Zhong Guo.
As the strangest Valentine ever (but absolutely the coolest), I was invited to discuss Censorship in China on the BBC World Service on a show called "World: Have Your Say."
I was pretty much the only person on the panel of four that found Censorship in China an actual problem.
Tian a film-maker who is Chinese and lives in China was very interesting. He had a very strong grasp on the political situation in China and seemed to be really intelligent and thoughtful but when pushed reverted to the usual, "People in China are not ready for free speech," because like everyone in China has been brought up to believe it will cause civil war and chaos instead of a lesser Police State. The thought passed me by to ask Tian if he ever thought it’s possible he had bought into Chinese Government Propaganda and just repeating it, but not only would that have been rude but he also may not actually want the authorities on his back afterward.. My friend who was listening asked me if he was being paid by the government, but I really don’t think so. I think he was passionate in his own way.
Mr. Lee, who is a lawyer in China who from his accent I think is Singaporean, so he obviously was not going to critique someones else’s country about a right he doesn’t have at home. He very early in the discussion admitted he doesn’t have any political consciousness hence he believed it’s not an issue. He’s one of those people who always amaze me as they don’t really have an opinion on the issue he or she’s been invited to speak, and I always wonder why if you would agree to speak to a journalist about it at all -in length. I always feel there is a whiff of simply enjoying the process of being interviewed and getting a bit of attention more than anything else that motivates these people. But they always make points which you can disagree with that helps strengthen the opposing points of view so I guess that’s why journalists like to ask them.
Then last there was Chris from the UK who is a business man in China. He was sympathetic to the cause overall but made an interesting case of why he cannot "interfere" due to his position as a foreigner and the difficulties in engaging people in China about these issues. I would have liked to listen to his other points of view if we had longer actually.
For me, I was pretty critical about the points the others made but I figure if one has agreed to go onto an international news show to discuss an issue, one has to expect to be disagreed with and point out that one is wrong. I spent a good hour before thinking about what others would say, and how I would answer it if those topics came along. I knew how special an opportunity it was to say to an immeasurable number of people about the cause of free speech in China and why it’s important for people to "aspire to something greater," so it was time for to get the point across in the least number of words possible.
You probably have a clue of what I did say. Something about American companies and the Internet, the issue is not whether you can access sites through proxies, it’s got to do with having freedom of speech so people don’t go to jail when they dissent (I mentioned that a FEW times), it’s true that people in China have serious economic priorities so it means people who live in the west should care more about rights they have that other people don’t and should have rather than ignoring the issue. And finally the topic that took up the most time..if foreign companies and foreigners willingly ignore the censorship issue in China does it makes it harder for people like work towards human rights in the country’s job harder.. YES…
And I did mention something about a "Non-Elected" government, now off the Internet onto a "real world," so I think I really should just destroy my Chinese Visa as talking about democracy in China on an international forum is not going to make me very welcome in the country, not that I was for a while now but this is a little more. To be honest, I don’t mention it often because it just causes me attention which I feel will cause me trouble (although it might just be paranoia). I really didn’t mean to pass that line (Free Speech in China, Okay. Democracy in China, NOT) but it just came out in the first 30 seconds of me speaking…. It’s kinda serendipitous, as writing about wanting a "Democratic China," for my birthday exactly two years ago which got my site banned, where I did that protest, which gave me the press attention, which is how I ended up speaking on the radio 24 months down the line.
PS. If I sound strange and suprized when I started, I was. I listen to the BBC World Service every morning and when I was sitting there listenning to the feed waiting for the show to start, I kinda got lulled into the habit of just listenning as it all seemed so familiar and when the host talked to me, I was like, "Oh, this live, this is me. This isn’t the radio.." so all I could do was blurt out, "No Problem." I think I should have said, "It’s a pleasure" or something like that… that and it was 2am…
Yan Sham-Shackleton Online 
Consider:
The missing element in every human ‘solution’ is
an accurate definition of the creature.
The way we define ‘human’ determines our view
of self, others, relationships, institutions, life, and
future. Important? Only the Creator who made us
in His own image is qualified to define us accurately.
Each individual human being possesses a unique, highly
developed, and sensitive perception of diversity. Thus
aware, man is endowed with a natural capability for enact-
ing internal mental and external physical selectivity.
Quantitative and qualitative choice-making thus lends
itself as the superior basis of an active intelligence.
Human is earth’s Choicemaker. His title describes
his definitive and typifying characteristic. Recall
that his other features are but vehicles of experi-
ence intent on the development of perceptive
awareness and the following acts of decision and
choice. Note that the products of man cannot define
him for they are the fruit of the discerning choice-
making process and include the cognition of self,
the utility of experience, the development of value-
measuring systems and language, and the accultur-
ation of civilization.
The arts and the sciences of man, as with his habits,
customs, and traditions, are the creative harvest of
his perceptive and selective powers. Creativity, the
creative process, is a choice-making process. His
articles, constructs, and commodities, however
marvelous to behold, deserve neither awe nor idol-
atry, for man, not his contrivance, is earth’s own
highest expression of the creative process.
Human is earth’s Choicemaker. The sublime and
significant act of choosing is, itself, the Archimedean
fulcrum upon which man levers and redirects the
forces of cause and effect to an elected level of qual-
ity and diversity. Further, it orients him toward a
natural environmental opportunity, freedom, and
bestows earth’s title, The Choicemaker, on his
singular and plural brow.
