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Lily for Liberty
Lily Tang Williams addressing the Colorado Republican Business Coalition.
I am a member of the Colorado Republican Business Coalition, an organization, which, among other activities, holds monthly luncheons with invited speakers. Frequently, those invited to address to group are Republican aspirants for public office. This month, however, we heard from the Libertarian candidate for US Senate, Lily Tang Williams. It was a talk to remember.
Lily is a libertarian, but not one of the all too familiar Epicurean variety, who apparently believe that the primary blessing of liberty is the opportunity it affords to relax and smoke grass. Quite the contrary; Lily is a freedom fighter of the fiercely patriotic sort – her two sons are both serving in the US military – a person who understands that there are things truly worth fighting for, risking for, and if necessary, dying for, and that the struggle between liberty and tyranny is the central issue of our time. When you hear her story, you can understand why.
Lily was born in communist China in 1964, and grew up in the midst of Mao’s monstrous Cultural Revolution. Along with the vast majority of Chinese, her family had to endure horrific poverty, created and made hopeless by the Communist Party’s insistence on suppressing any initiative that might allow anyone to escape. Everyone had to work at whatever the Party assigned them, and accept in return only what the party decided he or she should receive. It was the Communist utopia; “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs” realized in fact as universal slavery.
Furthermore, the Party was not only in charge of the production and distribution of material goods, but of thoughts. There were ideas that were politically correct, and those that were politically incorrect, and people were required to police themselves, and others, to suppress any sign of politically incorrect attitudes. To avoid ostracism, or much worse, constant conformity and obeisance to authority was essential.
Lily Tang as a Red Guard
After Deng took power and began his reforms circa 1980, things started to become materially better as those with the right connections to get the necessary permits from the still overbearing bureaucracy were able to launch businesses and escape poverty. But still, the ultimate decisions of what would be allowed and what would not in almost all areas of human life rested with the state and its petty tyrannical representatives. For example, as a result of performing exceptionally well on a massive set of high school graduation exams, Lily was allowed to leave her hometown and go to a university selected for her in Shanghai. After she was there for a while she began to date a Shanghai boy. Despite the fact that the relationship was being conducted in a conservative Chinese manner, with supervision by the boy’s parents, Lily’s supervisor at the university informed her that she needed to break it off. So she did. That’s how it was.
Ultimately an opportunity arose to do graduate work in the United States, and Lily, who through arduous efforts at apparent conformity had managed to convince the relevant authorities that she was a true believer, was given a passport to go. So she arrived in America, and never went back. She married an American, grew a family, built a business, and now she is running for Senate.
Lily Tang Williams with her American family.
“I am a Chinese immigrant who came to America for freedom and prosperity,” she says. “I am running for the US Senate because I hate to see the country I love becoming more like the country I left.”
At a time when so many Americans – including natural born citizens of both major parties, it must be said – seem so oblivious to what they are giving up by empowering a government increasingly unlimited in its reach and unconstrained in its discretion, it is refreshing to meet a candidate for major office who really understands what is at stake. Sometimes it takes an immigrant to see what we have here, and how truly precious and extraordinary it is.
If you want to hear what she has to say, have a look at this video. Lily Tang Williams, you have my vote.
Published in General
As inspiring as Ms. Tang’s story is, Colorado is a swing state, and Michael Bennet is nothing if not vulnerable.
Should the influence of Ms. Tang cause the prospective Republican nominee for Senate to underperform and consequently lose, what will her contribution to the fight for liberty in the United States have amounted to?
Are you talking about the EU?
The GOPe must be destroyed, starting with Senators like Bennett.
Senator Bennet is a Democrat…
Oh. Sometimes it’s hard to tell which is which.
There is no chance a Republican will win the Colorado Senate seat with Trump at the top of the ticket. If we want a shot at beating Bennett for Senate, we need to free the delegates to choose a much better presidential candidate than Trump.
I lived in Colorado for 30 years. Colorado’s voters are notorious ticket-splitters and like to hedge their bets. I get the impression that a strong Republican nominee a la Cory Gardner would be able to unseat Bennet.
But not if the Republican vote is splintered thus.
The ACU ratings for Colorado’s Senators.
No difference at all… move along…
People would not be fleeing the Republican Party if there were not a piece of filth at the top of the ticket.
That certainly doesn’t help the situation. It’s a wound, but need not be mortal if it didn’t have Libertarian assistance in pushing in the knife.