Twenty years ago this week the Tianamen Square Massacre unfolded in Beijing, China. Perhaps the most memorable image of that week was the man in the white shirt who stopped a line of tanks heading to the square. He didn’t stop the eventual massacre, but he did take a stand, and he helped focus the attention of the world on what was happening.
As I related here one year ago, our plight in Oregon is not comparable, but sometimes I imagine free-market, limited government types being men (and women) in white shirts. The tanks represent our current political establishment.
In the last year a lot has “changed.” In response, more “white shirts” seem to be taking stands, namely at tea parties [1] and events like the Defending the American Dream Summit [2] that I spoke at last Friday in Salem and the Liberty Summit [3] to be held in Salem this coming Saturday where other Cascade analysts will participate.
Watch the video and remember that those who forget history may be doomed to repeat it.
Steve Buckstein [4] is founder and senior policy analyst at Cascade Policy Institute [5], Oregon’s free market public policy research center.