Chinese government fear of protesters.

States the world over are getting their pants scared off. They've discovered that the internet has unleased the most dangerous free market possible to the state -- the free market of ideas. It will be interesting to see the various ways that states deal with the results.

Thomas Jefferson said:

When the government fears the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny.

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That's crazy, the more they try to control the population the more they are going to speak out. Wouldn't it be easier to listen to them than try and silence them?

Governments should be afraid of their people.

I just wished people didn't have to die when it happens.

Amazing that in the year 2011, billions of people live in bondage, controlled, by a few, unable to leave their prison countries.

Planet earth. Humans are born. And a few bad bad people control the lives of so many.

All of us are very fortunate.

Despite the awful airport pat downs that so repress us.



We're very lucky.

One again, thank you founding fathers.

Shouldn't our abundance of freedoms make us all the more wary of losing them, as we know what it's like to have them?

Or...was it the not having freedom makes you more wary, as you know what it's like to not have them?

I forget.

BySharonNelson said:

That's crazy, the more they try to control the population the more they are going to speak out. Wouldn't it be easier to listen to them than try and silence them?

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Megalomaniacs like Gaddafi are fundamentally incapable of thinking rationally. All the other presidents in the recent wave of revolutions took their time stepping down and it was probably due to "World" pressure (American being the strongest). Libya is a great tragedy, civilians being shot from the air.

Such revolutions usually happen when people are hungry and jobless - disproportionately high unemployment and low or zero welfare - while their leaders and their friends and family are obscenely rich and powerful (France vis-a-vis Louis and Marie Antoinette was a great example).

If a dictatorial government took good care of its people, if its citizens' needs are at least met if not exceeded - jobs, home ownership, healthcare and abundant food - I believe the average citizen in that country will be quite willing to give up some political freedom.

I speak from experience, having grown up in such an environment. I don't see a revolution in my country in my lifetime. Sadly though, if it does happen, I wish I could be 100% sure that rubber bullets would be used and not real ammunition (as should have been the case in Tiananmen but tragically, wasn't).

Americans are truly blessed and must never ever take their freedoms for granted. America, for all it's multi-trillion debt woes and various problems, is still the land of milk and honey. Its citizens are the most philantropic in the world, BY FAR. That says a lot about the country and its people.