For the United States, the outlook is rosier. To hear the geopolitical analyst Peter Zeihan tell it, our best days are ahead. In response to international turbulence, he predicts, we will reshore manufacturing, increase our food and energy security, and spark massive growth. Perhaps so, but only if we keep our commitment to liberal democracy and economic development.

The danger is that, just as a new era of American prosperity comes into view, the next generation of Americans will embrace, and then impose, the very tenets of CCP ideology that ensure immiseration. The denunciations and purges occurring at our universities proceed along Maoist lines. “Wage a tireless struggle against all incorrect ideas and actions,” Mao urged. Do not “let things slide for the sake of peace and friendship,” as the liberal does. And do not “hear counter-revolutionary remarks without reporting them.” Maintaining an open society, where free enterprise is defended and the scientific method is upheld, should serve us well in an age of uncertainty. Creeping toward Mao Zedong Thought most assuredly will not.

In 1986, college students in Anhui province sought to partake in the show elections for the National People’s Congress. They hung posters demanding “government of the people, by the people, for the people.” Needless to say, state officials promptly removed these appeals to Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. But those students did not think “internal contradictions” would prove fatal to American ideals. And neither should we.