Who Would Rule? Essay

The eighteenth-century German philosopher Johann Wolfgang van Goethe is quoted as saying: “None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free”. If Goethe, who died in the early 1800s, could have looked forward a hundred and twenty years to Mao Zedong’s Communist China, he would have doubtless seen his words ring painfully true. Mao’s dynastic rule survived on elimination of any thought deemed contrary to his own. Those who dared to speak out were dealt with swiftly and severely. Yet some people did not believe they were free, and were willing to do risk everything to subvert Mao’s manufactured culture. “The Mao Button”, “Black Walls”, and “Dogshit Food” are short stories that criticize the

The author of the first source expresses that freedom is necessary, as it, "fuels supports a diversity of thought." Through this sentence, the author conveys their belief that true freedom allows an individual to become their own person, without regulation or restrictions. When no restrictions are applied this can create a chain reaction of new ideas, thoughts and a more diverse community. The author also writes that “freedom is the elixir.” Their use of elixir implies that they view freedom as a sort of cure, that possible cures individual from the restricting control of sovereignty. To strengthen their conclusion, the writer goes on to define the troubles with government control. When the government takes over in individual life through the

At the beginning of this paper, I stated that freedom was a key concept in the

Originally, Liang’s “parents were deeply involved in all the excitement of working to transform China into a great Socialist country” (4). Over a serious of unfortunate events, though, he became the child of a “Rightist’s cap” mother and a “Reactionary Capitalist stinking intellectuals” father (9, 51). Impacted by the shattering of his family and horrific bloodshed created by fighting, Liang Heng began to question the Cultural Revolution. He claimed that his “family had scarified so much… but it had given [them] nothing in return” (148). Liang Heng presents his shift in ideology to demonstrate that most Chinese were no longer in support of a Communist nation. His “troubles were common enough and anyone could see there was a discrepancy between the glorious words of the newspapers and [their] painful reality (232). Even Liang Heng’s father, after many years of devotion, found that he could no longer defend the Party’s policies after he experienced the ill-treatment of the peasants in the country

The Spiral Road is a perceptive series bringing together the humanistic view of the rise of the People Republic of China. Usually history is dictated, but Huang’ s ethnographic work is not just another text of narration. Huang makes the readers know history should be concerned with the people involved, as much as it looks at the overarching politics. The book can be considered a series of stories that staunchly describes the continuing revolution innate to the countryside of the PRC by this time in the late 1990’s. Huang’s relationship with Ye, the local party leader, and both of their spirit in storytelling, one for work and another for self- gratification, provides the book with an appropriate framework. Huang immerses himself in a culture that is isolated, but it is slowly opening up to the rest of the world. As a scholar his work is remarkable in bringing light to the peasantry, who feed the development of China from bottom up. However, Huang’s adaptation of Secretary Ye’s voice skews his work towards subjectivity or bias that

China has been a communist country. Despite persistent debate over an extended period of time, the question whether which Chinese government is the most responsive to its people has never been permanently settled. However, I dare to claim that Qing Dynasty was the most open and receptive to its people among several Chinese governments. Some people might contend that Republic of China, Warlords, and Chinese Communist Party were the most responsive to its people. However, a close examination throughout this essay will clearly reveal the fallacious nature of their argument. My line of reasoning will derive its support from the most fundamental sources of human wisdom and history.

“Development is the process of expanding the real freedom that people enjoy, with expansion of freedom viewed as the primary end and the principle means of development”.

