The Key to Freedom

The nephew and his girlfriend have returned from a visit to her home city in China.  She very generously brought us many gifts, including a Mao hat, which she tells us in on sale at every tourist center, a replica of a letter holder with a poem by an ancient Chinese poet engraved into the wood, and a Maobama tee shirt.

Yesterday, I went to a local colonial fair (in my Molly Pitcher costume) and picked up a few “American” souvenirs for her.  A lace night cap, a lady’s tricorn hat, a silk change purse, and a copy of the Declaration of Independence.  I’m also trying to get her an “I Love Limited Government” tee shirt.

She gave me a souvenir notebook with the blessings of Mao on it.  I told her I had a copy of Mao’s “Little Red Book”.  The actual title is “Quotations from Chairman from Mao Tse-Tung.”  I explained that the book is in both English and Chinese.  She looked at me in surprise.  I’m not quite sure why she was surprised since Brother B specifically asked her for the Mao cap and a Maouse pad (mouse pad), in addition to the tee shirts.

She said her father didn't read the book; he had to memorize it – all of it.  Discounting the translation, that comes to 290 pages.  Can you imagine any American student having to memorizing a nearly-300 page book?  It wouldn’t be a bad idea, actually, for high school students to memorize, for instance, The Federalist Papers, which are the reasoned justification for the U.S. Constitution.

Here is what Chairman Mao had to say about the Chinese Communist Party:

The people's democratic dictatorship uses two methods.  Towards the enemy, it uses the method of dictatorship, that is, for as long a period of time as is necessary, it does not let them take part in political activities and compels them to obey the law of the People’s Government and to engage in labor and, through labor, transform themselves into new men.  Towards the people, on the contrary, it uses the method not of compulsion but of democracy, that is, it must necessarily let them take part in political activities and does not compel them to do this or that, but uses the method of educating and persuading them.  [June 23, 1950]

Later in the book, but from an earlier speech, he says this about the common people:

The people, and the people alone, are the motive force in the making of world history.  [April 24, 1945]

Then, in the Preface and Postscript to Rural Surveys, March/April 1941:

The masses are the real heroes, while we ourselves are often childish and ignorant, and without this understanding, it is impossible to acquire even the most rudimentary knowledge.

Mao’s demagoguery was unbounded.  His ambition was plain as early as 1927, when he wrote in “A Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Upsurge in Hunan”:

The present upsurge of the peasant movement is a colossal event.  In a very short time, in China’s central, southern, and northern provinces several hundred million peasants will {note:  “will”, not “have”]  rise like a mighty storm, like a hurricane, a force so swift and violent that no power, however great, will be able to hold it back.  They will smash all the trammels that bind them and rush forward along the road to liberation.  They will sweep all the imperialists, warlords, corrupt officials, local tyrants, and evil gentry into their graves.  Every revolutionary party and every revolutionary comrade will be put to the test, to be accepted or rejected as they decide.  There are three alternatives.   To march at their head and lead them?  To trail behind them, gesticulating and criticizing?  Or to stand in their way and oppose them?  Every Chinese is free to choose, but events will force you to make the choice quickly.

Some choice:  kill or be killed.  Then in the foreword to the 1955 The Socialist Upsurge in China’s Countryside, Mao wrote:

The masses have a potentially inexorable enthusiasm for socialism.  Those who can only follow the old routine in a revolutionary period are utterly incapable of seeing this enthusiasm.  They are blind and all is dark ahead of them.  At times, they go so far as to go so far as to confound right and wrong and turn things upside down.  Haven’t we come across enough persons of this type?  Those who simply follow the old routine invariably underestimate the people’s enthusiasm.  Let something new appear and they always disapprove and rush to oppose it.  Afterwards, they have to admit defeat and do a little self-criticism.  But the next time something new appears, they go through the same process all over again.  This is their behavior in regard to anything and everything new.  Such people are always passive, always fail to move to move forward at the critical moment, and always have to be given a shove in the back before they move forward.

Sound familiar?  The Progressives have been touting this very propaganda for decades, and they always aim their megaphones at the young, who frequently don’t know any better.  They take gross advantage of our peaceful natures, all the while encouraging their minions to worse and worse acts of violence.

Reading the Little Red Book and the Communist Manifesto (among others), but they must be read, and read alongside China’s Destiny and Chinese Economic Theory, The Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, The Wealth of Nations, Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography, John Locke’s Two Treatises of Government, and Thomas Paine’s Common Sense.

My nephew’s girlfriend is fortunate in that she’s staying in my brother’s house.   Brother B is an amazing history buff and can teach her the dates and facts of American history.  He can tell when and where events happened.  He’s not so good on the why’s and wherefore’s, however.  That will probably fall to me to teach her what freedom really means.  I have many copies of the pocket Constitution and Declaration of Independence lying about.

The souvenirs are nice, but the best gift I can give this young lady (whom I hope in future to call my niece-in-law) is the key to freedom.

“We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness – that to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their Just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”