Orbi et Urbi: Mind is Liberty's first battlefield

This night, I had a marvellous dinner, despite for a sordid lack of salmon, which was entirely self-chosen. Just minutes earlier, I had an unpleasant conversation with my father which again outlined that democracy is most necessary to, pardon my sense of melodrama, "defend" as well within the democratic paradigm. The subject in question was the United Nations, which my brother denounced as equally ludicrous as its shorter-lived and, decisively, less successful predecessor. In 1950, less than five years later, Kim Il-Sung's regime crossed the border into South Korea and for the next three years conducted a war on, amongst a series of nations, the newly formed United Nations for the cause of extending his absolute power to the whole of the Korean peninsula. This was, in my father's opinion, merely a matter of "perspectives", both the commence of the war and Kim Il-Sung's dictatorial position. I exposed the ludicrous in the thesis by stating, for a suggestion, that the fact that Hitler invaded Poland in 1939 is a matter of who you ask (I left out Stalin for the moment). My brother then suggested ironically the Holocaust might also be a matter of "perspective". No more than that is true is the ghastly claim that history is a matter of ideological creed. Predictably, father repelled him, to then assume the position repelled. The DPRK (North) is an oppressed and subverted (by other countries) nation, no less democratic than "free world" democracies who so unjustly abhor it. Kim Il-Sung is not at all an authoritarian leader, nor does he hold any such title as the worldly recognized (and, I dare say, outlaughed) office of Eternal President. The images of concentration camps, supposedly housing over 200,000 of its subjects ("citizen" is an unfit term, just like "republic", as the government here is less a public matter than anywhere else on the globe) is a slanderous cover-up concealing a much more pleasant reality of serfdom. The horrible suppression of dissidents and supposed dissidents and their families through internment, medical experiments, deliberate starvation, public executions, euthanasia, eugenics and reports of gassings, including of children in designed camps (to quote the great Christopher Hitchens, "This may remind you of something") are idle propaganda. Dictatorship is a myth, as the purpose of authoritarian leaders always are the benefit of their subjects. Liberal democracy is a reprehensible myth, as worse as the totalitarian regimes it polarizes itself against.

"You're like those right-wing conservatives, who watch Fox News."
"I don't watch Fox." (And neither do you, hence making the claim rather questionable.)
"You sounds like Fox."
"As I've said, I don't watch Fox, and hence I cannot make any claims based on Fox." (I have watched an Internetbound and rather good FN panel debate between libertarians from outside the network, including Harvard's goodly Jeff Miron, but that's rather off-topic.)
"You sound like... you sound like those... those foxes, whatever." Period. Strength and force. I live pre-Enlightenment, when arguments were not yet in fashion. Hence, again, making my definition of "left" and "progressive" questionable indeed.

Or, as the point may have sought to prove, the United States and other Western countries are just as disgusting and oppressive, such as in, I quote, "suppressing abortion". Yet the United States, all the 50 United States, have more liberal abortion laws than Sweden, where it is all-banned after the 18th week (designed as "terminating pregnancy" if deemed necessary), whereas in the US terminating a pregnancy outside the womb, so-called partial birth abortion, was legal until the 2003 ban (in my opinion rightly; whatever your opinions of this practice, I would make the case that if homicide is not federally regulated, nor should infanticide). To take this for an example, I would deem the call for a dictatorship to safeguard the right to abortion as quite ludicrous. Authoritarian regimes are much more consistent in regulating and outlawing abortion, including Ceausescu's well-meaning, altruistic, impoverishing, deeply corrupt and plastic bag-wielding rule of horror in Romania. The Nazis, on contrary, overturned the German abortion ban in 1933, hence making them, I suppose, a gilded examplar of this "authoritarian abortionist" choice of humanism and welfare. The DPRK, similarly, conducts forcible abortions, hardly making it a country of "choice" - of, well, anything, ever. I believe in choice. Hence, I am a "right-wing conservative". I believe in Voltaire, in Montesquieu, in John Stuart Mill, men of reason and argument, not loud-mouthed authoritarian content rooted in the current disposition of the senses. Which, if "conservative", would make the position of old right-wing regimes such as that of Louis in France rather interesting. Are they "left" now, responsible and caretaking? And would that not redefine the term "progressive" into an oxymoron?

This I identify as the most primitive, the most babeish form of contending with government. Infinite authority and oppression is justified as long as it serves your ideological creed; revolution and change is an imperative when it is not. Which, I would say again, proves that government must be based on reason, not emotion. Dictatorship is emotional, mystic; constitutional government is rational, especially when it goes against the preferences so sordidly locked in combat with reason itself.

Not unlike my litmus test; ask the one who doubts the ethos of democracy (or no-government) what sort of politics would be preferrable under an authoritarian system, and then ask again what is his or her politics. You're unlikely to hear separate accounts, and yet if not, what does this mean? The spirit of democracy and, more important in theory, liberty, has to be defended from those who would trade their both their accounts and, infinitely worse, mine for the qualities of a Führer, a Vozhd, a Caudillo, or a Lider Maximo (the title Castro assumed in 1959 after becoming just that). This is the paradox of any democratic system; in a tyranny, a single man (and, indeed, perhaps his retinue of followers) dream to rule the fates of many. In a democracy, the same is true for millions, who compete in having their voices heard in the tempest of legislation; what is to be banned and suppressed, what is to be ordained and enforced, and what is to be left in the boring, shrinking grey chasm between the burning battlefields. Liberty is, indeed, quite boring, and I most stoutly believe it has won among the masses only where it has proven itself more practical, rather than as a matter of ideological preference. This is indeed a dangerous predicament, as we might live to see within millennia, if not centuries.

Camus once said to an authoritarian-minded friend; "I will always protect your right to life. But if I'm placed before the execution squad, you'll have to condone my murder." On this soil, throwing off my desire of control of other's matter of affairs and their choices in life, I submit my moral supremacy before those who would rather have democracy defined as their current state of mind.

For an interesting compilations on the many claims of the friends of the DPRK, see this probably infamous tag on Reddit. Or, if you haven't, Hitchens' discourse on the "Axis of Evil" regimes (a term I deplore, but you'd hardly question it after giving it a thorough look, or I'm not sure about anything) is a must-see, though it's guaranteed to send some chills, through your backbone or (once you tell me) mine = 7