In a more decent world, China would not be allowed to host the Olympics.

This is partly to say that the brutality of the Chinese government is incompatible with the ideal that the Olympics are thought to represent. But it is also to say that no country has a right to the Games. When the IOC chooses a host, it deprives the losers of nothing to which they are entitled. To award is thus to praise. It is to praise the host city’s economic conditions, its tourism infrastructure, the excellence of its swimming pools. But it is not merely to praise in this way, because the Olympics do represent an ideal — of individual achievement, and, by extension, of liberty. To award them is therefore also to praise the host for embodying that ideal. This would be true even if the IOC did not wish its decisions to carry that implication: for it would know all the same that its decisions are so taken. Here we begin to understand why a normally constituted person recoils at the thought of its giving the Games to Pyongyang.

Many normally constituted persons did not recoil when the IOC gave the Olympics to Beijing, and their feeling was not wholly detached from reality: The Chinese government is not, after all, Kim Jong Il. But the lesser evil is evil still, and there is nothing hyperbolic in the use of that word to describe the Chinese Communist Party. The bill of indictment against it is familiar, though one should remember that it comprises much more than the bloodletting, fifty years of it, in Tibet. There is also the persecution of Christians and other religious groups, the laogai system (a Chinese Gulag), the suppression of free speech (grown worse under Hu Jintao). To put the matter schematically, there is the Chinese government’s belief that it may obliterate anybody who opposes its policies.

No one of consequence is calling for an all-out boycott of the Beijing Games. The Dalai Lama himself does not favor this, though he offers no reason for his view. Probably he knows a total boycott would be unpopular. It would “hurt athletes” (true, if hurt here means revoke an opportunity for professional attainment) “without doing much good” (perhaps true if good is defined in terms of outcomes). Meanwhile the tanks roll across Lhasa, and we ask ourselves whether, against that grim backdrop, it is frivolous, or cowardly, or worse, to applaud athletes for running fast.

Each will have his answer to that question. But the answer should depend at least in part on whether it is possible, while still competing in the Games, to deplore the Chinese government’s wickedness.

And that is the force of the argument for boycotting the opening ceremonies. If diplomats and athletes were to walk out, or simply not to attend, this would serve as a denunciation of the Chinese government’s latest outrages in Tibet. It would implicitly revoke the praise that the IOC has bestowed upon that government. It would be a way of saying: “We will compete here, for we did not choose to compete here. But we are not happy about it. And we want the world to know that, in our opinion, this government is not worthy.” Yes, that is symbolism. But then the implied praise that this symbol is meant to cancel out has itself been conferred symbolically.

Let us speak for a moment of consequences. China’s rulers would see a boycott of the opening ceremonies as the slap in the face it would be. They coveted the Games precisely for their symbolic value. (Here we see the error in claiming that to boycott this Olympiad is to politicize it. It is inescapably political. The only question is: Whose politics?) There is a school of thought according to which it is necessarily against our interests to alienate the Chinese state. But those who make this claim should be challenged to tell us which bad consequences would follow from alienating it in this way. On the face of things, the Chinese need us at least as much as we need them. This is a matter of both trade and geopolitics. (It is hard to see how we can defang Kim Jong Il without greater cooperation from China. On the other hand, the U.S. has a thing or two to say about what the Chinese like to call their “Taiwan problem.”) If it is true that the Chinese depend on us, we should leverage this dependency to the maximum while we can. If, contrariwise, we must walk on fortune cookies* to avoid giving offense, then our cause is already lost.

What we are engaged in is a battle for the Chinese soul. We should like to see China become the sort of country that does not forbid protest, shoot protesters, lock up democrats, shrug at North Korea, and threaten to invade Taiwan. We should like to see this because it redounds to our benefit, and because we believe it is good even apart from that.

Here too we must speak of consequences. The consequences we desire are changes of opinion — some 1.3 billion of them. It is impossible to detect these changes as they occur, or to say with any precision what will bring them about. But revolution begins with the assertion This — is — wrong. When the Olympic torch reaches Beijing, it will be. And the United States, by rejecting the symbolism of that moment, can lead an unknowable number of Chinese men and women to ask the most powerful question in the world: Why? – Jason Lee Steorts is managing editor of National Review.

*Please do not write to tell me that there are no fortune cookies in China. I know.