Re: Congress Vs. China's Censorship Abetters

It's telling that Bruce received an email from a congressional staffer in response to his post "Cool Tools For Tyrants," but I received no such correspondence in response to my reaction, which argued for a respect for free market principles.

Why is this?

The answer lies in a quote from Republican Rep. Chris Smith, who says that if China doesn't show more respect for human rights - that if they don't ameliorate their behavior - that "we (the United States) will not do business with you."

How arrogant. How pathetic that our representatives in Congress so reflexively believe that they control private industry; that private companies only compete on the world market as freely as our all-knowing congressmen allow.

Companies like Microsoft and Cisco should be banned from selling their products to communist countries, they argue, as if the Chinese are so stupid that they won't eventually acquire technological resources if we don't provide them.

Bruce's post was mistitled. He should have called it "Congress's Censorship Abetters Vs. China's Censorship Abetters"; after all, the popular theme in Washington of late apparently is that the state knows best what its citizens - and citizens abroad - want. Pretty soon we're going to have to ban cell phones because terrorists use them to detonate IEDs.