Chinese Bloggers Show Indomitable Spirit of Inalienable Right

HIGHLAND, UT | 3 July 2008 | Chinese bloggers are proving that rights, being unalienable, cannot be taken away no matter how hard a government tries. The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that “bloggers on forums such as Tianya.cn have taken to posting in formats that China’s Internet censors, often employees of commercial Internet service providers, have a hard time automatically detecting.” The Chinese government employs programs to automatically read possibly dissident phrases in hopes of keeping its citizens quiet about events inside the country, such as protests or riots. Blogs that are caught are taken down and the bloggers could face steep penalties. Many bloggers, however, have discovered a way around the censorship. “One recent strategy involves online software that flips sentences to read right to left instead of left to right, and vertically instead of horizontally.” All of this is good example that those who exert force over their fellow men may be able to temporarily hinder the expression of ideas, but the indomitable spirit will always find ways to express itself. And rights are inalienable, not because it is imoral to try to take them away from others, but because no matter how hard you try, it is impossible to take them away.

Key Points

• Regarding this matter, the First Amendment to the Constitution says, “Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.” This wording reveals that the Founders recognized that the right to expression exists independent of any made and imagined governmental system.  
• Thomas Jefferson, on the necessity of a free press (1787), said:
  

  The basis of our government being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.

• Thomas Jefferson also expressed:
  

  Our rulers can have no authority over [our] natural rights, only as we have submitted to them. The rights of conscience we never submitted, we could not submit. We are answerable for them to our God. The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others.

  There are rights which it is useless to surrender to the government, and which governments have yet always been found to invade. These are the rights of thinking, and publishing our thoughts by speaking or writing; the right of free commerce; the right of personal freedom.

• Samuel Adams (1772) observed:
  

  The natural liberty of man is to be free from any superior power on earth, and not to be under the will or legislative authority of man, but only to have the law of nature for his rule. … If men, through fear, fraud, or mistake, should in terms renounce or give up any essential natural right, the eternal law of reason and the grand end of society would absolutely vacate such renunciation. The right to freedom being the gift of God Almighty, it is not in the power of man to alienate this gift and voluntarily become a slave.

Conclusion

The human spirit possesses an innate understanding of its self-interest. People love truth, or what they perceive as truth, and they will go to the ends of the earth to defend it. Actions in the Twentieth Century have shown this to be true as writers throughout the suppressed world went to incredible lengths, risking life and limb, to publish to the world the story of their struggles.  Chinese bloggers are showing this now as they discover new ways to get around the censors in their own country.

Americans have been greatly blessed with the Constitution and Bill of Rights that guarantees and protects the right of thought and expression. Thomas Jefferson further explained, “The time for fixing every essential right on a legal basis is while our rulers are honest and ourselves united.” The Founders were honest and the people were united. Benjamin Franklin cautioned that we should continually show resolution of our rights and to exercise them frequently in order to demonstrate that we understand those rights and that we do not lose sight of them. But this all begs the question: Have we in our relative freedom given heed to our rights as we ought to have? Or do we glibly expect them to always be there just because a piece of paper said so? Or will Americans some day soon find they must invent ways around the censorship in their own country?

Action Items

1. If you have not already, set up a blog of your own, even if the ideas and expressions you seek to establish and protect seem superficial and pointless.
2. Enroll in a writing class that will build your confidence in your own ability to express your ideas.
3. Study the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution to learn how “honest rulers” sought to protect individual rights.
4. Read other works by the founders—not just biographies of their lives, but their actual ideas and philosophies—in order to better express similar ideas of your own.

MRFC Principles:  (2, 4, 11, 13)

Sources

Juliet Ye and Geoffrey A. Fowler, Chinese Bloggers Scale the “Great Firewall” in Riot’s Aftermath, Wall Street Journal, July 2, 2008.

The Constitution of the United States of America.

The Real Benjamin Franklin, NCCS, p. 478.

The Real Thomas Jefferson, NCCS, p. 614–615.

Annals of America, vol 2, p. 217–220.