COVID lockdown is just a proof of concept experiment

NYT readers praise China’s “different” approach

“The NY Times published a piece yesterday about the appeal of the Chinese version of freedom:

The pandemic has upended many perceptions, including ideas about freedom. Citizens of China don’t have freedom of speech, freedom of worship or freedom from fear — three of the four freedoms articulated by President Franklin D. Roosevelt — but they have the freedom to move around and lead a normal day-to-day life. In a pandemic year, many of the world’s people would envy this most basic form of freedom…

Of course, the Chinese government is eager to help the world forget that it silenced those who tried to warn the world in the early days of the outbreak.

But there’s no denying that China’s success in containing the outbreak burnished Beijing’s image, especially when compared with the failures of the United States. It has given currency to the so-called China model — the Communist Party’s promise to the Chinese public that it will deliver prosperity and stability in exchange for its unrelenting grip on political power.

“[taking] a look at the comments, there are plenty of people defending this trade off:

The fact of the matter remains that most Chinese are not obsessed with advancing democracy — they are focused on advancing both their personal family and overall society’s prosperity.

And they are getting what they want.

We in the West must come to accept that China’s approach is different but not necessarily wrong simply because it doesn’t conform to our ideas of individual liberty and “freedom”.

Another popular response:

Do you really think that the average existence of a family with two kids somewhere in China is any less free than we are in the US? Does it really matter to be able to speak out against the government there or here in terms of daily life?…

I would take China any day of the week.

And on and on it goes:

The Chinese model is the future and I, for one, am welcoming it. Having witnessed the chaos and the incompetence in the US, I am totally disillusioned in this sham democracy.

Internet censorship, limiting American’s mobility and freedom to travel by eliminating cars, vaccination passports, school indoctrination programs, 70% tax rates on the middle class, and so on; it’s all coming, and many, many formerly-free Americans will cheer the loss of of their liberty in exchange for “security”.