the statue in New York Harbor represents Libertas, the Roman goddess of freedom --- but does not represent an open door to America or democracy.
On Monday, July 22, 2013 9:09:26 AM UTC-5, MJ wrote: > > > JULY 22, 2013 > *Worshipping the Wrong Goddess > **Democracy and Liberty Don't Necessarily Go Together > *by B.K. MARCUS > > The crowd in Tiananmen Square was losing hope. Their mass protest had > drawn throngs of students at first, but as the summer of 1989 approached, > their numbers were dwindling, their leaders were resigning, and the square > itself, according to one historian of China’s democracy movement, "had > degenerated into a shantytown, strewn with litter and permeated by the > stench of garbage and overflowing portable toilets." > > The democracy movement seemed to be dying, not with a bang, but with a > whimper. > > This was before most of us in the West had ever heard of Tiananmen Square. > What turned the protest around? Why did hundreds of thousands of supporters > pack the square in the final days of May? What made the government, which > had been ignoring the protest and refusing to offer any reforms, suddenly > sit up and take noticeand send in tanks? > > A lady with a torch. > > To American eyes, she looked like a Chinese version of the Statue of > Liberty, her torch of freedom held aloft over Tiananmen’s huddled masses. > The art students who had quickly assembled the foam statue over a bamboo > scaffolding had deliberately avoided creating something that seemed "too > openly pro-American" -- even basing the style on the Cold War art of the > Soviet socialist realists -- but even with her Chinese features and a > two-handed grip on the torch, the comparison with Lady Liberty was > unavoidable. > > But while the statue in New York Harbor represents Libertas, the Roman > goddess of freedom, the protestors in Tiananmen Square were worshipping a > different deity. They called their statue the Goddess of Democracy. > > The tanks rolled in and crushed the goddess beneath their treads, but her > symbolic power remains, and her likeness now appears in the form of > commemorative statues throughout the world. > > The authoritarian state may have won the battle, but the war for freedom > lasts longer than our history textbooks would have us believe. In England > and America, we had more than a century of struggles between liberty and > power before anything like a victory could be declared for our cause. It > took more than a piece of papermore than the Declaration of Independence > or the Treaty of Paris. And for years the words and symbols of liberty and > independence inspired generations of freedom fighters, not just the ones we > call the Founding Fathers. > > But did the symbols ever unite us? Americans may look at the unifying > force of the Goddess of Democracy and long for a time when our own symbols > had the power to inspire our passion and our courage, but colonial America > was never united on the cause of independence. About a fifth of the white > population was loyal to the British Crown, with twice as many keeping their > heads down and avoiding any openly held position on the question of > independence. That puts the American Revolutionaries in the minority. And > even among those who actively supported America’s secession from the > empire, there was a deep philosophical divide about the goals of such a > fight. > > We call the American Revolution the War of Independence, but whose > independence are we referring to? For the rank and file of the resistance, > independence would mean freedom from coercive government -- independence > for themselves, individually. For the elite, it meant putting themselves in > charge in place of their former imperial masters: an American government > independent of the British Empire. > > A similar equivocation was at work in China’s democracy movement. Another > name for Tiananmen's Goddess of Democracy, one that wasn't used as widely, > was the Goddess of Liberty. But democracy and liberty are hardly the same > thing. The words are too often used interchangeably in the modern West, > too, but we know that a democratic majority can impose horrendous > violations on the outvoted minority. It was, after all, the democratic > process that first brought Hitler to power in Germany. > > Some try to avoid the problem with a qualifier: they advocate "liberal > democracy," by which they mean a system with the constitutional protection > of certain rights. But what virtues are captured by the term *liberal > democracy* that aren’t more clearly given in the single word liberty? > > Did the Chinese want what we have here in the United States? Our political > process produced the USA PATRIOT Act. The recent PRISM scandal may have > uncovered illiberal, illegal, and perhaps even anti-democratic activities > on the part of the NSA, but it was the legal political process of the > world’s leading liberal democracy that created the NSA, gave them a huge > clandestine budget, and put them beyond the reach of public oversight. > > Even if democracy worked according to the ideals we were taught in > middle-school civics -- even if the qualifying modifier in "liberal > democracy" were accurate (according to the older, now less-well-understood > meaning of the word "liberal") -- I find it hard to believe that the > passions and courage on display 24 summers ago in Tiananmen Square were > about the mechanics of voting. Those people wanted freedom. > > And yet I also recall American news coverage after the government tanks > rolled in. In their post mortem of the movement, analysts explained that > the Chinese students had no real experience of democracy and didn’t > understand what they were fighting for. Many within the movement, for > example, conflated democracy with consensus, paralyzing all decision-making > until they could achieve unanimity on everything. > > I don’t think the movement would have succeeded with a different name for > the uniting symbol constructed in the square. Tank treads would have > pulverized a Goddess of Liberty as effectively as they turned the Goddess > of Democracy to rubble. But I do wonder about the effects that that > unifying symbol has on the hearts of the Chinese masses, still yearning to > be free. > > Under the nominal Communists, the Chinese people are now discovering the > blessings of markets and widespread wealth. Do they understand the > relevance of the Goddess of Liberty? When they finally throw off the yoke > of the totalitarian state, will they vote themselves into submission? I > almost hope they maintain their confusion about democracy and consensus. A > paralyzed government might allow liberty to flourish a while longer. > > http://www.fee.org/the_freeman/detail/worshipping-the-wrong-goddess#ixzz2ZmcW3N11 > > -- -- Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups. For options & help see http://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum * Visit our other community at http://www.PoliticalForum.com/ * It's active and moderated. Register and vote in our polls. * Read the latest breaking news, and more. --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "PoliticalForum" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
