In China they practiced foot binding. Men controlled everything that has to do with family. In India they have class structure. It used to be a practice in India to kill their babies if they did not have a male. In Asian countries females are commonly advised they can have more than one wife. In China you can only have one kid. To me that's no liberty. The individual or community is not free to leave. It is a communist state. In some middle east countries you have kings and a great deal of the country is poor. You have people killing one another for some tunnel in Israel. My question is this: The Westerners in time of trouble leave to go set up new forms of government while Asia and the Middle East stayed at home. You said they stayed at home to work our their problems. I think they did not work out their problems. I think they did not work out anything. They have been killing each other in the name of religion for thousands of years. Can you please explain?

In both the East and the West, cards-down approaches to policy-making have had their shortcomings. The Anglo-American and European traditions have seen much battle over who is capable of turning the cards down. The Chinese tradition has seen the upper classes practice foot-binding on their women. The overpopulation problem in China was addressed under Mao by a government mandate for each couple to have just one child. It appears that China has problems with its approaches to policy decisions--much as Europeans have had problems with their approaches. One possible conclusion is that, despite the best efforts to combine morality and public policy, peoples have sometimes failed to avoid arbitrary treatment of groups and individuals. Whether states have aimed at liberal or communitarian approaches, forms of tyranny have set in. From this conclusion, a question may be raised about bases for courses of action states or nations may adopt. Perhaps changing circumstances require some shifting along the line--let's say somewhere in the zone between liberal and communitarian--to keep a balance that reduces the arbitrary treatment of some people by other people. As new forms of suffering and servitude are identified, new rules and rights need to be defined.