20 years ago today, Chinese people around the world cried in anguish as the People's Liberation Army turned its tanks and guns against its own people. I was only 18 at the time, and I can still remember watching my grandparents collapse in tears as the footage came in. In the wake of the Cultural Revolution, my grandmother was thrown in prison for two years. Her crime? She was a schoolteacher, and was therefore considered to be a Counter-Revolutionary. Upon her release, she spent several months tracking down her children (who the government had sent to different orphanages), and they literally walked on foot for over 500 miles out of China across the border into British-controlled Hong Kong, where my grandfather was waiting for them (he was in HK when the Nationalist government collapsed and dared not return). My grandmother's first job in Hong Kong was as a housekeeper, and she said the hardest part of her job was scrubbing the floors. Why? Because she had to do it on her hands and knees, and being in that position would cause a wound she had suffered on that agonizing journey to re-open. She said she spent a good amount of time having to clean up her own blood off of that floor. My grandparents had such high hopes when the students protested to demand democracy, hope for reform, hope for the end of totalitarianism in their country. Their physical collapse was a mere reflection of the collapse of those hopes.
20 years later, China
owns us. We send thousands of jobs there while sending thousands of Americans to the unemployment lines. IBM computers are made in China. GM cars will be made in China. 20 years later, we turn a blind eye to the murder that the Chinese government inflicted on its own people -- unarmed civilian students at that. Our politicians kowtow to them so that they'll agree to help us mortgage the futures of American children who have yet to be even born. 20 years later, we've sold our souls and futures to the largest Communist regime that remains on the planet. 20 years later, I understand the hatred that causes some people to strap on a bomb vest and blow themselves up for a political cause, because I'd gladly walk into a crowded room full of Chinese government officials and do the same.
Prior to June 4, 1989, the PLA was considered to be the people's army, and the people of China thought the government was their 'friend'. It was unfathomable that the government would unleash its military might against its own people. It was unthinkable that an army whose primary mission was to serve and protect its own citizens would be ordered to take the lives of those very same citizens, and that the soldiers of that army would
actually comply. Were the citizens of China naive? Perhaps. But either way, it was certainly a rude awakening for them, and 20 years later in America, there's a lesson in this for all of us. Namely, to all those who think the government is our friend, to all those who would willingly give up our freedoms and place all their trust in the government:
Get a clue. And lest you think that this could never happen in America because our government is democratically elected, be reminded that Hitler was also democratically elected -- before he decided to suspend democracy and kill all his opposition in what has come to be known as the 'Night of the Long Knives'. For some more recent examples, be reminded that Charles Taylor of Liberia and Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe were also democratically elected prior to unleashing their militaries against their own people and starting civil wars.
20 years after the Tiananmen Square massacre, we are approaching a crossroads in America. Choose your path wisely.
YouTube - Tiananmen Square Massacre