…on the twentieth anniversary:
George Orwell said, “If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever.” He’s all too right. Last century, an estimated 262 million people were murdered by their own government . That doesn’t include the hundreds of millions more killed by opposing governments during war.
Today ought to be a day to celebrate and promote human liberty, and to remember the abuses governments have heaped upon their subjects over the centuries.
So go find your own metaphor for the government tank pictured above.
Then put yourself in front of it.
You know, I can’t think of a single corporation that could claim even a tiny fraction of such a death toll.
[Update a few minutes later]
Sadly predictable behavior by the left — using the anniversary of Chinese government brutality against those seeking liberty, to smear Walmart.
Seeing that guy stop a column of tanks–that was a great moment. It’s a shame that the event didn’t result in a general uprising, but the seeds were planted. Even now, the Chinese government is having to take draconian measures to stop protests in commemoration of the massacre.
For us, the lesson should be simple: Don’t trust government and don’t ever let it get too powerful. If the LP or GOP would make that one idea its platform, it’d have my consistent vote. Even the Democrats, who I think are too tied to government power to adopt this philosophy (this is likely true of the GOP as well in practice, but I don’t think it’s as inevitable for them philosophically), could stand to return a bit to the traditional American distrust of government power.
I have a nephew who attends the University of Detroit.
He has a native Chinese room mate who categorically states that “Tiananmen Square” is a vicious Western lie.
At first I thought I did not know what to think; I thought he was joshing me, but he is serious!
Michael,
In order to be one of the fortunate ones allowed to attend American universities, a Chinese applicant, in addition to being adequately bright, has to be, at least outwardly, politically correct as judged by his Communist overlords. Perhaps your nephew’s roommate is, in fact, a Communist – or merely Chinese ultra-nationalist – true believer and fully buys into whatever the official line of crap is that’s now being peddled in official Beijing ruling cadre circles about the events of 20 years ago. Perhaps not. I suspect the acid test won’t occur until his schooling is complete and he is faced with the decision about whether or not to repatriate. Even then, his true beliefs may fail to manifest if he has any family back home he ever wants to see again. People from brutally authoritarian societies often promote the home-country party line simply because they fear the consequences if word ever gets back home about their expressing any departure from approved orthodoxy. The serf/peon/slave mentality is one we Americans find baffling because we encounter it so seldom and it is so unlike what we regard as normal.