The Pros and Cons of Freedom

I'm very struck you've written quite a lot about how important writing as an expression of freedom is to you. It's why it's such an agony to contemplate the fates of writers who are trying to write in unfree societies. I'd just like to think again in an international perspective that Ai Weiwei the Chinese artist said he was shocked that the United States is doing this. He said the US appears to be acting like China and with this thought about freedom and what America symbolizes and represents to those not living in America I just wonder if this is changing things. Well I don't see how it can do otherwise. One almost feels it as a violation and a clear abuse of