Narking out China

Every American woke up this morning, yawned, stretched, ate some Froot Loops and said, "Golly gee whiz it feels good to live in the land of the free." But is freedom really so great?\nIt's really more of a hassle than anything else. Imagine sitting in your car and waiting for more than an hour while 57 small ducklings slowly cross the street. That's pretty much what freedom is.\nI can publicly criticize the government. I have access to virtually anything on the Internet. And I'm sick of it. When is the U.S. government going to step in and protect me from myself by denying my personal liberties like they do in China?\nLuckily for the Chinese, several U.S. Internet companies, while providing their services, are still adhering to Chinese law to uphold the values of censorship and smothering political opposition.\nRep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., said Microsoft Corp., Yahoo!, Cisco Systems and Google are "enabling dictatorship" by cooperating with the Chinese government, according to CNN.\nBut those who criticize U.S. Internet companies for aiding the Chinese government are forgetting one thing. The Chinese Internet market has a lot of people. How can we waste time worrying about the ideals of freedom and citizens' rights when there's big, fat, cash money to be made?\nIf someone had just mentioned moolah to George Mason while he was writing up the Bill of Rights to the U.S. Constitution, everything would be different.\nI can hear Mason now.\n"Wait a second. Did someone just say 'big, fat, cash money?'"\nAnd before you could say "liberty shmiberty," he'd be on the first covered wagon to China.\nAfter all, freedom isn't free. I got my freedom bill in the mail last week, didn't you? U.S. Internet companies are just trying to make sure citizens of China don't freeload off our freedom.\nInternet services still provide a lot of information in spite of government regulation in China. A little drop of freedom, a dash of technology; it might not be the entire freedom pie, but it's better than nothing. The revolution has to start somewhere, such as Microsoft pulling a blog that criticized the Chinese government. Or how about Yahoo! disclosing information to the Chinese government that led to a 10-year prison sentence for journalist Shi Tao? The taste of sweet, sweet freedom.\nGoogle seems to be coming out with cool new features every week. It recently launched a censored version of its search engine in China that blocks sites about human rights, Tibet and more. I want that feature here. What Web sites should I look at when I'm surfing the Internet? I don't know. That's for my government to decide.\nReporters Without Borders, an advocacy group, suggested in a statement that Internet companies use U.S.-based servers in "repressive countries" so foreign governments would have to comply with American law to get information about users. But why bother? It's only freedom at stake. Giant, globally prominent U.S. Internet companies couldn't possibly have any influence on foreign governments in the midst of a technology and communication revolution.\nYou can't have your freedom pie and eat it, too.