CHINA TIBET AND OLYMPICS
“Our contest is not only whether we ourselves shall be free, but whether there shall be left to mankind an asylum on earth for civil and religious liberty.” -Samuel Adams
Vdov.net is not normally prone to politicking and this post is mostly about principles rather than politics. The authors here, from what I know of them personally, tend toward unfettered freedom rather than more tempered and restrained freedom. I am personally enamoured of the cause of liberty wherever it arises. I have a soft spot in my heart for all democratic reformers and movements that sincerely want to replace repressive regimes with open societies governed by democratic principles, whether that be anti-theocratic student movements in Iran or the Free Tibet movement.
There are a couple problems that I have with the a Free Tibet movement in general. One is that Free Tibet people (and I have known several) tend to focus solely on freedom for Tibet while turning a blind eye or even sympathy to many other brutal regimes. The other, is that that it is largely symbolic and despite years of protests and political statements Tibet remains no freer today than it has ever been. This is not the fault of the movement so much as the unwavering determination of the Chinese to maintain unity above all other values, including human life and freedom. This is the same country that still views Taiwan as a rogue and unsubdued province, which sadly is echoed in US foreign policy. It is this caving into political sensibilities at the expense of what American’s truly believe that has always shamed me about our country. I have never supported the “hate is illegal in Canada” approach to free speech and I know I have support on that from this site’s authors and many readers. (For a startling reminder of the dangers of that kind of restriction on free speech takea look at the Canadian “Human Rights Councils” and their chilling effect on free speech, specifically speech that offends someone. The case of Ezra Levant and the abuses of Richard Warman. The Wikipedia paints a rosy picture of Warman as fighting neo-nazis but he is currently suing most major conservative Canadian bloggers in an effort to shut down speech he does not agree with.)
The long and short of this is looking at the protests against the Olympics that are currently taking place seemingly everywhere that the Olympic Torch is going. I am sympathetic with the protests as long as they are not violent. I have no problem with police arresting people who disrupt the torch procession, it is their choice to break the law. I believe the protests are doing good by keeping the disgusting abuses of individual liberty by the Chinese government in the spotlight. Will they change much? I doubt it. However, one article did catch my eye and dismayed me to a certain extent. My only problem is why the police immediately hustled this runner off the route and seized the torch? The woman was an official torch bearer. She is a US citizen entitled to freedom of speech. Presenting a flag is a Constitutionally protected act. She was not causing anyone danger. The issue is relatively small but I wish that the officers in charge of the event had acted differently, perhaps in a more “American” way.
afischer,
Interesting ‘perspective.’ In the cavalcade of your ramblings, though, you seem to quickly usher the reader through utterly illogical comments to mask their fallaciousness.
“There are a couple problems that I have with the a Free Tibet movement in general. One is that Free Tibet people (and I have known several) tend to focus solely on freedom for Tibet while turning a blind eye or even sympathy to many other brutal regimes.” You’ll forgive me if I don’t find the anecdotal experiences of a young man such as yourself to be wholly convincing when making generalizations surrounding the entirety of the Free Tibet movement, which surely encompasses millions of people across dozens of nations. Additionally, subjecting members of this movement to criticism due to your perception of their lacking sympathy and understanding for other movements is absurd. Would you similarly denounce someone for being–by your estimation–overly-concerned with Darfur or Burma? It’s simply non-sensical to judge others on such grounds.
The further accusation that supporters of Tibet are even sympathetic to oppressive regimes is simply dishonest and a completely unsupported claim which has no bearing on the discussion at hand.
Perhaps the most laughable comment in your ‘article,’ though, is the following: “The other, is that that it is largely symbolic and despite years of protests and political statements Tibet remains no freer today than it has ever been.”
I highly recommend a basic course in logic at your local community college, as this comment simply does not pass muster. After decades of efforts, we have not cured cancer, nor Parkinson’s, nor myriad other ailments. Using the system of logic you’ve applied here, we are simply wasting our time and should just get used to them. I will be generous and assume that you would not encourage this line of thinking. Similarly, we should not encourage the line of thinking you offer as criticism of the movement to free Tibet.
In the future, I hope to see you utilize more thoroughly-considered arguments that are logically sound and not based on the anecdotal evidence of one person generalizing millions. Your current writing is detrimental not only to yourself, but to those who read it and take it seriously.
