Discredit Obama. Discredit the second Bush. Discredit Clinton. Discredit the first Bush. Ever since China became a world economic powerhouse, the United States from the president on down has shamefully ignored the violation of human rights in China. Dictatorship. Big Brother. Repression of dissidents. Its all been OK with America and its presidents, just so long as trade kept a-rising.
Never mind that the worship of trade has come back to bite us. Never mind that American manufacturing and American jobs have suffered grievously. Never speak to China about human rights. Never take a stand. Never make a sacrifice. That has been the discredit of America.
To be sure, Google, which is about to take a stand, is hardly pristine and pure in its calculations. But no matter. Better start somewhere.
Google discovered that China has hacked Google.cn and suppressed free access to information about Chinese dissidents. Apparently, if one googles a Chinese dissident, instead of information about and by that dissident coming up on the screen, denunciations of the dissident come up. As the symbol, the purveyor and the financial beneficiary of cyber-freedom, Google is warning China: Stop, or were pulling out of China.
To be sure, Google, as we say, is hardly lily white. First of all, Google made a deal with the devil when it entered China a few years ago. Google.cn agreed to censorship by China. Its just that now the censorship has grown way beyond Googles expectations.
Second, its not just censorship that is bothering Google. Apparently, the Chinese government-backed hackers have gained access, in whole or part, to Googles core source code. This is no ordinary hacking job. Googles essential trade secret is at risk in China.
Third, Google is guilty of its own form of theft, as columnist Froma Harrop has pointed out. Google lifts material from news organizations, claiming that it does so only under fair use of copyrighted material, but basically relies on what other news organizations pay to produce.
Our take is that despite all of the moral compromises Google has ensnared itself in, it still shows more courage than any government or business in standing up to Chinas suppression of freedom. It strikes us as a bit hypocritical for others to criticize Google while they do nothing but watch passively as China rides roughshod over every human right from political expression to human reproduction. Google is saying: A $1 billion market is not our bottom line. Bravo.
The best outcome would be for Google to succeed in opening up freedom of expression in China for everyone, including its dissidents. The next best outcome would be for the US government and free societies everywhere to put freedom in China ahead of trade with China. Just . . . get freedom on the agenda!
A moral leader emerges in the form of a computer company. Odd? Perhaps not. Perhaps the perfect symbol of our age. Once it was Moses and the Prophets. In America it became Martin Luther King, Jr. Now the moral leader may turn out to be a computer search engine, half-man and half-machine. So be it.