The Sun of the Revolution by Liang Heng, is intriguing and vivid, and gives us a complex and compelling perspective on Chines culture during a confusing time period. We get the opportunity to learn the story of a young man with a promising future, but an unpleasant childhood. Liang Heng was exposed to every aspect of the Cultural Revolution in China, and shares his experiences with us, since the book is written from Liang perspective, we do not have a biased opinion from an elite member in the Chinese society nor the poor we get an honest opinion from the People’s Republic of China. Liang only had the fortunate opportunity of expressing these events due his relationship with his wife, An American woman whom helps him write the book. When

I argue that when it comes to developing our capabilities, Roosevelt’s argument that the main purpose for freedom is to benefit the community is the most viable because it helps maintain democratic processes, while also providing a higher quality of life for all. While Sen and Roosevelt are similar because they both believe that a society can only develop if the people are given equal opportunity to develop their capabilities, they differ when it comes to the purpose of fulfilling those capabilities. In this essay, I will outline Sen’s argument as to why development should be viewed in terms of maximizing our freedoms to achieve our desired lives, in contrast to Roosevelt’s argument. Then, I will advance my own argument as to why Roosevelt’s

The word freedom is often associated with the idea of an unfettered liberty to select from a range of alternatives coupled with a sense that our actions will not affect our natural state.

Locke and Rousseau present themselves as two very distinct thinkers. They both use similar terms, but conceptualize them differently to fulfill very different purposes. As such, one ought not be surprised that the two theorists do not understand liberty in the same way. Locke discusses liberty on an individual scale, with personal freedom being guaranteed by laws and institutions created in civil society. By comparison, Rousseau’s conception portrays liberty as an affair of the entire political community, and is best captured by the notion of self-rule. The distinctions, but also the similarities between Locke and Rousseau’s conceptions can be clarified by examining the role of liberty in each theorist’s proposed state of nature and

Revolution, however, can be a messy issue rather than a prescription to cure China’s problems. Through examining revolution and revolutionaries in fiction short stories written by Lu Xun and the short story “The New and the Old,” by Shen Congwen, it is possible to discern the wants and concerns of each author for the future of Chinese society and the confusion that was felt by rural peasants during this time.

The basis of natural freedom is the absence of any tyrannical force, that would otherwise bare a burden by inhibiting an individual’s ability to act according to his/her own free will. Their definition provides simplistic and comprehensible rationality, as to what free individuals live’s would entail. However, in my experience, their are circumstances in which the exercise of one individual’s free choice affects another person’s life. In the instance of raising a child, it is not solely the parent’s life being affected by their decisions. The child’s life and future free-will is reliant on their caretaker’s current choices. In order to maximize the greatest amount of freedom for the largest amount of people, there essentially needs to be some limitations on the individual’s free will. In my experience, living in a “free country,” the only way to enforce these limitations are through a form of government. Although this social contract restricts a small number of personal freedoms, there is a greater net benefit for the society as a

now here an important question arises that what should be the limits to the man's free action and if a boundary is drawn between an individual's own life and public authority, where should it be? Concepts of positive sense of liberty come from the wish of own-master of an individual. as one can see it is not freedom from but freedom to freedom. These concepts seem very close to each other but Berlin states that in various directions, these ideas have developed and ended up with quarrels among each other.. In Berlin's view, notions of freedom have arisen from concepts of what constitutes a person but in my opinion, altering the definition of 'what it is to be a man' one can change the definition of freedom into a desired one.

In the article “The Tragedy of Common”, Garret Hardin, a professor of human ecology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, writes that, “ruin is the destination toward which all men rush, which pursuing his own best interest in a society that believes in the freedom of the commons. Freedom in a commons bring ruin to all” (Garret 33). As we all know, freedom is the right people are born with, so why will it ruin everything? In the beginning, we need to ask ourselves a question, what is freedom, or, what is the accurate meaning of freedom? According to the the dictionary, freedom, in general, means power or the condition of acting without compulsion, in the range of law allowed. But, we need to come to realize that law is not only about to punish, but also about to restrict the right. In the view of Americans, freedom is important because it makes their desires to live in their ways reasonable. For example, famers have their freedom to farm the land, parents have their freedom to give birth to children, countries have their freedom to deal with the waste. The law gives people the freedom to enjoy their lives, and they need to use it to do the right things, but in fact, people have done something wrong, such as harming the environment.