Beijing is angry today with the U.S. Department of Education. The Department’s infraction?: Removing a quote of China’s late leader Mao Zedung from its Web site. According to this editorial from China’s state-run Huanqiu, the knee-jerk removal of the quote, at the behest of Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley, shows that far from being the world’s leading advocate of free expression, America is just another nation with its own free speech limits.
The Huanqiu editorial starts off this way:
The National Center for Education Statistics under the U.S. Department of Education found itself in some trouble recently. On March 22, it pulled a quote of former Chinese leader Mao Zedong from its Web site which read, “Our attitude toward ourselves should be ‘to be insatiable in learning,’ and toward others, ‘to be tireless in teaching.'” One U.S. senator demanded that the Education Department explain why it cited the words of a “communist.” The quote was reportedly replaced by an aphorism from Abraham Lincoln. As if to apologize, the Department’s acting press secretary [Dennis Briscoe] called it a “poorly chosen quote.”
[Editor’s Note: According to the Washington Times, Senator Grassley, a Republican from Iowa, issued a statement saying, “As our society rightly does with Hitler, murderous tyrants like Stalin and Mao should be considered pariahs, their victims should be remembered, and their crimes should be taught to future generations so they never happen again.” Dennis Briscoe, press secretary at the Education Department, apologized for a “poorly chosen quote,” intended to “highlight the importance of teaching and learning.]
The fact that the United States, which prides itself on its freedom of speech, can’t even tolerate quotations from Mao Zedong, shows how narrow-minded the American political system is in the face of the diversity of global culture. It would appear that U.S. “freedom of speech” has been exposed as counterfeit.
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