Redstate

Posted at 2:35am on Mar. 25, 2008 Please Continue To Pray Peacefully As We Round You Up For Slaughter

By Ben Domenech

Now when Daniel learned that the decree had been published, he went home to his upstairs room where the windows opened toward Jerusalem. Three times a day he got down on his knees and prayed, giving thanks to his God, just as he had done before. (NAS)

I was asked by a friend once about the two bumper stickers I had on my first car when I was a teenager. One was a Catholic pro-life sticker written in Spanish - the other, a small flag of Tibet. He asked me if I was trying to get my car keyed by everyone at once, or if they would just take turns.

For me, the question still is: Why aren't conservatives leading the way for Tibetan freedom?

While it may inspire very different demographics, I still believe that these two battles speak to the very soul of American conservatism. If conservatism means anything, it means this: that we are all born with an equal claim to certain rights given to all mankind, and that these include the right to live, and live freely, regardless of whether your life is inconvenient, or another claimed to own it, and the power to determine its fate ... and the right to worship, regardless of whether the deity you serve is unpopular with the ruling authorities of your nation. The claim to the first principle gave rise to the abolitionist movement and the Republican Party; the claim to the second gave rise to the Pilgrims and the birth of America itself.

And that principle is at the heart of the conflict in Tibet today.

It doesn't matter whether or not you believe the Dalai Lama's message about the nature or theology of the divine - that is irrelevant. What matters, in the case of the recent "unrest" in Tibet - such an adorable, innocent little word these foreign beat reporters use, as if China was turning restlessly in its sleep - is that the freedom to worship in this case has not just been torn from an entire people. It is their right to exist, to direct their own paths in any meaningful way.

Read on . . .

Posted in China | Communism | Foreign Affairs | Human Rights | Tibet — Comments (55) / Email this page » / Read More »