and a history and tradition of civilian armament for self-defense that goes back into our culture hundreds of years.

You may not be that impressed with the difference in civilian armament, but let me tell you, every tyrant who ever lived takes immediate note of such conditions. That’s why tyrants always, always go after the civilian arms — tyrannies view such conditions as a culture of civilian armament as a threat to their tyranny.

I wouldn’t quite say that this culture of hostility toward civilian self defense with arms is itself Taiwan’s greatest vulnerability. I would say instead that Taiwan’s anti-Second Amendment culture of civilian arms against crime is evidence of Taiwan’s greatest vulnerablity. If a culture doesn’t think you can defend yourself lawfully against crime, and so disarms the innocent victim, prevents a culture of quality training in gun safety — true gun safety, that is, like learning where the safety is on a gun and how to handle a gun safely — and if training is prevented for ordinary self-defense purposes, what makes you think the culture has a chance to fight back against a bigger tyranny ?

For the US, civilian armament, its culture, training, safety, manufacturing, ownership, etc., preceded our shaking off of tyranny. That condition is missing in Taiwan, and so our $$ foreign aid needs to take account of that.

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Dr. Lucas J. Mather, Ph.D. was a Chinese linguist in the US military for several years, and worked as staff for foreign language refresher education and training for the National Security Agency in the US Department of Defense, for which work he was awarded the Joint Service Achievement Medal signed by NSA Director General Michael Hayden. Professor Mather has taught Political Geography, International Relations, Congress, and The American Founding for the History and Political Science Department at Azusa Pacific University in Lost Angeles County, and has taught the Second Amendment at California State University, Fullerton in Orange County, California.