Chinese SARS patients hidden

Washington Post via Seattle Times ^ | April 20, 2003 | John Pomfret

[Dec31,1999]

The lesson is about to be driven home that political freedom isn't a 'threat to political stability,' it's a vital feedback mechanism to prevent a society's government from doing something really, really stupid.

And what a quite valuable lesson it is, would be, and will be (hopefully) for all, including "our own".

It's high time for our nation to promote the virtues of freedom, honesty and good will to the people of the world.

It is clear that our past policy of keeping freedom to ourselves has been a disasterous failure.

[Dec31,1999]

Do you *honestly* think we were better prepared medically and scientifically in 1950 to track down, to isolate this contagion?

I'll grant you that! But in the 50's there were no biological weapons programs by foreign countries, nor the threat of such.

And besides, Jim, there wasn't as much travel between countries and continents as there is today.

I'd love to have lived as an adult in the '50s BTW.

[_Jim]

It's high time for our nation to promote the virtues of freedom, honesty and good will to the people of the world.

WHO are our best spokesmen on this subject?

Would they be Rush, Hannity, Glenn Beck and a myriad of like-minded talk-show hosts around the country?

If not them and their message - then who and what?

[_Jim]

there wasn't as much travel between countries and continents as there is today.

... we *still* got Cholera freom across 'the big pond' in 1932 ...

As to travel - what was the total figure for emigration *into* the United States (and many of these emmigrants brought with them al manner of contagion) over the course of our history?

[Ma Li]

Not that I've seen. But that would be really hard for anyone to know, unless they were themselves farmers. When livestock die, they are usually quickly sold off to unsuspecting people. (The smart person never buys the "deal meat" off the street.) Around here they are really trying to keep this whole thing secret, so if the livestock were dying off, they wouldn't tell anyone at this point.

[Black Agnes]

In the waves of immigration before 1924 we actually screened for sick people. Sick? No entry!

[Mitchell]

I think that China is a new experiment whereby the communist ruling authorities are trying to establish a state with a limited amount of economic freedom, but without the polital, religious and ideological freedom that we in the US see as primary.

But how new is this really? What the Chinese leaders are apparently turning China into is very much like what the media generally call a "right-wing" dictatorship: some economic freedom, no political freedom, lots of bureaucracy and corruption, and brutal treatment of those viewed by the government as enemies. [Needless to say, despite the media appellation, this has nothing to do with true right-wing political thought based on principles of individual liberty.]

[Ma Li]

Thanks. The tag came in an epiphany I had one day, trying to understand why all the Chinese people I know think they have freedom of information and the right to believe anything they want. I finally realized how clever their government had been: They didn't continue to supress all news from outside China. That would create discontent and people would be more forward in their attempts to gain access to the rest of the world. Instead, they flooded the people with information from everywhere--just only the information they wanted them to hear. The students at the high school can step outside the gate and choose among 50+ newspapers and the same number of magazines on every conceivable subject, at very affordable prices. But they all pass the same regulations and censors, all have the same basic origin, and all tell them nothing. Then it became obvious: One way the government keeps them under control is by giving them excess information, and telling them it's freedom of information.

[Semper911]

The tag came in an epiphany I had one day

An epiphany indeed. Brilliant thinking.

[Allan]

one's expectations and standards are higher for a Western democracy.

Canada is not a democracy.
Freedom of speech is a requirement of a democracy.
As for barbarism
I know a little about that as well
I went to public school in Canada.

[riri]

Hey, you guys belong on the Great Satan anthrax-Iraq threads!

[Mitchell]

Canada is not a democracy. Freedom of speech is a requirement of a democracy.

Your point is well-taken, but -- and maybe I'm flogging a dead horse here -- there is so much more freedom of speech in Canada than in China that any similarities one can point out are going to be very strained. I'm certainly not defending the path away from true liberty that Canada has chosen (along with western Europe and the U.S., to a greater or lesser degree, depending on the country). But these Western countries are not totalitarian states.

Yes, there are problems with the Western democracies (or so-called democracies). But equating them with China or with other similar dictatorships obscures the truth about the dictatorships. It unintentionally runs parallel to the left-wing agenda of claiming that all societies have equal claim to our moral and political approval. It also obscures the arguments needed to try to bring the West back to the philosophy of freedom, because our problems (and therefore the ideas we need to reach for solutions) are very different from those of the dictatorships.

[KantianBurke]

Sheesh where to begin in terms of responding to your comments in post #41

And what a quite valuable lesson it is, would be, and will be (hopefully) for all, including "our own".

No arguments here. The most effective means for an independant nation to learn to the values of freedom and capitalism is to suffer under totalitarianism and economic slavery. See Iran's current situation.

It's high time for our nation to promote the virtues of freedom, honesty and good will to the people of the world.

But here you do a complete 180 turn and announce that only through EXTERNAL means, namely us, can such an event happen. Indeed the US even has a duty to spread our values, however optimal they are, onto other nations that might not have learned to appreciate their precise value? What if a population is too stupid and hate filled to "want" liberty? See the Palestinians. That said, where in the Constitution is it mentioned that we should democratize the rest of the world? Shouldn't we concentrate on what IS mentioned in that document?

It is clear that our past policy of keeping freedom to ourselves has been a disasterous failure.

How you can make that statement with regards to SARS is beyond me. The region in which the disease came from is notorious for breeding such vile things. What, its our fault that the people living in that region aren't interested in toilet paper, sanitation and 21st century habits of cleanliness? We need to send in the 4th Div? Besides our foreign policy over the past 50 years has done precisely what you claim it hasn't albeit for non-alturistic reasons. Our victory in the Cold War for one, the Afghan campaign for another and now Iraq.

[Dec31,1999]

Well, the process of "democratization" is certainly not going to happen, it seems, without any EXTERNAL influence, as I see it, as most folks just git along to get along.

Moreover, the socialist-based media doesn't help educate the people of any given nation about the importance of self-reliance and freedom.

My main point is that it's up to us to influence the people of other nations how to fight for freedom, because otherwise they will not know, unfortunately, how to go about it.

The genious of the advent of our nation was a kind of a coincidence of converging values and philosophies. You may disagree with what I say, but if you think that a representative republic will spontaneously appear on the globe as a result of previous tyrrany in the modern age, I think you are mistaken.

Keep in mind that when the Americans fought the Revolutionary war, they did not have complete support of the people.

To repeat my premise: The people of the world need our support to become and stay free.

Thanks for the reply.

Dec31,99

[Dec31,1999]

Yes, there are problems with the Western democracies (or so-called democracies). But equating them with China or with other similar dictatorships obscures the truth about the dictatorships.

While what you say is very true, most western "democracies", especially "socialist" ones employ a kind of widespread censorship of rightist values, such as support for unadulteraded news accounts, individual freedoms, familial freedoms, religious freedoms, under the guise of political correctness, especially in cities and the educaqtional establishment.

The marxist unions keep a firm hand on the media and the government-run, taxpayer funded educational establishments, and they get away with it.