Sir:
I am a Chinese student studying law in Shanghai. I have read many of your articles, yet one question has always troubled me. You, Western people, often criticize us, but can you point out some way of our parting from the damn dictatorship? What you only do is make little men know our misery. I think only education can save a race barbarized like us. Not that I mean we are inferior to you. We are a civilization too.
One day, a young girl, my good friend, said: "What the hell of freedom and democracy do you want? I think now it is good, I don't want any more of them."
I felt very sad for my race, for my country, and all the people I love so much.
So I want you to ask whether what we need most is education, such as Plato.
Thank you.

Before 1215 England had been ruled by King John and his officials in absolutism as China is ruled today in dictatorship (the kind of absolutism in which absolute power is transferred not hereditarily, but by obscure reshuffles). To put it in one sentence, Magna Carta, which King John had signed, abrogated his power to imprison or otherwise penalize any subjects of his: they had to be put on trial in independent courts of justice and found guilty if they had committed a crime.

This English form of government came to be called "constitutional monarchy." Before, every inhabitant had to conform, that is, behave and speak as the king wanted him to. Non-conformity was persecuted by the king and his officials as a crime. Now it is an independent court of justice decided what was a crime. What is freedom? Non-conformity, which cannot be persecuted by the top power holder since it is not a crime according to an independent court of justice.

My reader is being overly modest when he says: "We are a civilization too."

My God! The year of 1215 was at the dawn of the post-Roman Europe/West, that is, the barbarians who had overrun the Roman Empire. Now, the civilization of China had been in existence for 5,000 years. I will not survey its contributions such as book-printing or gas-heating (about 2,000 years before it appeared in the West), but will touch only on the second half of the 20th century. Nothing unique about the advent of Mao: Stalin had preceded him after the "revolution" in Russia.

Let me now recall those in Tiananmen Square in China in 1989. They were unarmed. They were not seeking a "revolution" (which usually ends up with a worse oppression). They sought their Magna Carta from the absolute power-holders.

If King John's army had killed off those who were for Magna Carta, the post-Roman West would not have known freedom — possibly not even today.

My reader speaks of the unique importance of "education," meaning enlightenment. But the Tiananmen Square enlighteners made a mistake: they enlightened their own milieu — mostly students, while the Chinese "People's Liberation Army" consisted mostly of savages, killing those in Tiananmen Square as would have a gang from an uncivilized country.

According to my reader, "One day, a young girl, my good friend, said: 'What the hell of freedom and democracy do you want? I think now it is good, I don't want any more of them.'"

Is this conformity a Chinese trait?

A Soviet neighbor of ours (a professor of medicine) lived in one room with his wife (a cosmetician), his sister (a school teacher), his daughter, and a "domestic worker" (a young girl from the countryside). But every Sunday morning they woke us up with a chorus, glorifying "Stalin, wise and beloved," and "our young beautiful land." They believed that to be free is to conform, and those who conform are the freest people on earth. The Soviet (Marxist) hymn (I also heard its tune in a video from China) addressed the rest of mankind:

Arise, ye accursed and downtrodden,
The entire world of paupers and of slaves!

Very early, "Stalin, wise and beloved" embarked on ethnic discrimination: now, not all Muscovites were just Muscovites — some of them, like our neighbor, a professor of medicine, were Jews! Only Stalin's death prevented his "Final Solution" along Hitler's lines. For starters, our neighbor professor was fired. . . .

German diaries published outside Nazi Germany or after its demise, indicate that before Hitler's first military setback in December of 1941 and the beginning of his "Final Solution," which followed, some Germans, identified by the Nazis as Jews, also conformed to the glorification of the Nazi military victories.

Conformity rather than freedom was characteristic of many people in other Western countries as well. Recall Robespierre's or Napoleon's France. In his "History of Civilization in England" (the birthplace of Magna Carta!), Henry Thomas Buckle showed that the England during its wars with Napoleon was a police state, resembling Stalin's Russia, though Buckle died in 1862 and never knew Soviet Russia. My reader from China mentions Plato. But the latter's ideal utopia, "The Republic," resembles Nazi Germany except that Plato would have thought Nazi Germany much too free, had he known it.

The dictator seeks world power to ensure his power within his country — the collapse of the Soviet dictatorship in 1991 shows how vulnerable a dictatorship is despite its secret (political) police and armed forces. But at the same time, a dictatorship promises to make the nation of its country free as the master race, standing over all other nations of the world. Is this promise valid? With free countries still viable, the dictatorship reckons with them and restricts its persecution of its subjects or at least avoids the world publicity of its persecution. With the free countries annihilated or subjugated, no persecution will have to be avoided or concealed as immoral. Mao was said to have caused the death of 50 or 100 million Chinese? Why not destroy half a billion of them if there are no free countries to condemn it and hence there is no reason to avoid or conceal it.

Yes, my reader from China is right: the key is enlightenment. The case may seem hopeless: at the dictatorship's service are the mass communication media as well as schools and universities, while Magna Carta seekers can use only whispers. Yet whispers may be more persuasive than the biggest loudspeakers — and lead to Magna Carta in China.

Lev Navrozov's (navlev@cloud9.net] new book is available on-line at www.levnavrozov.com. To request an outline of the book, send an e-mail to webmaster@levnavrozov.com.