“Last November, he was arrested by the police and then charged in March with ‘creating a disturbance’. His lawyer, Li Fangping, said the evidence for the charge had been that Mr Zhao had given a media interview on a public pavement, held a dinner in a restaurant for a dozen parents of other victims, and that he had held up a small sign in protest outside a trial of milk company executives responsible for the poisoning.”

via Father of ‘toxic milk’ child jailed in China for protesting – Telegraph.

It’s sad. I read articles like the one above and hear people in China talk about their rights and how there are some things that the Government can’t do because it goes against “their rights”. The problem is, in China, people aren’t considered to be “endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights” which cannot be removed from them by other men (humans). In China all rights are disseminated by the government to the people, therefore if the government decides that the people are mis-using their rights, then the government has the ability (as the original giver) to withdraw those rights when it sees fit.

And so we see the voices demanding protection and reason become silenced. We see a lawyer for Liu Xiaobo detained and forbidden to leave the country. We see the people of the most populace country in the world without the skills to reason scientifically, to judge compassionately, or to understand the perspectives of any other country in the world, all because if they get it “wrong” according to the government powers, then they will be bullied and publicly shamed at best and permanently silenced at the other extreme. It is a tragedy when people have to choose between being “alive and stupid” or “smart but dead”.

I have a question for my American friends: Do you really want to live in a country where the leaders will remove God from every aspect of the government? Do you really want your rights to be determined by men, whether you have elected them to represent you or not? Don’t let your rights be taken away, merely by the process of omission when someone gives a pretty speech. If you just lay down and roll over when your rights are ignored by government leaders, by the time you get back up, you will be leashed and chained to a monster you will have great difficulty shaking. But maybe that’s okay. Maybe you want to be protected from starvation with poisoned food and given shelter from the weather in apartments with leaky plumbing. Maybe the only thing you will want to say in response is, “It’s okay, it’s for the good of the people.” By that point, it will be the only thing you are allowed to say.

winner-winner, chicken dinner 🙂