So the big news of the day is that the Nobel Committee awarded the prestigious Nobel Peace Prize to Liu Xiaobo, a Chinese scholar who is currently serving an 11 year prison term for his pro-democracy and human-rights advocacy. This came just a few days after a likely counter-productive statement to the Nobel committee from the Chinese government warning that giving the award to Liu would have a negative impact on Chinese-Norwegian relations.This got me to thinking about the nature of communistic governments and why China's government is so belligerent towards its dissidents. The combination of watching too much Star Trek and having a great world history teacher have always led me to believe that communism would work great if humans weren't involved, or at least the current human nature was radically altered. The problem is, of course, that humans are selfish and often materialistic creatures.
