But you have to be intelligent about it in other circumstances, and consider whether it’s actually worth throwing your life away, if the enemy isn’t genoicidally murderous like the Germans under the Nazi party.

Consider African Americans under Jim Crow laws — should they have fought violently? That only would have led to them murdered, even potentially in large numbers. African Americans have survived in the U.S. and not been mass murdered partially due to not fighting (and also by moving to more hospitable areas during the Great Migration).

To quote https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-cas...:

>It was in these early years that Ross began to understand himself as an American—he did not live under the blind decree of justice, but under the heel of a regime that elevated armed robbery to a governing principle. He thought about fighting. “Just be quiet,” his father told him. “Because they’ll come and kill us all.”

Basically don’t fight the enemy that’s enslaving you, unless you’re strong enough to win; otherwise you endanger suffering ethnic cleansing / genocide of your people.

If there is a choice, sure. If there isn't a choice, then living is also a good option. Losing liberty isn't a reason to commit suicide.

> Stop counseling despair.

What despair? Why would Taiwan have to despair? China already controls something like 10% of the human race, the 10% that has seen the biggest improvement in living standards over the last 50 years.

Signing up with that would be unpleasant. But it seems like a better option than a war with the world's greatest industrial superpower that Taiwan is quite likely to lose. We've had a bunch of countries choose war with the US and they'd almost uniformly have been better off surrendering and arguing for liberty in a diplomatic way.