Enemies of Students

Deng was a bad man.

That's not a line one commonly reads in obituaries, but it's true in this case. What is shocking about the statement is only the sparse number of times it has been written and spoken amid the media hyperbole surrounding the death of Deng Xiaoping--the laudatory news-magazine cover stories and the praise from world leaders including our own sympathetic President.

Deng was an enemy of dissent, though not of capitalism. And while Eaton Professor of the Science of Government Samuel P. Huntington might conceive of this paradox favoring economic freedom but not political as a cultural characteristic, I am prone to side with those who label it dictatorship.

That is, Deng knew that privatization could lead to much-needed increases in productivity and therefore riches for both individuals and nation. (Congratulations to him for passing Ec 10.) Deng also knew that economic liberty breeds a stirring for political liberty, so he was quick to keep the pot on the kettle.

In his intellectual and physical repression of the populace through a sham of a justice system, a terrorist police force and a corresponding expansive network of laogai, the Chinese brand of gulag, Deng was an enemy of liberty itself--and he well deserves the authoritarian status he was this week denied.

As an enemy of both dissent and liberty, Deng can be declared an enemy of students. All that is necessary evidence to understand this fact is that he personally ordered the shooting of pro-democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square in 1989. Now think of poor, dead Deng, all cooped up in his glass casket. There is no need to weep for him, America.

Likewise, there was no need to memorialize Richard Nixon. Perhaps you have already made the analogy. Let me stress the similarities of circumstance between the evils of the two "leaders" by reprinting the previous paragraph:

As an enemy of both dissent and liberty, Nixon can be declared an enemy of students. All that is necessary evidence to understand this fact is that he may as well have personally ordered the shooting of anti-war protesters at Kent State in 1970. Now think of poor, dead Nixon, all cooped up in his wooden casket. There is no need to weep for him, America.

No self-respecting students did weep for Nixon when he died in 1994. Basically, most of us could have cared less. But the more poignant response came from those who were students in the 1960s, like my high school biology teacher, who had been part of the Democratic convention protests in Chicago in '68. I recall her walking into class that day, being queried on the ex-president's passing, and responding with a brief expletive directed to the deceased.

But several self-absorbed politicians did weep for Richard Nixon. Again, Bill Clinton emerges as the central figure eulogizing a bad, dead man, saying: "Oh yes, he knew controversy amid defeat as well as victory. He made mistakes, and they, like his accomplishments, are part of his life and record. But the enduring lesson of Richard Nixon is that he never gave up being part of the action and passions of his times."

Perhaps "opposed to" might be substituted for "part of." And his opposition was not lightly felt. A paranoid president, he drew up an enemies list. He formed a political subversion committee known as the plumbers.

He prosecuted a futile war in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia against an invisible enemy, in the process destroying tens of thousands of American and Vietnamese lives. The only passion Richard Nixon had for his times was an evil one.

Yet our leaders mourned, in so doing freeing the dead man from his historical legacy, allowing him a bit of legitimacy on his deathbed that was wholly undeserved.

Why not harangue Nixon after his death as we did during his life? Why is a bad, dead man more likable than a bad, live one? Why bother to forgive those whose actions were so evil? Why should we not hold Nixon, and for that matter Deng, to their dirty lives as enemies of students?

Joshua A. Kaufman's column appears on alternate Thursdays.