In Bush’s America, the agents of a foreign government, in this case China, were permitted to assault an Olympic torchbearer and civil rights activist, Majora Carter, because she had the audacity to express her support for the people of Tibet by displaying a Tibetan flag while carrying the torch in the communist enclave of San Francisco. Let’s go to the video:
Here’s what the NY Times reported about this incident earlier this week:
In her left hand she held a water bottle, which was serving as a stand-in for the Olympic torch. In her right sleeve was tucked a Tibetan flag. Majora Carter was ready. […]
Five seconds into her run down Van Ness Avenue, Ms. Carter pulled the Tibetan flag from her sleeve and began waving it. There she was, a mole at the head of the procession.
She waved the flag for roughly five seconds, until a Chinese guard saw her. He lunged at her. She dodged him. He lunged again and soon wrested the flag from her hand, saying, “Sorry, I can’t let you do this.”
She said she was pushed toward a group of San Francisco police officers, who then pushed her into a crowd of bystanders. Her time in the spotlight was over. The torch kept moving.
This is how liberty dies in 21st Century America. Our government permits the agents of a foreign government to forcibly take away a person’s freedom of speech because she makes a statement in support of freedom for Tibet which they find unacceptable, and then our own law enforcement officials nakedly use force to assist that foreign government in suppressing her right to free speech by literally kicking her to the curb. How are we any different than any other dictatorship around the world? They don’t allow dissent to be publicly expressed either.
I salute Majora Carter. I condemn the Chinese government and the San Francisco Police for their suppression of her constitutionally protected right to express her own opinions in public. In America (or what’s left of it).
