John Derbyshire writes:
The rulers in Beijing made it plain in a ruling this August that “broadly representative” means “approved by the Communist Party.” That has brought thousands of young protestors out on the streets of Hong Kong, and that’s what you’ve been seeing on your TV news, after the segments on George Clooney’s wedding and the latest flare-up of race hysteria.
How will it end? In tears, of course. Oriental despotism has no room for Anglo-Saxon liberties, any more than it had for the republican vitality of medieval Italian city-states.