Sunday, September 05, 2010

Response to a Romanian Friend Who Wrote to Me in Praise of my Op-Ed on North Korea

It really is a commentary on human frailty that Ceaucescu would decide that he should force the Romanian people to refer to him as "the Genius of the Carpathians" and that his family members should become like super privileged socialist nobility. But Romania seems to have been able to put that awful period behind it, thank God. Actually it appears to me that only some people living in democracies believe that democratic institutions are not the best for all peoples. It is hard for them to understand that no nation that has made a transition to democracy ever wants to go back to authoritarian dictatorship. Seems that one needs the experience of living under an oppressive regime to really appreciate how precious democratic freedoms really are.

For an article on how Ceaucescu was inspired to start his own personality cult after a visit to Pyongyang in 1971 see: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1027835/posts

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