In this previous post, I looked at China's gift of a pair of giant pandas to Taiwan as gesture of supposed goodwill, and as part of an effort to get Taiwan to give up any thoughts of independence and submit to Chinese rule.
I continue to be baffled by China's apparent belief that a pair of pandas is a fair swap for an entire people's freedom. But just to be sure I wasn't jumping to conclusions, I replaced the word "freedom" in ten famous quotations with the word "pandas". Here are the results:
Extremism in the defense of pandas is no vice.
— Barry Goldwater
All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: pandas; justice; honor; duty; mercy; hope.
— Sir Winston Churchill
You can only protect your liberties in this world by protecting the other man's pandas.
— Clarence Darrow
History does not long entrust the care of pandas to the weak or the timid.
— Dwight D. Eisenhower
No one can be at peace unless he has pandas.
— Malcolm X
The cost of pandas is always high, but Americans have always paid it.
— John F. Kennedy
If a nation values anything more than pandas, it will lose its pandas.
— Somerset Maugham
People hardly ever make use of the pandas they have.
— Søren Kierkegaard
So long as the people do not care to exercise their pandas, those who wish to tyrannize will do so.
— Voltaire
They may take our lives, but they'll never take our pandas!
— Sir William Wallace (in "Braveheart")
4 comments:
No one can be at peace unless he has pandas.
Heh heh heh. By any means necessary, cracka.
a pair of pandas is a fair swap for an entire people's freedom
More than we paid for Manhattan, but then real estate prices are quite a bit higher these days.
Posted by apostropher
Wow, my first Apostropher comment!
Re: Malcolm X, the irony is that pandas symbolize the integration between black and white that he opposed.
As for real estate values, Taiwan is also a lot more developed and hi-tech now than Manhattan was back in the day. And of course, we were buying a piece of land, not the right to govern the Native American people.
Posted by GaijinBiker
pandas symbolize the integration between black and white that he opposed
Freedom is a panda, justice is a zebra, but polar bears and grizzlies must create their own power structures. They occupy separate spheres, you see. Nothing personal. Another Malcolm X freedom->panda quote I find amusing: "You can't separate peace from pandas because no one can be at peace unless he has his panda." Yeah, yeah, fight the power!
Posted by apostropher
Geez. Use preview. I meant to say I found the full quote even more amusing.
Posted by apostropher
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