Erasing the past

On the First Amendment, peaceful assembly, and what a cadre of rulers finds frightening

It's hard to say how much worse-off the world is just because the cadre in power in a single country refuses to accept the possibility of real criticism from the public. But 1.4 billion people remain deprived of political conditions so basic that Americans routinely forget that they are credited directly in the First Amendment: The right to protest peaceably, and the right to petition the government with grievances.

■ Since 1989, China's government has played a game of cat-and-mouse with the facts of Tiananmen Square. The protests were huge and sustained, the protesters voiced clear demands, and people died for the cause. Yet China's government persists in trying to erase the past from any current review.

■ Many things are wrong with America's government, and those should be addressed. But however short it fails on other accounts, America knows that it gets things wrong, and that correcting a bad way is better than covering it up. June 4, 1989 happened.