April 2025 – CGW's Blog

Jimmy Lai, Hong Kong’s troublemaker

What’s the greater priority: universal human rights or sovereign rights? What rights, if any, are truly universal? How far should other nations go to challenge a sovereign power who is taking such rights away from residents within their boundaries?

After the horrors of the world wars, the United Nations marked in 1948 its “Universal Declaration of Human Rights.” This gave moral currency to dozens of international actions over the next 80 years. The drafting committee included philosophers from China and Lebanon, yet these are criticized by some as Eurocentric. Overreach under the UDHR banner complicated its message, and gave authoritarians greater cover.

Where does that leave us? I’ve thought about that since completing “The Troublemaker: How Jimmy Lai Became a Billionaire, Hong Kong’s Greatest Dissident, and China’s Most Feared Critic,” a 2024 biography written by Mark Clifford.

This is not funny. But it has the makings of a very dark comedy

The details were horrible, a gruesome murder scene. But, stay with me now, I was repeatedly sent screenshots of multiple local TV news segments about the discovery of a body on South Street in Philadelphia this month.

Inside the Multiracial Populist Coalition Remaking the GOP

In 2002, The Emerging Democratic Majority book based its arguments on two key points: that the population of the United States was becoming less white, and that non-white voters voted for Democrats more often than Republicans.

Though the multiracial Obama coalition seemed to make their case. The Trump era has looked very different. In 2023, within the Biden presidency, Republican strategist Patrick Ruffini wrote “Party of the People: Inside the Multiracial Populist Coalition Remaking the GOP,” which looked prescient in November 2024.

Looking closely at the 2016 and 2020 elections, Ruffini argued that Hispanic, Asian and mixed-race voters were following voting patterns of immigrants before them. Very unlike Black American voters, and Native Americans too, with their distinct historical context, waves of immigrants often vote their liberal interest, then grower richer and vote a different interests.

The Emerging Democratic Majority rightly demonstrated how much more diverse the American electorate would get, but badly misunderstood how that more diverse electorate would vote. The 2024 election put this on full display: Democrats look like a party of rich, educated people, alongside Black supervoters; whereas Republicans look now like a multiracial populist coalition. This is so far from the Republican jokes that left-leaning voters told in the 2000s and 2010s. Whatever comes to pass, the book is rich with insight.

Below my notes for future reference.