Want To Halt The Spread Of Socialist Ideas On American Campuses? Send All First-Year Students To Hong Kong For Orientation Week.

Let’s send the Class of 2023 to Hong Kong for Orientation Week instead of the university to which they have been admitted.  Let American students meet with their Hong Kong counterparts to see why Hong Kong youngsters are on the front line risking life and limb for Liberty and standing up against socialist Tyranny in China.

For Hong Kong, Liberty is not an abstract ideal.  It is life itself.  Socialism is not an abstract ideal needing only good men and women to achieve its noble goals. It is Tyranny.

There is no greater struggle going on in the world today between Liberty and Tyranny than in the streets of Hong Kong.

Hong Kong Residents Are Writing Their Chapter In The Annals Of Freedom

Against impossible odds, Hong Kong youngsters and their supporters among the population, are making a remarkable stand for Liberty.  Ten weeks and counting, they are resisting a proposed law permitting extradition of Hong Kong residents to China and demanding  the right to elect their leaders, not having them picked by China.

All four Chief Executives of Hong Kong, ostensibly legitimized through controlled elections, have been dismal failures.  The first, Tung Chee-hwa (1997-2005), resigned during his second term following a futile attempt to impose an anti-subversion law.  Tung now blames America for inciting and supporting the resistance.  The second, Donald Tsang (2005-2012), spent time in jail on corruption charges after finishing up the balance of Tung’s term and completing his five-year term as Chief Executive.  The third, C.Y. Leung (2012-2017), got caught up in the Umbrella Revolution, was tagged with financial hanky-panky, and declined to run for a second term.  Now Carrie Lam, by far the worst, could not leave well enough alone.  She forgot Mao Zedong’s great essay:  A Single Spark Can Start A Prairie Fire.”  She lit the match, poured gasoline on the fire, refuses to withdraw the proposed extradition law, and reiterates she will do a better job of listening to the people of Hong Kong in the future to help restore stability and prosperity. Credibility gap, anyone?  Carrie Lam, her government, the Hong Kong Police, and China have all lost face.  If this all ends badly, as happened in Tiananmen, Lam will go down in history as the woman who destroyed Hong Kong.  Lam should have retired to Britain with her family in 2012 as she then hinted she might.

Hong Kong residents are risking life and limb to maintain their civil liberties (echoing Patrick Henry).  Indeed, were a referendum held with two options, (1) restore British rule or (2) continue as a Special Administrative Region of China, Hong Kong residents would doubtless choose Britain.  Must be a bitter pill for Chinese President Xi Jinping to swallow.  Too bad he didn’t learn from China’s great leader Deng Xiaoping, who invented the “One Country, Two Systems” formula.