Tuesday, December 12, 2017

When Government Calls the Shots

And oh, what zeal!: Street-side banners and billboards; a Communist Party publicity tour to celebrate “General Secretary Xi’s words”; official choral performances and song-and-dance routines. “As performers,” says the dance troupe director, “it’s our duty to educate the masses about how they benefit from party and state policies.”
Whenever government starts coercing belief in government’s stated beliefs, the wise citizen will hug his liberties hard, before political wind gusts hurl them away. Those winds blow not just in China but here as well, in the land of the free… I mean, perhaps, “supposedly free.”
The wedding cake case heard last week by our own country’s highest court centers, as media coverage and Twitter reaction would have It, on the gay marriage question. May a Colorado baker deny, out of religious conviction, a gay couple’s request that he bake their cake? Not so, says the state of Colorado. The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision will be close — likely 5 to 4, with Justice Anthony Kennedy playing, as he does so frequently, the role of decider.

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