2 California Books for Your Christmas Stockings

A man browses through books at the Cecil H. Green on the Stanford University Campus, in Stanford, Calif., on Dec. 17, 2004. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Commentary

Looking for California-related books to give as Christmas presents? Here are two new ones from 2022.

“A San Francisco Conservative” is by David Parker, whose biography says, “For 40 years, David Parker served as a teacher in San Francisco’s inner-city schools. Unlike most of his colleagues, however, he did not place his faith and his future in the teachers’ union or the government. Instead, he simultaneously became a real estate investor and entrepreneur, as well as a jazz musician.”

Yes, there actually are some remaining conservatives in the City by the Bay. After all, in 2020 President Trump garnered 12.7 percent of the vote there.

Parker begins with some essays on philosophers he admired, especially John Locke and Friedrich Hayek. “Our Declaration of Independence is verbatim John Locke: the right of citizens physically to overthrow noxious government. At is origin and for 150 years, the U.S. was a Lockean nation. Then, believing the world to be moving forward, 20th century progressives put an end to that. We are today a Hobbesian nation, a state of overarching rules that leave citizens less responsible for their actions and allow government to do more than protect.”

Getting to the San Francisco section, he writes, “A San Francisco conservative: to those on the Left, an oxymoron – it’s not possible; to those on the Right, a sigh of relief – we’re not alone!”

He laments, “Why do San Francisco liberals balk at economic freedom? Creative business, creative teaching, creative art – none of these demands government regulation.”

The city’s homelessness problem has become notorious around the world, to a great extent caused by high rents. Rent control hasn’t helped. Parker calls it “a political solution to an economic problem. San Francisco doesn’t have high rent; it has a housing shortage, an economic problem, for which the city chose a political solution: rent control. Supported by a host of laws, San Francisco tells its landlords what they cannot do and cannot say to their tenants; literally, they do not have the right to negotiate with each other.”

I was happy to see Parker is a fan of Jane Jacobs, the great opponent of city planning, which disrupts the natural congregation of people in favor of artificial arrangements that cause misery. He urges San Francisco to “terminate its ‘liberal’ planning department. Every thought, every action, of that institution is wrong. The planning department is ruining the city! ... City planning goes against the evolution of a city, the ongoing creative equilibrium process that must be allowed to run its course.”

He warns unless the city and the whole Bay Area change, “this world center of innovation in technology, artificial intelligence, biological engineering and space flight will shift elsewhere.” That’s been a theme of my writings here in The Epoch Times, such as in “Elon Musk Is a California Treasure—for Now.”

It’s so sad. I haven’t visited San Francisco often, the last time in 2013, but the deterioration of one of the world’s most charming cities is itself a crime.

A different book arrives from the late Bruce Herschensohn, the longtime conservative California commentator, filmmaker, speechwriter to President Reagan and others, and 1992 candidate for the U.S. Senate. Our country would be a far better place had he beaten Democrat Barbara Boxer that year in a close race. He always was good for a quote and some perspective on an issue. In 2012, I saw Bruce at the wake for Tom Fuentes, the former chairman of the Orange County Republican Party. I suggested Bruce run again for the Senate. He joked at 80 he was too old. Of course, that was before we had a president who’s 80.

He had a lifelong interest in all things related to the Pacific Rim, especially Hong Kong, which he visited 37 times before 1997. So it’s apt his last book, published two years after his death in 2020, is, “A Profile of Hong Kong: During Times Past, Times Current, and Its Quest of a Future Maintaining Hong Kong’s Liberty.”

Unfortunately, in 1997, Hong Kong came under the control of the communist regime in Beijing. But how did it get to be such a beacon of liberty? And why does it remain so today, despite sometimes brutal interference by its overlords?

He writes:

The major element being the people. The inhabitants of Hong Kong prove on a daily basis that no one knows better what to do with liberty than those who have lived under an absence of liberty, and most of the builders of this city have known such an absence since they used to live across the border. … The only deadline they have known since living in Hong Kong is 1997. …

The second element was the British government. It did very little, which is exactly what any good government should do. Its regulations were very few and not the stifling of creativity and talent, and with almost a relaxed form of anarchy, yet there is little crime on the streets and a general feeling of safety no matter the hour. For almost five decades of my journalism, Hong Kong has served as a model, not just against Maoist China and today’s Xi-ist China, but the nonsense in my own country. Limited government promotes vast economic growth, lifting all boats, including the poor. Today, Hong Kong’s top income tax rate is 17 percent. Imagine if we had that here, where the combined U.S.-plus-California rate is 50 percent.

On the other hand, California doesn’t have an overlord in Beijing, although state policies sometimes make it seem that way.

For the third element, Herschensohn tells the telling story of the Yixing Teapot:

The old Chinese story is told that an old woman wanted to sell her teapot in the marketplace of Yixing. A foreign traveler came by and, at her invitation, he drank tea she poured from the teapot. It was the best tea he had ever tasted, and he offered to buy the teapot from her for a sum she never expected to be offered. While he went away to get the cash to pay her, she became conscious of the used appearance of the teapot, and because he offered her so much money for it, she scrubbed the teapot inside and out, not realizing that by removing the dross accumulated from years and years of tea leaves used in the pot, that she was removing what made every cup of tea as wonderful as it was. She, in fact, destroyed the very reason he wanted it.

Even a member of the Politburo of the People’s Republic of China, Li Ruihuan, told the familiar story of the Yixing Teapot to the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference in 1995. He did not make any specific parallel, but it was apparent to some that he was saying Hong Kong is today’s Yixing Teapot and cannot be fooled with carelessly, or it will be destroyed. The last events the book covers involve the democracy protests in 2019. He writes, “The newer decision of Xi to demand the extradition of Hong Kong citizens to Beijing starting in 2019 was an action he took against all international protocol and against the code of traditional diplomacy and against the will of the Hong Kong people who did not elect either Xi Jinping or [Chief Executive] Carrie Lam and, to be brief, it was against the PRC’s word.” That word in 1997 promised non-interference in the city’s operations.

In 2020, the COVID lockdowns and the imposition of a new National Security Law suppressed the protests. But Simon Elegant, writing in Foreign Policy, says the recent protests on the mainland against the excessive COVID lockdowns might reignite the Hong Kong democracy protests. He reports:

“Things in Hong Kong are worse than the mainland now,” said Simon Cheng, an activist who was detained for two weeks by the Chinese authorities in 2019 while on a work trip to the mainland. Cheng now lives in London, where he had applied for political asylum. Because of the repression by the authorities in his hometown, Cheng said, “The protest spirit is dying. We need to look at the protesters in China to rekindle it.”

Herschensohn’s book is good background to what comes next. We’ll soon find out if Beijing ruins the Hong Kong teapot.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.