The Leftist’s Ideal

The American Left would like America to be more like China. Senator Joe Leiberman (I-Conn.) said as much when touting the need for his Internet Kill Switch bill, which would give the President the authority to shut down the Internet in a time of national emergency.

Well, here is what goes on in China, as reported last week in London’s Daily Telegraph:

Parents who believed their children died in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake because school buildings were shoddily-built petitioned the Chinese government to release its findings in a post-earthquake investigation. About 60 parents that were attempting to deliver the petition were instantly arrested by police.

“The police came right away and took us away,” said one parent, who managed to flee.

In a related story, a Chinese activist who conducted his own investigation into the earthquake—and who had previously written about the violent 1989 crackdown in Tiananmen Square—was sentenced to five years in prison in February for subversion.

The New York Times’ Thomas Friedman once wrote: “One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks. But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages… Our one-party democracy is worse.”

That’s where the Leftists would have us go.