June 4, 1989

June 4, 1989 was a pivotal date in the development of my civic conscience even though I did not realize the significance until many years later. The Tiananmen Square Massacre was broadcast live from China and I remember clearly how my 11 year old mind was captivated by the images. Scores of unarmed students standing up against the Chinese military, the chaos that only the shedding of innocent blood can spawn and of course, that image of the unidentified young man blocking the path of a column of tanks. I imagine that I am not alone in remembering this tragedy but I want to share with you why it impacted me.

I was raised in a fairly political family composed almost entirely of yellow dog Democrats (yes, I am including you in this assessment Robert, even if it is reluctantly) but they are not particularly radical. The idea of non-violence and civil disobedience were foreign concepts to my 11 year old self. Watching the news coverage of the massacre introduced me to an entirely new thought. You see, the commentators on the major networks were outraged that the Chinese military would use such overt display of violence in quelling non-violent protestors. To me, it was this outrage that was intriguing and new. Unlike many out there it was not the drastic contrast to America and the freedoms that we enjoy that was remarkable to me, but the fact that others thought what the military was doing was awful.

I want to pause here and state that I wasn’t some kind of child monster. Looking back, I believe my developing understanding of a complicated world around me was overly influenced by the simplistic notion only a 11 year old boy can hold that “might makes right”. I had never given any real thought to freedoms and rights. They were simply words that were used by Americans as a part of our jingoistic dogma. On June 4, 1989 I was introduced to the concept that just because someone is the most powerful doesn’t necessarily make them right.

This is important. I began to see that what happened in Tiananmen Square was wrong not because of some concept of liberty but because it was simply wrong. Let me try and explain it a little more clearly, I came to understand that there was right and wrong in the world and because of this we need civil liberties to protect the distinction between right and wrong. This is a very different thought path from believing that we have civil liberties and that if someone violates these liberties it is wrong.

Many years later, I was blessed to attend Bethel College and was introduced to Mennonites. It was this wonderful religious denomination that introduced me formally to the concepts of non-violence, social justice and civil disobedience. I can say now that it was the Mennonite church that allowed me to look at organized religion as something more than a despicable and insidious organization but was something that actually tried to make the world a better place. This was a revolutionary concept for a boy from Kentucky whose primary interactions with religion was hypocritical Baptist and pompous Presbyterian churches.

So in short, on this 18th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, I want to thank everyone out there that have had a hand in helping shape my life and my current view of the world. Sitting here at 29 I am amazed how different the world seems compared to my 11 year old self.

Thank you.