Free Republic

On June 2nd, 1989， 100,000 people went to Tienanmen Square. One reason for the crowd was a statue called the Goddess Of Democracy. Its pose was modeled on the Statue Of Liberty but its face was Chinese. Democracy can be a babe. Do we understand her？ Walt Whitman was elegant in writing of democracy and religion: “Even in religious fervor there is a touch of animal heat. But moral conscientiousness, crystalline, without flaw, not Godlike only, entirely human, awes and enchants forever. Great is emotional love, even in the order of the rational universe.” “In the faces of men and...

A college student at Fordham University in New York was punished and forced to undergo “political reeducation” this summer for two Instagram posts – one of which depicted the student holding an AR-15. Austin Tong is a rising senior at Fordham University’s Gabelli School of Business, and he accused the school of “Soviet-style interrogation and punishment.” “I am no longer permitted on campus, with public safety coming to my home at midnight to question me on the day of the post, and face forced political reeducation through mandatory courses and to write an apology letter, or will face full suspension...

The next feud between America's freedom and democracy hawks and old United Nations diplomats will likely develop this week with the release of a much-anticipated report. Ordered by Secretary-General Annan, it was prepared by a panel of 16 former world movers and shakers now in their 70s, who will undoubtedly be hailed at Turtle Bay as wise men, and derided elsewhere as has-beens. Men who held previous posts like Russian foreign minister and Saddam champion Yevgeny Primakov, British U.N. envoy David Hannay, or current Arab League chief Amr Moussa, are not going to excite anyone looking for fresh insights into...

Although Golitsyn’s book does not deal at length with the situation in mainland China, it does provide detailed methods for interpreting events in such countries. In light of the dialectic, the student demonstrations and government massacre last year take on new meaning. Since at least the early 1970s, the Communist party of China has been poised to create a spectacular but controlled “democratization” at any appropriate time. The party had by then spent two decades consolidating its power, building a network of informants and agents that permeate every aspect of Chinese life, both in the cities and in the countryside....