I detest all anti-democrats, wherever they stand on the political spectrum. Democracy is my political religion and I truly believe that democracy is not the worst system except for all the rest, as Churchill famously remarked, but rather it is the system that genuinely produces the best results for societies.
Fred Hiatt does a disservice to pro-democracy advocates like me who detest Fidel Castro. This is simply pure nonsense:
The contrast between Cuba and Chile more than 30 years after Mr. Pinochet's coup is a reminder of a famous essay written by Jeane J. Kirkpatrick . . . In "Dictatorships and Double Standards," a work that caught the eye of President Ronald Reagan, Ms. Kirkpatrick argued that right-wing dictators such as Mr. Pinochet were ultimately less malign than communist rulers, in part because their regimes were more likely to pave the way for liberal democracies. She, too, was vilified by the left. Yet by now it should be obvious: She was right.
No, she was not right. More.
But even if she was right, it still is the wrong analysis. The contest was never between fascism and communism. The contest was between democracy and authoritarianism. Jeane Kirkpatrick was an apologist for authoritarianism and an enemy of democracy. She was wrong in every particular and her philosophy was particularly harmful to US foreign policy. This is not a question of ideology for me. A left wing dictatorship is not superior to a democratically elected conservative government. A right wing dictatorship is not superior to a democratically elected socialist government. The consent of the governed is not only a moral good, it is essential to good government. Jeane Kirkpatrick never understood this and Fred Hiatt still does not.
That out of the way, let me introduce some of you to a discussion I had with Al Giordano back in 2004 on the nature of democracy. You can't access it now but I think it is worth a look.
If I can later, I'll update with the parts I think most interesting.