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Dallas Morning News | Editorials:Whatever happened to Republicans? President Reagan famously declared, "Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem." Now, twenty five years later, President Bush is head of a government that demands private businesses open their databases containing the personal habits of millions of Americans for government fishing expeditions. Head of a branch of government that claims sole authority to decide what is legal and what isn't in the name of national security. A federal government that wants to run our local schools. A government that wants to dictate who we can love ... and marry. A government that wants to borrow and spend our children's heritage for our immediate gratification today.
Whatever happened to Republicans? Were they ever really anti-government or only opposed to a government controlled by the Democratic Party? Now that Republicans control every lever of government, there seems to be no end to their love of government, of power, of using it to force their vision of how things ought to be onto the country as a whole.
4 comments:
Now they are going after Google for offering their service in China.
Google states right on their home page "Some results have not been displayed due to local regulations."
Thas seems reasonable to me if you are going to engage the Chinese.
The other search engines - the one's that aren't being criticized - simply censor the results returned and don't mention that they are doing it.
The original topic in this thread concerns the US government asking Google for access to information in its database of searches. It does not deal with China. But since you raise the topic, it should be pointed out that Google has abruptly changed its censorship policy. From Google's Help Center:
Q. Does Google censor search results?
Original answer...
A. Google does not censor results for any search term. ... We believe strongly in the democracy of the web to determine the inclusion and ranking of sites in our search results.
New answer...
A. It is Google's policy not to censor search results. However, in response to local laws, regulations, or policies, we may do so. When we remove search results for these reasons, we display a notice on our search results pages.
In other words, Google caved to China's demands for censorship. The alternative was to shut down. It chose what it saw as the lesser of two evils.
Many Americans hate to see any American company cooperate with China's suppression of liberty for its own people. It's not only conservatives who feel this way. Google is catching it from all sides.
Whatever happened to Republicans?
Christopher Hitchens, in a column in Slate, asks a parallel question in another context, namely, the Hamas victory in Palestinian elections. To those who say the Hamas vote represented a repudiation of Fatah corruption, Hitchens responds:
"Anyone voting for a clerical party in the hope of abolishing corruption is asking to be considered a fool and also treated as one: There is corruption all over the Middle East, but it is nowhere as flagrant and exploitative and damaging as in the region's two main theocracies, Iran and Saudi Arabia. Those who come to power as puritans lose no time in becoming positively gorgeous in the excess of their corruption, and Hamas will not be an exception to this rule."
Are Republicans America's own modern day puritans?
BusinessWeek (Feb 20, 2006) reports that Google is beefing up its Washington lobbyist influence but is having trouble recruiting any Republicans. Reportedly, 99% of Google employees' campaign contributions in 2004 went to Democrats. That might explain the real reason why Washington is up in arms over Google's refusal to open its databases to government snooping.
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