Dissent

[TennesseeWalker]

I picked up the following from www.southknoxbubba.net/skblog a very fine, democratically oriented blog from the Knoxville area of Tennessee.

I think it's worth a read.

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Here's a compare and contrast between two 'dear' leaders from someone who's seen how both operate and govern.
LA Times, 10/26/2003 Sunday Opinion Section. By Liu Baifang, Liu Baifang, who emigrated from China in 1977, lives in Berkeley.

Lately, I find myself worrying about my adopted country, the United States. I'm alarmed that dissent is increasingly less tolerated, and that those in power seem unable to resist trying to intimidate those who speak their minds. I grew up in the People's Republic of China, so I know how it is to live in a place where voicing opinions that differ from official orthodoxy can be dangerous, and I fear that model.

Like so many others, I arrived in the U.S. enormously relieved to have left my "socialist" homeland. During Mao Tse-tung's "Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution," intellectuals were persecuted, physically intimidated, imprisoned and, all too frequently, killed. Educated people, known as "the stinking ninth category," were terrified into political silence after witnessing the dire consequences of voicing any suggestion of dissenting views. My parents were engineers, educated people, and so my family was separated and then "sent down" to labor among peasants in the countryside. We were punished merely for being educated.

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http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/latimes/435117001.html?did=435117001&FMT=ABS&FMTS=FT&desc=A+Chinese+Emigre%27s+View+of+Dissent+in+U.S.

*sigh* LA TIMES pay per view, apparently. The above is shown in full int the comments section of the bubba blog.

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

1. Interesting read.

Hey pal, ya gotta edit that down to about 4 paragraphs and then leave the link for the rest of the article...Copyright and all..:D

[spooky3]

2. thanks.

[tnlefty]

3. kick

I read this the other day and I printed it for general sharing with my repub relatives.