Nobel Liberty

The Norwegian Nobel Prize committee deeply embarrassed itself and its coveted prize when it awarded the Nobel Peace Prize to Barack Obama. The President won his prize without having done anything to earn it other than replace George W. Bush. I can't help but wonder whether that embarrassment might be in part responsible for the good judgment they exercised in two recently announced rewards.

The Nobel Prize in Literature went to Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa. What a great choice! Vargas Llosa is my favorite living novelist. Now that I think about it, he's my favorite novelist period. I can't say that that judgment carries much weight. I don't read enough novels. But I have read most of his.

I don't read Spanish, so I read Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter in English translation, maybe eighteen years ago. I was turned onto the novel by Eva, who was a secretary at Northern. Her parents, as I remember it, were Jews who ended up in Peru. The novel was delicious. The novel consisted of alternate chapters, one advancing the story, and the other telling a tale written by a mad script writer for a Peruvian radio station. It still gives me shivers thinking about it.

But my favorite Vargas Llosa novel was The Storyteller. It tells the story of an anthropologist studying the Machiguengas, a very isolated tribe in the jungles of Peru. The student goes native, and becomes a storyteller. Again, every other chapter alternates. One advances the story. The other is a story told by the storyteller. The richness of this is beyond description.

Vargas Llosa believes, if I have understood his nonfiction writings correctly, that the emergence of the novel is both cause and consequence of the rise of individual consciousness in modernity. Every human being exists within a cultural context, but some human beings can stand apart from that context and think of himself or herself as an individual. I don't think that this existential achievement is unique to modernity. You can find traces of it in the poems of Sappho. It is well developed in the poetry of Ovid. The modern novel has advanced it and made it available to everyone who is literate. Mario Vargas Llosa is a champion of human liberty.

It is a tremendous joy that the Nobel Peace Prize this year was awarded to Liu Xiaobo. Liu is a Chinese dissident, currently serving an eleven year sentence for such crimes as writing in favor of human rights in China and being part of the Charter 08 movement for democracy. It is his third prison sentence.

This one has a special meaning for me. A couple of years ago, one of my Chinese students came to me with a moral problem. A petition was circulating on the web calling for democracy and individual rights in China. My student was wondering whether he should sign it or not. If he did, he and his family in China could suffer grievously for it. "But if do not sign," he said to me, "what will I tell my children and my grandchildren? That I lacked the courage to act for them when I had the chance?"

It was, without doubt, the most difficult bit of advising I ever had to do. He seemed to want me to tell him what to do, and I could not. I could only tell him what I knew, and that was precious little help. We talked it out for maybe two hours, and then he left. I did not hear from him again, and I do not know what he decided. I still wonder what I will tell my grandchildren about this.

The gangster regime in China tried to strong arm the Nobel Committee. They threatened Norway with all sorts of things. It is to the credit of the Committee that they ignored those threats and did the right thing.

Of course, they didn't have to worry about eleven year prison sentences or about the security of their wives, husbands, brothers and sisters, or cousins. A person should be free to think and act without such fear. That is an imperative for modern civilization. Mario Vargas Llosa and Liu Xiaobo are champions of that liberty. The Nobel Committee did itself proud.

Comments

[Douglas Wiken]

Heavens to Betsy, almost a miracle that the Nobel Committee could improve so much in one year in the minds of Republicans wedded to GOP mythology. Don't you ever wonder if some of what you write is just a tiny microscopic bit funny?

"The President won his prize without having done anything to earn it other than replace George W. Bush."

Of course, my Norwegian heritage might cloud my usual balanced view of things, but that alone struck me as a major accomplishment. Too bad something like it couldn't have happened 8 years sooner. Likely the US and word economies and socia conditions would be in much better shape today.

[Donald Pay]

Just remember this as you vote this year: those US corporations spending all the money they have made from shipping jobs to China on ads for Republican politicians are buying the type of system they want in China and in the United States. Let's not mistake what's at stake this election---the corporate elite wouldn't mind in the least if they could impose the Chinese regulatory system on the US. And that's exactly what the Republicans promise.

[KB]

Doug: I certainly hope some of what I write is funny. If some of it is unintentionally funny, well I still get the laughs.

Can you really not see that Obama's Nobel prize was a travesty that deeply discredited the Committee? After all, one of the grounds offered in explanation was that Obama promised to close Gitmo. Is it closed, after two years? Has the cause of peace been advanced in the Middle East? North Korea? Iran?

Would you not agree that Liu Xiaobo is about as worthy a recipient as one can imagine? Indeed, we conservative applaud the Nobel Committee when it makes decisions worthy of applause. We reserve our applause on other occasions.

Donald: we are closer to agreement here than you might imagine. Economic interests make it very hard for the U.S. or Norway, to ignore the wishes of the gangster regime in China.

[Donald Pay]

My daughter has worked in a number of places in China (including with some in national government agencies) over four years and has a fairly sophisticated understanding of the government there. Actually, the leadership in Beijing are not gangsters, though there is governmental corruption (particularly at local and provincial levels). The national government is composed of fairly well established meritocracy. Most are not not ideologically motivated, and really they aren't communists in the 1950s understanding of that term. Most are scientists or engineers with some financial people in there as well.

