TOD 11.12.07

The Chinese government recently gave us a scare when it was reported they would ban athletes from bringing Bibles into the Olympic village housing. It turns out to not be true, but we all immediately understood why the Chinese would have done it if they had: they don’t want Christian athletes sharing the Gospel with the others.

In all the hubbub, one element of this story can easily escape notice: the Chinese take ideas seriously. Of course they must, since all totalitarian regimes only exist so long as the people are kept indoctrinated. But as awful as censorship is, at least it reminds people that ideas have consequences, good and bad. Starting from the same premise, our philosophy is to protect the sharing of ideas so that the important ones thrive in competition with each other. But consider the implication: from a society where all ideas are treated so equally by the law one could easily draw the conclusion that they either don’t matter much or else are all equally valid.

A society that censors thereby declares the importance of ideas. A free society must sometimes remind people of the fact.