I'm not much a fan of Google but I do appreciate their defiance of the censorship laws imposed by that powerful statist regime (the one in Asia). I especially liked the government apparatchik's denunciation of Google's move: he said the nation's leaders are "opposed to the politicization of commercial issues."

Get it? When you defend your right to convey thoughts and information you're politicizing the issue. Restricting the right is not political at all -- that's all done in the general interest. That sounds familiar.

Yep, that's the same rhetoric used by statists around the world to clamp down on individual liberties -- rights to speech, religion, association, and property. Yeah, there is a right to property but you'd never know it from reading the popular newspapers. Or listening to elected "leaders." Or watching Google's lobbyists perform their black arts. The busybodies want to tell you how to manage your own earnings, evaluate your investments, and run your businesses; attempting to maintain a zone of self-determination is condemned as rank politics. The busybodies themselves? They style themselves more as Plato's philosopher kings -- no politics there!

Just a brief observation on the state of the statists, as I sit here sipping my coffee and reading my WSJ, pining for a restoration of First Principles, happy to see a glimmer here or there, saddened to see them swamped by the corruption inherent to our fallen state.