Deterministic systems, ideological symbols of abdication
by man from his natural role as earth’s Choicemaker,
inevitably degenerate into collectivism; the negation of
singularity, they become a conglomerate plural-based
system of measuring human value. Blunting an awareness
of diversity, blurring alternatives, and limiting the
selective creative process, they are self-relegated to
a passive and circular regression.
Tampering with man’s selective nature endangers his
survival for it would render him impotent and obsolete
by denying the tools of diversity, individuality,
perception, criteria, selectivity, and progress.
Coercive attempts produce revulsion, for such acts
are contrary to an indeterminate nature and nature’s
indeterminate off-spring, man the Choicemaker.
Until the oppressors discover that wisdom only just
begins with a respectful acknowledgment of The Creator,
The Creation, and The Choicemaker, they will be ever
learning but never coming to a knowledge of the truth.
The rejection of Creator-initiated standards relegates
the mind of man to its own primitive, empirical, and
delimited devices. It is thus that the human intellect
cannot ascend and function at any level higher than the
criteria by which it perceives and measures values.
As long as some choose to abdicate their personal reality
and submit to the delusions of humanism, determinism, and
collectivism, just so long will they be subject and re-
acting only, to be tossed by every impulse emanating from
others. Those who abdicate such reality may, in perfect
justice, find themselves weighed in the balances of their
own choosing.
– from The HUMAN PARADIGM
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Let us proclaim it. Behold!
The Season of Generation-Choicemaker Joel 3:14 KJV
CONTEMPORARY COMMENTS
“I should think that if there is one thing that man has
learned about himself it is that he is a creature of
choice.” Richard M. Weaver
“Man is a being capable of subduing his emotions and
impulses; he can rationalize his behavior. He arranges
his wishes into a scale, he chooses; in short, he acts.
What distinguishes man from beasts is precisely that he
adjusts his behavior deliberately.” Ludwig von Mises
“To make any sense of the idea of morality, it must be
presumed that the human being is responsible for his
actions and responsibility cannot be understood apart
from the presumption of freedom of choice.”
John Chamberlain
“The advocate of liberty believes that it is complementary
of the orderly laws of cause and effect, of probability
and of chance, of which man is not completely informed.
It is complementary of them because it rests in part upon
the faith that each individual is endowed by his Creator
with the power of individual choice.”
Wendell J. Brown
“These examples demonstrate a basic truth — that human
dignity is embodied in the free choice of individuals.”
Condoleeza Rice
“Our Founding Fathers believed that we live in an ordered
universe. They believed themselves to be a part of the
universal order of things. Stated another way, they
believed in God. They believed that every man must find
his own place in a world where a place has been made for
him. They sought independence for their nation but, more
importantly, they sought freedom for individuals to think
and act for themselves. They established a republic
dedicated to one purpose above all others – the preserva-
tion of individual liberty…” Ralph W. Husted
“We have the gift of an inner liberty so far-reaching
that we can choose either to accept or reject the God
who gave it to us, and it would seem to follow that the
Author of a liberty so radical wills that we should be
equally free in our relationships with other men.
Spiritual liberty logically demands conditions of outer
and social freedom for its completion.” Edmund A. Opitz
“Above all I see an ability to choose the better from the
worse that has made possible life’s progress.”
Charles Lindbergh
“Freedom is the Right to Choose, the Right to create for
oneself the alternatives of Choice. Without the possibil-
ity of Choice, and the exercise of Choice, a man is not
a man but a member, an instrument, a thing.”
Thomas Jefferson
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THE QUESTION AND THE ANSWER
Q: “What is man that You are mindful of him, and the son
of man that You visit him?” Psalm 8:4
A: “I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against
you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing
and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and
your descendants may live.” Deuteronomy 30:19
Q: “Lord, what is man, that You take knowledge of him?
Or the son of man, that you are mindful of him?” Psalm
144:3
A: “And if it seems evil to you to serve the Lord, choose
for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the
gods which your fathers served that were on the other
side of the river, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose
land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will
serve the Lord.” Joshua 24:15
Q: “What is man, that he could be pure? And he who is
born of a woman, that he could be righteous?” Job 15:14
A: “Who is the man that fears the Lord? Him shall He
teach in the way he chooses.” Psalm 25:12
Q: “What is man, that You should magnify him, that You
should set Your heart on him?” Job 7:17
A: “Do not envy the oppressor and choose none of his
ways.” Proverbs 3:31
Q: “What is man that You are mindful of him, or the son
of man that You take care of him?” Hebrews 2:6
A: “I have chosen the way of truth; your judgments I have
laid before me.” Psalm 119:30 “Let Your hand become my
help, for I have chosen Your precepts.”Psalm 119:173
References:
Genesis 3:3,6 Deuteronomy 11:26-28; 30:19 Job 5:23
Isaiah 7:14-15; 13:12; 61:1 Amos 7:8 Joel 3:14
Ecclesiastes 3:1-8
DEDICATION
Sir Isaac Newton
The greatest scientist in human history
a Bible-Believing Christian
an authority on the Bible’s Book of Daniel
committed to individual value
and individual liberty
Daniel 9:25-26 Habakkuk 2:2-3 selah
“What is man…?” Earth’s Choicemaker Psalm 25:12
http://www.blogger.com/profile/4744267
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Parthenon/2728/
http://www.choicemaker.net/
jbaxter@choicemaker.net
An old/new paradigm – Mr. Jefferson would agree!
(Alternative? There is no alternative.)
+ + +
“Man cannot make or invent or contrive principles. He
can only discover them and he ought to look through the
discovery to the Author.” — Thomas Paine 1797
“Got Criteria?” See Psalm 119:1-176
semper fidelis
– from The HUMAN PARADIGM
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