A Little History Can Be a Dangerous Thing

[Urbane Guerrilla]

I won't agree there, Bruce -- for it seems self-evident to me that there is no wrong time nor wrong way to dismantle a totalitarian regime. They are constructed upon tissues of lies and villainous oppression.

While I am under no illusions as to the inherent goodness of the State, a representative republic (a genuine one, not a well-concealed fraud) makes a much better government than any autocracy, enough so that quite a few denizens of republics end up thinking governments really can be nice guys, and that that is the normal outcome. Even the most casual reading of world history will bring that idea into doubt. The pool of political talent in a small, poor nation is often shallow enough that a highly motivated sociopath can rise very high, even unto head of state. Large republics are fairly efficient at selecting against such -- William Jefferson Clinton and wife being an example of failing to weed them out, probably due to their sociopathy -- and they both have it -- being mild. The problem with a highly motivated sociopath becoming a head of state is that then you get the kind of state a sociopath would run -- complete with corruption, poverty, elevated death rates, torture, disappearings, and government-employed rapists. And a totalitarian regime -- always, the sociopath head of state is out for his own freedom and absolutely no one else's, a particularly rank sort of selfishness.