Comments on: On the Matter of Freedom, We Should Never Be on China’s Side

By: Clearing the Browser Tabs – Hu’s That Tyrant Thursday Edition

Clearing the Browser Tabs – Hu’s That Tyrant Thursday Edition — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 11:12:18 +0000

[...] to their credit. I would have praised the President if he had set an empty place at the table for 2010 Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo, who could not receive his prize because Hu would not let him leave the country.He could also have [...]

By: Jimmie

Jimmie — Sat, 11 Dec 2010 21:05:19 +0000

The advantage of having my own blog is that I can take any tone I want. You'd know, since I know that you read the blog regularly, that I have no tolerance at all for tyrants or their apologists.

By: Adam

Adam — Sat, 11 Dec 2010 19:04:23 +0000

God, that snide, petulant tone of yours, coupled with a complete lack of information… I defy you, without a Google search, to name one thing that your hero, Liu Xiaobo, has written (hint: he did not write Charter 8).

China is not the USA, obviously. It has its own conditions, its own history, its own culture. Despite your clear affection for the word 'tyrant,' it is barely a relevant term in a Chinese context. Again, I'm not a fan of the Chinese government, but to lionize anyone who does them harm, whether or not you know anything about the particular circumstance, is an act of "childish intellectual cynicism," to use a phrase from LXB's criticism of the rightist author Ba Jin.

Delete this, whatever, I'm done too. Either I'm more set in my ways, or you are more aggressively stupid than I remember.

By: Jimmie

Jimmie — Sat, 11 Dec 2010 18:43:32 +0000

Right. We're done with this line of conversation. It's a shame that you equate the morally bankrupt infants of WikiLeaks with Liu Xiaobo.

By: Adam

Adam — Sat, 11 Dec 2010 17:44:45 +0000

There are some real thugs in the Chinese government, it's true. It's a shame that, as a nation, we've totally undermined our ability to criticize them by pursuing a dissident with no regard for the rule of law.

By: Jimmie

Jimmie — Sat, 11 Dec 2010 16:47:00 +0000

The issue isn't transparency, but tyranny. There is no reasonable comparison between the tyrants in Beijing and any free Western nation.

By: Adam

Adam — Sat, 11 Dec 2010 09:13:07 +0000

Sorry, it's not obvious to me, and I teach modern Chinese history. Moreover, in my spare time, I translate Liu Xiaobo's literary criticism for several European pro-democracy NGOs, so don't take this as me disagreeing with him.

Please enlighten me, how is it that a country we chastise for lacking transparency won't be emboldened by us operating outside of existing laws to protect government secrets?

By: Jimmie

Jimmie — Sat, 11 Dec 2010 02:08:09 +0000

Hi again. Your comparison is pretty ridiculous, for reasons that ought to be obvious.