Sincerely,
Deez Nutz
deez nutz,
i’m going to make a rare unsolicited defense of afischer’s comments because i find your text to be just as utterly illogical though perhaps through a different lens. note that in my statements i know absolutely nothing about the free tibet movement or really any humanitarian movement: it is neither my expertise nor my passion. my comments are far more general.
the reductio ad absurdum extension of afischer’s original argument here is indeed absurd: it suggests that i should feel as passionately anyone or anything as i would those people and things that are close to me. of course that is ridiculous … if i felt in the same way i would a member of my family dying of those who are currently suffering in Burma, i would be dead by now. the opposite is also true, however, and i think we all know that. i didn’t take afischer’s comments to mean that we should forget Tibet, simply that the movement might be better served and informed by not isolating the thought process. again, speaking without any knowledge on the subject of Tibet, i can only assume that afischer finds those people involved in the movement to be overly isolated.
extrapolated to all areas of thought or action, if this wasn’t true there would have been no point in us going to an elite liberal arts college.
secondly,
“I highly recommend a basic course in logic at your local community college, as this comment simply does not pass muster. After decades of efforts, we have not cured cancer, nor Parkinson’s, nor myriad other ailments. Using the system of logic you’ve applied here, we are simply wasting our time and should just get used to them.”
that is absolutely not the point of what afischer said and to suggest this is to completely misunderstand the context. forgive me for quoting Einstein:
“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
to suggest that a major humanitarian movement shouldn’t be judged on the basis of its results or achievements is absurd. we have made MAJOR progress in each of the “myriad of ailments” you cite here, each in part because we understand and modify our methods and goals as a function of their success. you may not see this from the outsiders prospective (the binary cured/not cured is hardly an appropriate measure of success over the course of 20 years of research) … and i admit the same may be true of my knowledge on the successes of the “free tibet” movement, if they exist. regardless, humanitarian movements, like scientific theories, don’t exist outside the realm of scrutiny and never should.
lastly, and most important to me personally, stems from your repeated use of deconstructive introductory phrases:
“In the cavalcade of your ramblings, though, you seem to quickly usher the reader through utterly illogical comments to mask their fallaciousness.”
“Perhaps the most laughable comment in your ‘article,’ though, is the following”
“I highly recommend a basic course in logic at your local community college”
“Your current writing is detrimental not only to yourself, but to those who read it and take it seriously.”
this language is utterly useless. if you’re going to write something with seemingly didactic and intellectually expository purpose, please wrap it in something that has some meaning.
with love,
acosta
I must say, acost’s response brought proud tears to my eyes. Identical thoughts were passing through my head as I read the response of deez nutz — and though I have a far, far shorter history of disagreement with afischer (mostly just one vdov article), I was similarly hesitant to cry out in his defense.
One thing to keep in mind about China is that its governing body (Note: OPINION) will soon lose the majority of support of foreign governments as China’s major productive force (the cheap and uniquely abundant workforce) flutters. Those who are familiar with human rights issues in China know that one major, though often overlooked, problem is infanticide of girls. The one-child policy leaves many cold-hearted parents of newborn girls feeling little choice but to murder their newborns in hopes of birthing a boy capable of producing income for the family. You may shudder at the horror, but it is not unprecedented or unique to the Chinese — or even rare in the history of mankind. My contention is that a society whose major strength is a high population of cheap labor with a declining female population is unlikely to produce the same levels of growth that China has been in the recent past. Let’s face it, the uterus is an economic asset. If China loses her unprecedented growth potential, she will lose the support of developed governments, and her government will have a harder and harder time maintaining a border fraught with turbulence over religious and cultural differences. Major economic and military players have fallen apart over regional cultural turbulence often in history and recent times are no different.
Of course, it would be wonderful if those fighting for human rights issues in China would find success not born from… horrifying human rights violations… But that would be a world I’m not familiar with.
acosta,
I respect your defense of your colleague, though I do have a few quibbles over your defense. Clearly, you give afischer the most generous reading of his piece. To highlight where I disagree:
“again, speaking without any knowledge on the subject of Tibet, i can only assume that afischer finds those people involved in the movement to be overly isolated.”
I don’t know where the bloggers here are located or if they travel the globe, meeting with local organizations devoted to the liberation of Tibet, but you’ll forgive me if I assume that afischer has met fewer than 10,000 members of the movement. Out of tens of millions. This is not a statistically meaningful sample, and to pretend otherwise is disingenuous. We’re talking about far from even one percent of the movement. If afischer wishes to tell me that he has gone to some sort of international rally for the movement and encountered hundreds of thousands of them and found them all similarly afflicted with tunnel vision, then perhaps we could begin to consider comments such as the ones he made. Until then, they simply can’t be taken seriously.
I was pleased that you understood the nuance of my argument when I likened the Free Tibet movement to curing cancer or Parkinson’s: “we have made MAJOR progress in each of the “myriad of ailments” you cite here” [one minor quibble: when quoting me, please do so precisely; in this case you inserted an extraneous preposition that is unnecessary and reflects badly upon me]. You said openly that you are no expert in the Tibet movement, so I understand that perhaps the progress made is less visible to you. Like with cancer or Parkinson’s, progress has been made. The same thing is not being done over and over again with no result. You reject the binary of cured and not cured as being overly-simplistic, and I find it similarly unsuitable when applied to a country. Free and not free is not the opposition–they are the end points of the spectrum.
