The Free World at 30 “If you don’t fight for democracy, you don’t deserve it.”
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THENS — Perhaps you know the story of the parrot in Soviet Russia that escapes from its cage and flies out the window. Its owner rushes out and hurries down to the Ministry of State Security. “I just want to assure you,” he tells the Soviet agents, “in case the situation arises, that my parrot’s views are not my own.” None of us wants to live in a
society where we worry what our parrots might say. Nor for that matter in a society where the presidential parrot would repeat: “I am a genius! America first! Witch hunt! Coup!”
ROGER COHEN A columnist for The Times Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times
China has banned Winnie the Pooh online and in theaters. Pooh, who memorably said, “People say nothing is impossible, but I do nothing every day” — among other incendiary remarks. A society that bans
Winnie the Pooh, because of a supposed resemblance to its Great Leader, is a society with some serious issues. As the three-decade mark of the fall of the Berlin Wall approaches, free speech must be safeguarded with great tenacity, for when it dies, as when truth dies, the worst becomes possible and probably inevitable. I have been attending the Athens Democracy Forum, a gathering organized in
Protesters in Hong Kong in September. An Rong Xu/The New York Times
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