The People v the (Colective) State

This was writen by my freind Dick McDonald

Every day people wake up to some new tyranny imposed upon them by the leaders of the world's totalitarian states. This morning Russia broke their word to stop their assault on the tiny democratic state of Georgia. Last night Cheng Fei won the gold medal as the leader of China's women's Olympic gymnastic team. We all recognize that the ex-KGB agents running Russia are trying to restore the glory of the USSR but why would I throw the glorious and exciting victory of China's gymnastics team under the same bus?

The answer is the state took Cheng Fei away from her family at three years of age and put her in a state gymnastic school. In the last 17 years of her life she has been allowed only one week a year to visit her family. In her early teens she begged her parents to let her come home and be a normal kid. Her mother said no because the family's fame and fortune was riding on it. In China there have been few avenues to fame and fortune - selling your kid into the state-sponsored gymnastic mill is one.

It is a misnomer to call this "women's" gymnastics - the underage illegal teenage Chinese were clearly early post-menstrual teens under the legal age of 16. But what can we do - the state issued them phony passports allowing them to compete before the rigors of that discipline destroys their bones and joints in their late teens. The state is as complicit as it was with the age of Little Leaguers from Chinese Taipei. Lying is a cultural virtue in Chinese business - I guess it goes farther than that.

Unfortunately the American team didn't have their National Symphony composing special music just for their floor routine. Nor did they have the National Opera Company choreographing it. Those routines were spectacular. It is amazing what the state can do when it controls all aspects of its people's lives. However, the world has been there, done that and the USSR imploded from some of the same policies.

Collectivists in America probably are applauding the Chinese state's power over their people. I just don't believe that a "family" that can only have one child and that child is taken from them by the state and imprisoned for years can be characterized as a "family". Yet I have a feeling that literally hundreds of millions of Chinese are envious this morning of Fei's parents and the riches and social standing that accrues to them from their daughter Cheng's gold medal.

For more of Dick www.dickmcdonald.blogspot.com