I am sorry you don’t find my ‘deconstructive’ writing useful or rich with meaning. Having read multiple pieces by afischer, my intention was to imitate his writing style–and pronounced lack of tact and social niceties–in the hopes that a voice similar to his own would be more persuasive.
Best wishes,
Deez Nutz
deez nutz,
thank you for your response, though i find your points again misguided. (note: i certainly appreciate your change in writing style in your more recent comment) … but let me summarize:
1) afischer hasn’t met lots of people in the movement personally, therefore he is unable to think about the problems rationally.
2) 10,000 members of an organization isn’t statistically significant when that organization may have upwards of 10 million members.
3) i struggle to understand the point of your second to last paragraph.
4) … you really have to be kidding me about the preposition. how can it possibly reflect poorly on you when you can’t even be bothered to own your thoughts on the subject by signing something other than ‘deez nutz’.
let me respond specifically:
1) this seems like an awful argument. if somehow someone’s thoughts on a subject aren’t valid simply because they haven’t spoken personally to everyone involved, then i might as well just give up now. i guess my thoughts on science are useless because i only read what other people say and interpret it to the best of my ability … i’ve met a very small percentage of all the scientists in my field. if i couldn’t read or think for myself then i imagine i would agree with your argument: then again i might not know about it.
2) i will happily refer you to any of a number of elementary statistics textbooks on why this statement is ridiculous.
3) i’m not really sure how ‘nuanced’ your initial argument was, though it seems fully pretentious. you are certainly correct in your restatement that i am not an expert in any movement such as free tibet.
you seem to have restated yourself. afischer said something which you interpreted as him believing the movement had no value because it hadn’t produced a “binary” result yet. i simply stated that i don’t believe that was his intention and knowing him very well i think i’m more than qualified to make judgements here (he i’m sure will be commenting here soon). i’m quite sure some progress has been made. you used your own interpretation of his words to suggest that he might think our work in medicinal science has no value, a view which if you knew afischer in the slightest would present itself as utterly absurd.
“You reject the binary of cured and not cured as being overly-simplistic, and I find it similarly unsuitable when applied to a country. Free and not free is not the opposition–they are the end points of the spectrum.”
that’s all fine and good, but the comment to which you were responding was the following:
“The other, is that that it is largely symbolic and despite years of protests and political statements Tibet remains no freer today than it has ever been.”
the most important thing that i was trying to say is that scrutiny of a movement and its achievements is important and the way we make improvements to our methods and goals. afischer is well within his right to make judgements, based on his view of the movement, about its successes or failures. you’re making a philosophical argument out of a comment where no philosophy need apply: i’m quite sure that afischer has read extensively on tibet and the movement which have led him to believe that not much progress has been made. if you would like to specifically make a counterargument here and suggest that lots of progress has been made, please do! though, he doesn’t have to meet 10,000 people to have legitimate thoughts on the subject.
4) nothing really more to say on that one.
regards,
acosta
I would also love to hear something of substance from DN regarding the progress the Tibetan freedom movement has made. As someone who has encountered a fair amount of reading about Tibet, albeit ancillary to my subject of interest, I have a hard time imagining to what you (DN) are referring.
While I’d agree that freedom is a continuum, along which no ’society’ can stray too far towards the freedom side, I contest that given the purpose of the Tibetan freedom movement very little has been accomplished. And yes, the parameters of the purpose of the movement is a very important piece of the discussion.
To add to that. The point I’m getting at is that to my understanding the purpose of the free Tibet movement is political autonomy. Given that Tibet is not autonomous, or in any sort of in-between stage (I’m thinking of the Irish fashion here) I have a difficult time thinking of what progress has been made. Given that the Dahli Lama still resides in Dharamsala, in exile, I doubt very much that he would agree that significant progress has been made.
I fear very much that you (DN) are going to return with talk about the health and size of the movement as indication of progress… I hope this is not the case.
I leave for one weekend and everything gets ‘exciting’ (I guess that is the best description).
Let me clarify a little. The “Free Tibet movement” that I am talking about is the fashionable, western, flag-waving variety, which was heavily associated with the Olympic torch protests. I certainly do not mean the general movement for Tibetan governmental autonomy and/or civil rights. On principle I am very sympathetic toward that aim.
I hope that clears up some of the apparent misunderstanding.
Now to be slightly more substantive allow me to annotate:
Anyway I don’t really mean to sound like a dick but you should try polite disagreement next time. Your arguments are by and large valid and I probably would concede some of them. The real problem is that you come off as a bloviating ass, seemingly more self righteous than anything else. I apologize for getting your pants in a bunch. I don’t really hate the Free Tibet movement as much as you think and my apologies to the millions in dozens of nations.