Thread: The land of free speech?

The land of free speech?
Published By Times Herald
Posted: 06/29/2009 01:00:50 AM PDT


Editor's note: The author, a Chinese immigrant, is executive director of Alliance for a Sustainable USA, a nonprofit organization based in Oakland.





Thursday, June 4 was the 20th anniversary of the pro-democracy demonstrations in Beijing and other Chinese cities that ended with a bloody crackdown by the communist government. Some elite Americans have seized this opportunity to finger-point at China for denying its citizens political freedom. But is the United States still the land of the free and brave?


Undeniably, political freedom does not exist in China. However, many Americans do not dare to speak their minds because of widespread political correctness from shore to shore, reaching all levels of the American community: Individuals, public and private entities, and the media and elected officials alike. Many pay a price for exercising their freedom of speech.


In January 2005, then-Harvard President Lawrence Summers infuriated academia for suggesting that biological differences between men and women might partly explain why fewer women succeed in science and math careers, and the lack of female science professors. Despite Dr. Summers' repeated apologies for those remarks, Harvard's Arts and Sciences faculty still voted to express a lack of confidence in him.


In January 2008, Frances Semler resigned from Kansas City's Park and Recreation Commission after months of intense pressure from Hispanic activists who insisted that the


city's mayor, Mark Funkhouser, fire her because of her membership in the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, a group focusing on border security. Instead of defending Semler, the American Civil Liberties Union joined forces with her opponents.

In March 2008, 1984 vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro had to quit the finance committee for then-presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton for stating that Barack Obama's racial background was the decisive factor in his run for president. Any fair-minded American knows that then-presidential candidate Obama, a junior senator, would have had no chance if he were white.


China's one-child policy has been attacked by many Americans as undemocratic. Although forced abortions should clearly be avoided, isn't it more humane to restrict families to one child than to allow large families when many kids would go hungry? Should Americans take pride in the fact that 10 percent of the births in the United States in 2006 were to teens between 15 and 19?


If the United States really practices Democracy, shouldn't elected officials work for the American people and be elected only by the American people? Yet bill after bill has been introduced at the state and federal levels granting benefits to illegal immigrants. Furthermore, for more than a decade, voter fraud committed by illegal foreign nationals has been reported in the news, yet little has been done to address the issue.


Political leaders of both parties also want to be politically correct, instead of representing the interests of the American people. Even though 14 million Americans have lost their jobs in the recession, one-third of all foreign-born people in the United States have no health insurance, 10 percent of kids in our grade schools speak little to no English, and neither president Obama nor congressional leaders advocate drastic immigration reduction.


Instead of being the president of the American people, both President Obama and his predecessor, President Bush, have felt the need to consult with the presidents of Mexico in immigration matters. Both have yielded to the demands of the Mexican government by vigorously promoting amnesty for at least 12 million illegal immigrants and massive guest-worker visas -- against the interests of American citizens.


Indeed, China's media members are not free. However, many American media, both on the left and the right, have become advocates. Fewer and fewer newspapers would allow viewpoints opposing their editorial boards on their opinion pages. Instead of reporting hard facts, more and more media are ducking issues that they view to be explosive, such as the impact of mass immigration on Americans.


Few in the media have show our elected officials who are burying their heads in the sand that the United States cannot effectively solve unemployment, reduce health care costs, improve our educational system, or lower energy costs if millions of foreign-born people -- legal immigrants, illegal migrants, "guest workers" -- continue to enter the United States every year, needing jobs, health care, education and energy.


Political correctness has prevented Americans from examining the impact of drastic demographic shifts on the future of the United States. We are already a de facto bilingual country (English-Spanish), with people coming from all over the world. The U.S. population has quadrupled since 1900, despite a quasi-immigration moratorium between 1925 and 1965. Another quadrupling of 306 million people will make the United States as populated as today's India.


Instead of focusing on criticizing China, we as Americans should do some soul searching with regard to our own democratic practices and beliefs.




Yeh Ling-Ling




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