There is quite a lot of diversity in viewpoint in the Chinese government, often breaking down between those pushing the interests of the coastal areas and enterprises (both private and state run) and those of the interior, who have not shared as much in the boom.

The lack of am efficient system for the rule of law is something that Chinese leaders realize they need to address, as well as creating a more robust regulatory system. Interestingly, the national government is fairly weak in administration of laws and goals. Many of the national government's plans are actually implemented at the provincial level, and provincial leaders are often not as competent or as in tune with national leadership as the national leaders might want.

Since my kid grew up in South Dakota, she sees not much difference in the one party rule in China versus the near total predominance of the Republican Party in South Dakota. Anyone who has spent anytime watching the South Dakota Legislature and the Pierre regime will see how bad it is to have one party rule. On the other hand, if you can stand to live in South Dakota, you can probably handle China.

There is freedom of speech of a kind in China. My daughter says people freely speak of their disagreements with their leaders over policy matters. And they are free to have any beliefs they want. However, there is a paranoia about congregations of people protesting or unauthorized political gathering, even in internet chat rooms. My daughter, though, was able to organize a debate on Chinese energy policy without any problems at all.

[KB]

Donald: if your daughter sees no difference in one party rule in China and Republican majority in South Dakota, and if you think that there is "freedom of speech of a kind" in China, then apparently the condition runs in the family.

How many people are in prison in South Dakota for criticizing Governor Rounds? Liu Xiaobo isn't a "congregation of people," he is one man. I suppose, however, that everything is okay there as long as your daughter was able to do as she pleased. Let's remember whose really important and who is manifestly not.

[Donald Pay]

Very interesting response, and one which indicates your lack of perception and comprehension. Perhaps you should reread what I wrote since your post (purposely?) overstates what I said and then proceeds from your solipsist thought.

[KB]

Donald: one of us is way off base here. Maybe its me. I don't resent your tone at all. This is serious business.

I'm sorry, but your response looks like the kind of thing that Westerners say when they have been patted on the head by foreign tyrants. I thought that when you wrote that your daughter "sees not much difference in the one party rule in China versus the near total predominance of the Republican Party in South Dakota," you meant that your daughter sees not much difference in the one party rule in China versus the near total predominance of the Republican Party in South Dakota. I inferred from that that your daughter can't see.

I thought that when you wrote "There is freedom of speech of a kind in China" you meant that there is freedom of speech of a kind in China. Ask Liu Xiaobo about that. Or the Dali Lama. There is no freedom of speech of any kind in China. That is because the only kind of freedom of speech is freedom of speech. Here I take my stand.

[Donald Pay]

Ron Johnson, the Republican candidate for senate in Wisconsin, is a big investor in Chinese companies, including companies that have majority ownership by the Chinese government. According to you, he's supporting a gangster regime in China. He's using all the money he makes from his investments in that gangster regime to try to buy the Wisconsin Senate seat. Should people vote against him?

At least Johnson is consistent. The Chinese regime won't allow real labor organizing and most companies don't provide health benefits, and that's pretty consistent with how Ron Johnson runs his companies. Ron, too, has a compliant workforce, because he uses labor from Wisconsin's prison population to help him generate his profits. Taxpayers, of course, pay the health care for his prison slaves.

[KB]

Now we are getting somewhere. If Ron Johnson is guilty, then so are all Americans. America is heavily invested in China, and vice verse. Maybe we should vote for a new people. If you think that the U.S. and the rest of the developed world should divest from China, you might be right. It is certainly the position with the cleanest hands. Is that what you advocate?

I am not sure that that would be good for the Chinese people, and I am sure it won't happen. But it might be the right thing to do. Whatever we do, we ought not to fool ourselves about what China is. It is a gangster regime. When the Nobel Committee was nearing its decision, Beijing tried to muscle Norway into submission. To fail to recognize this for what it is is bad faith.

[Donald Pay]

And your Republican Senate hope in Wisconsin is conspiring with gangsters, as is Americans For Progress, and the Republican Party.

[KB]

Yes, and so is pretty much everyone who shops at Wal Mart, which is pretty much everyone. Do you think we should divest in China? Good luck with that. If you do, maybe recognizing "a kind of free speech" in China isn't the best way to start your campaign.

[Donald Pay]

No, but I'm not the one who called the Chinese leaders gangsters. You did. But your dishonest argumentation is pretty typical of what passes for Republican talking points these days.

It appears your belief in human rights in China extends right up to the point where it might actually mean the corporate interests and outsourcing billionaires (those supporting the US Chamber's foreign money drop to elect gangster lovers) would have to hire Americans at a fair wage. Ron Johnson, your Wisconsin candidate, said he prefers to the Chinese gangster economy to the American economy, because, he said, it's a more stable business climate. If you believe the leadership in China are gangsters, then people what do you think of people like Ron Johnson who do business with them are conspiring with and propping up these "gangsters?"

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