Live Free Or Die
This may sound overwhelmingly simplistic (and please forgive my brief descent in tree-huggery) but people are good everywhere.
So when critics, such as myself, say that Iran is the epitome of evil, they are talking about the regime, not the populace. Some of the worst countries have within them some of the bravest people. Zimbabwe? Sudan? And also Iran.
[For any visiting trolls, I hope that you're not so stupid as to make any brainless comparisons with Florida - go and learn something about how electoral colleges work.]
I like to think that I, too, would protest. But it’s impossible to know. Most of us, thankfully, have never experienced life under autocratic, not to mention totalitarian, regimes.
With the realization that there are limitless ways for such regimes to punish dissenters, how brave must you be to do this?
While it’s true that globalization and the internet, etc, have empowered opposition movements more than anything since the invention of the printing press, there’s a corollary that’s not mentioned as often. Namely, that these tools also benefit the dictators and tyrants, who have never found it so easy to oppress their people. Chuck modern weaponry into the mix and it takes more than a Tea Party nowadays to remove unwanted rulers.
Iran has a wonderful history, educated people and vast resources – in terms of freedom and prosperity, it should more resemble Europe than its neighbors. Given our history with modern Iran, its paranoia is understandable to a degree, but the regime there constantly foments this unease to maintain an atmosphere of revolutionary zeal. This has worn thin with all but the most hardcore regime supporters, who are not blind to the failures of the Islamic revolution.
There will be another revolution in Iran during the next decade or two and, this time, it’ll be the right one.
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June 15th, 2009 at 22:35
[...] the president is choosing to do this at perhaps the most dangerous moment that Iran’s theocracy has faced in the thirty-year history of the Islamic [...]