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Wednesday, March 31, 2004

In Defense of Freedom, From Dangers Within...

7:03 PM

As you undoubtedly know, I am an American journalist and author living and writing in China where the greatest danger to the freedoms essential for me to continue doing what I was born, raised and trained to do--and also love to do--is that things might stay about the same or at the absolute worst retreat just a bit to, say, the way things were a little over a year ago before SARS somewhat loosened the central government's notion that the people's right to know began and ended with what the central government thought they should know. This matter of personal freedoms, particularly the freedoms of speech and of the press, has been very much an abiding issue of late, at least among online writers, Chinese and foreigners, what with the continuing saga of the blocking of certain blog-hosting networks.

I wish I could say the same about the nation I love above all things save perhaps for my immediate family members, America. There, right now, the greatest danger to personal freedoms essential not only to my peculiar profession, but essential for all Americans to be able to continue being the freest citizens on earth, is that the very framework which assures our freedoms is in the hands of people who do not trust the citizenry that entrusted them with safeguarding those very same freedoms.

For the first time since there were good and honest citizens who wondered if in fact the infant American nation might be better served by putting a crown upon the head of George Washington, the mature American nation is in danger of unwittingly entitling a small group of ideological zealots with the divine right of rulership that Mr. Washington and his compatriots fought so fervently to deliver us from. Hyperbole I am guilty of you say? Read carefully, and with a sense of continuity, the following series of columns, essays, and reports in the posts below. If you do not sense something very fundamental and scary afoot then so be it and I will preach all the harder anyway because frankly I am terrified for the future of the United States of America.

7:03 PM / Editor / permalink 0 comments

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