Discussion: Sorry, Freedom Lovers: America's Hero Worship<span style="line-height: 1em;"> Is Just As Bad As North Korea's

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Sorry, but totalitarian regimes and citizens of a democracy who selectively, and often hypocritically, incorporate constitutional norms into their own understanding of civic life are categorically different things.

I certainly agree that there are many people in our nation who are basically authoritarian-minded. In free societies, that authoritarianism is usually expressed in “freedom for me, but not for thee” terms. It is a phenomenon that is presently far more pronounced and dangerous on the right, where it borders on mainstream thought, than on the left, where it is a characteristic of the most annoying but irrelevant part of the fringe. But democracy is premised on the assumption that a certain percentage of people in any population are going to wired for authoritarianism and that their inclination, being more powerful, has to be checked by formal institutions rather than social pressure.

The reaction to Maines’ 2004 comments basically falls into three categories: economic decisions to not give financial support to people whose opinions one finds repugnant, zealous expressions of disagreement with those whose opinions one finds repugnant and death threats. The first two are the conduct of free people used to exercising autonomy in their economic life and the exercise of free speech. Nobody ever promised that those rights would be exercised wisely or that their exercise would be pretty or noble. But authoritarians have rights or none of us do: it’s just that simple. The fact that they have to have rights, and that they’d gladly take them from others if given a chance, creates a need for constant vigilance, but it’s a feature, not a bug, of the worst form of government ever conceived by the mind of man except for all the others.

The death threats are, of course, the work of imbeciles, the maladjusted and the deranged. Democracy doesn’t have a cure for that either, but it does, at least, have a better track record at keeping the imbecilic, maladjusted and deranged out of high office than totalitarian states do.

Like I said, categorical difference, not one of degree.

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Appreciate all of those thoughts. I would just add this: as a collective, we’re a hell of a lot better at critiquing other nations (often through contrasts to our own ideals) than at examining the moments and ways we’ve come up short of those ideals. This Interview situation seems to me very much a case in point. So I think reminding us of one such moment is a useful corrective to that tendency, and a way to make sure we’re thinking self-critically in order to maximize the chance for the more positive tendencies you’re citing here.

Thanks,
Ben

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With that thought I am in complete agreement. We absolutely hold other countries to a different standard than we hold our own. Look at torture and treatment of POWs. We allow admitted war criminals (Cheney, etc.) to roam free. Ones who have warrants out for their arrest in several countries. But in the meantime, we criticize Iran for not allowing people to protest in the streets and we insist African nations hand over their war criminal leaders. Our entire rational for going into Iraq was that Sadaam was a war criminal, so we killed over a million people for something we are okay with here.

But if you want to compare apples to apples, look to the response to the British film from 2006 Death of a President, which included a scene showing the assassination of George W. There were a lot of people very mad about it. But I don’t think anyone in the government, or even much in the general public were talking about launching cyber attacks against Britain at the time though. No one went and saw the film, but the reaction from the public was very very different from the incident with the Dixie Chicks. And certainly very different from the way NK is dealing with The Interview.