By Dr. Harold Pease

Twenty years ago June 4, thousands of students gathered at Tiananmen Square to oppose socialism. Using a copy of the Statue of Liberty they created to symbolize their bid for freedom over 2,000 stood as Patrick Henry had years before with his, “give me liberty or give me death.” No one in history symbolized this more powerfully than the brave student who stood in front of the line of incoming tanks offering the only thing left to him, his body. The Chinese government continues to tell us nothing of this man. Eventually over one million demonstrated in the streets of China in support of the nations bid for freedom.

Led by the student intellectuals from the universities, the group supposed to be the base of future communism rule, it caught the existing socialist government leaders completely by surprise. Paralyzed for seven weeks-how could they destroy their future socialist base?-the decision was made by the Old guard. In the middle of the night a tank drove through the Square of demonstrators at full speed crushing to death hundreds under its massive wheels. It was followed by indiscriminate gunfire and other incoming tanks and thousands were wounded or killed.

Virtually all nations condemned the Chinese governments’ brutality as did the United States but unfortunately, within a month thereof, President Herbert Walker Bush, having previously been our ambassador to China, awarded the “Old Guard” most favored nation trade status– a real coveted prize for the receiving country. Presidential candidate Bill Clinton promised to retract the favored status on the basis of Chinas’ continued human rights violations but after his election changed his mind.

Ironically while the Chinese intellectuals, who understood what socialism really was, were attempting to rid themselves of it, our student intellectuals of today are too often promoting and electing those who promote socialism and abandoning, as quickly as thy can, the very philosophy that made us the envy of every other nation on earth. Socialism, without a serious injection of capitalism, has never resulted in prosperity for more than the ruling elite and never will. Sometimes our intellectuals are too smart to see that. If we wish to retain our freedom those who cannot or will not see must be turned out of office regardless in which party they reside.

We end our coverage of the Tiananmen Square Slaughter with two brief contemporary CNN accounts: Tiananmen Square Students Reject Socialism and Tiananmen 20th Anniversary found in Dr. Peases’ Favorites. Would to God that we never have to attempt to get back our liberty in the same way having lost it by our own present ineptitude.