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Jewish World Review
June 8, 2009
/ 16 Sivan 5769
Tiananmen icons
By
Jonathan Gurwitz
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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
More than two centuries ago, the German philosopher Immanuel Kant laid out the proposition that the internal character of a nation literally, its constitution defines its external actions. Democratic nations built upon republican ideals and the rule of law will tend to be peaceful. Despotic governments that tyrannize their own people will also tend to terrorize their neighbors.
Kant wrote in his 1795 essay, "Perpetual Peace": "In a constitution which is not republican, and under which the subjects are not citizens, a declaration of war is the easiest thing in the world to decide upon, because war does not require of the ruler … the least sacrifice of the pleasures of his table, the chase, his country houses, his court functions and the like."
The 20th century was the proving ground for Kant's theory. Hitler and Stalin brutalized their own people before devastating most of Europe and then, under Stalin's communist successors, keeping half the continent behind an Iron Curtain. Later on, Saddam Hussein in Iraq and the Kim dynasty in North Korea tortured, gassed and starved the unfortunates who suffered their rule while attacking their neighbors and building the infrastructure of international terrorism.
The communist Chinese government, which, 20 years ago this week, massacred peaceful protestors in Tiananmen Square, certainly follows in this despotic tradition. A government that wages war on its own people seeking democratic reform, one that sends tanks down the Avenue of Eternal Peace to slaughter thousands of unarmed students, will have no compunction about the use of violence beyond its borders.
And so a regime that beats and imprisons Buddhist monks in Tibet which China considers a province is also the principal accomplice of the Sudanese government's genocide in Darfur. A party apparatus that sees Christians, Muslims and Falun Gong as ideological threats to its existence must keep the People's Liberation Army with 2.3 million active duty troops on a war footing against free Taiwan, with a total population of only 23 million.
Zhao Ziyang was, in 1989, the general secretary of the Communist Party and one of China's most powerful leaders. He was an accomplished economic reformer who sympathized with the students and sought a peaceful resolution to the Tiananmen Square protests.
Communist hardliners, however, outmaneuvered Zhao. For his lack of enthusiasm in defending the party, Zhao was placed under house arrest for the final 16 years of his life.
Last month, Zhao's memoirs secretly recorded during his confinement became public. In translations provided by the Wall Street Journal, the former communist boss reveals an evolution in thinking that sounds remarkably Kantian: "The democratic systems of our socialist nations are all just superficial; they are not systems in which the people are in charge, but rather are ruled by a few or even a single person.
"We can say that if a country wishes to modernize, not only should it implement a market economy, it must also adopt a parliamentary democracy as its political system. Otherwise, this nation will not be able to have a market economy that is healthy and modern, nor can it become a modern society with a rule of law."
Zhao died in 2005. It would be too much to call him a hero of Tiananmen Square, though his subsequent defiance under house arrest was valiant, even noble.
The world doesn't know who most of the real heroes of Tiananmen Square actually were. After Zhao's ouster, those who weren't killed were made to disappear in the Chinese gulag. What we do have are a handful of images, the most powerful being that of a man staring down a column of tanks.
Tank man, as he is known, is gone. So far as we are aware, he left no memoirs. His spirit lives on, however, among Chinese people and people everywhere who would challenge the pleasures of their leaders' tables for a freer life and a more peaceful world.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
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JWR contributor Jonathan Gurwitz, a columnist for the San Antonio Express-News, is a co-founder and twice served as Director General of the Future Leaders of the Alliance program at NATO Headquarters in Brussels, Belgium. In 1986 he was placed on the Foreign Service Register of the U.S. State Department.
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© 2009, Jonathan Gurwitz
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