China Shows What PC Looks Like as the Law of the Land

We all know how psychologically oppressive and annoying “political correctness” has become. A lot of people are sick of it, which partially explains the rise of Donald Trump’s candidacy, love him or not.

What would it look like if PC became the law of the land?

To find out, look no further than China.

Everybody is measured by a score between 350 and 950, which is linked to their national identity card. While currently supposedly voluntary, the government has announced that it will be mandatory by 2020.

The system is run by two companies, Alibaba and Tencent, which run all the social networks in China and therefore have access to a vast amount of data about people’s social ties and activities and what they say.

In addition to measuring your ability to pay, as in the United States, the scores serve as a measure of political compliance. Among the things that will hurt a citizen’s score are posting political opinions without prior permission, or posting information that the regime does not like, such as about the Tienanmen Square massacre that the government carried out to hold on to power, or the Shanghai stock market collapse.

It will hurt your score not only if you do these things, but if any of your friends do them. Imagine the social pressure against disobedience or dissent that this will create.

Anybody can check anyone else’s score online. Among other things, this lets people find out which of their friends may be hurting their scores.

Also used to calculate scores is information about hobbies, lifestyle, and shopping. Buying certain goods will improve your score, while others (such as video games) will lower it.

Those with higher scores are rewarded with concrete benefits. Those who reach 700, for example, get easy access to a Singapore travel permit, while those who hit 750 get an even more valued visa.

Sadly, many Chinese appear to be embracing the score as a measure of social worth, with almost 100,000 people bragging about their scores on the Chinese equivalent of Twitter. [Sources: aclu.org, 10/5/15, “China’s Nightmarish Citizen Scores Are a Warning For Americans”; “China’s Creepy New Form of Oppression” at weeklystandard.com 10/19/15]

Imagine that. A numerical score of 350 to 950, based on the federal government’s view of your desirability as a citizen. Placed on your driver’s license or, better yet, your national ID card.

In a recent Stossel show [John Stossel’s “Censorship in America,” which aired 10/10/15], it was reported that a plurality of Americans now support legislation against government defined “hate speech.”

Would this same plurality oppose something like a “citizenship score” to appear on your driver’s license or national ID card? I’m guessing yes.

My question for people who want laws against hate speech but who would oppose the citizenship score like they have in China is: On what basis would you oppose it? If it’s permissible for government to restrain you from saying things the government does not wish you to say or think, then why not pass a law requiring the government to publicly rate your views?

I’d like to hear candidates for high office like Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump and the others running explain why they’d oppose such a law.

You’d probably hear answers like, “Well, you just cannot do that. It’s America.” That may be true; but it’s not an answer.

The only way to uphold freedom of speech is by reference to a principle. Even the First Amendment depends on an underlying principle. Besides, you disregard the First Amendment when you support a law or executive order against “hate speech.” You cannot run to the First Amendment now, when it comes time to oppose a citizenship score evaluating your level of loyalty to the government in power.

The principle to protect Americans from citizenship scores is the same principle which makes the First Amendment possible: individual rights. The concept of individual rights forbids the government from initiating force against its citizens. The sole purpose of a government is to protect individuals from force.

With that in mind, there’s no basis for ever having anything like a “citizenship score.” Aside from the appalling travesty of politicians and bureaucrats — the least morally and intellectually qualified people we know — determining by some government formula the moral worth of an individual, there is no reason the government would ever want or need such a score, other than for the purposes of violating individual rights in some way.

I might be wrong that a plurality of Americans would fight such a measure as strongly as I hope and assume they would. We have so tattered the Constitution, including the First Amendment, that we have precious little left to defend us.

Regardless of what you think of Obama, the fact is that he routinely uses executive orders to turn laws on and off at will, as with Obamacare waivers for his cronies, disregard of immigration laws without passing new legislation and implementing EPA policies without the backing of new laws. Obama has talked openly of using executive orders to raise taxes (which the Constitution requires Congress to do), or to enforce new gun regulations (not yet passed as regulation). He repeatedly tests the limits to see what Americans will resist, and to date the majority of Americans have resisted absolutely nothing. If we reward Obama’s behavior by installing one of his supporters, Joe Biden or Hillary Clinton, to replace him, you better believe the trend will continue.

Once Americans permit a President to so blatantly disregard Constitutional limits on executive power merely because he can, and because he thinks he’s right, the table is set for all kinds of more unimaginable things. This is not paranoia. It’s a fact, and it’s a reflection of the fact that liberty and freedom are far more vulnerable than most Americans are willing to think they are. On our present course, Americans are set to learn this lesson the hard way.

Opposing legal measures against “hate speech” is not an endorsement of hatred. It’s an endorsement of the idea that the government may not determine what people state or think on their own private property. The test of your dedication to a principle is how consistently you apply it. If you claim, as a majority of Americans now seem to do, that “free speech has its limits when you’re offending people,” then for all practical purposes you’re already living under something like the Chinese regime. Or, if not yet, you will be.

A lot of people argue that China has become more “capitalist,” and more free, with each passing year. Citizenship scores to quantify and publicize your political loyalty and compliance do not sound like freedom to me.

Psychologially, the worst thing a government can do to its people is mandate compliance and conformity. Dictatorships always have and always will operate this way, for obvious reasons. Americans must take a hard look at their own contradictions and their own government, who is not immune to such outrageous and unjust schemes.

Despite the First Amendment and our Constitution, the mentality represented by political correctness and support for laws against government-defined hate speech have already made such violations of individual liberty more plausible than you think.