The gratuitous U.S. bashing in this thread looks exactly like something you'd see on Reddit (more likely, Digg). Not only is it ugly, it's utterly irrelevant to the nominal topic of discussion. Even if the U.S. were Nazi Germany, the Stalinist U.S.S.R., and the Pol Pot regime rolled into one, it would have zero relevance to the ethical position of Google with the Chinese government.
I suppose I could have said that Paul B.'s position (and that of several others) is a classic example of the tu quoque variety of ad hominem fallacy, but that would basically just be using Latin to say the same thing.
My point is that no place is perfect and that different countries have different problems. It's not US bashing to suggest that we are not perfect, and that everything isn't black and white.
