"For there is a precedent in modern Western history for a country whose leader exploits national humiliation and fear to restrict public freedoms; for a government that makes permanent war as a tool of state policy and arranges for the torture of its political enemies; for a ruling class that pursues divisive social goals under the guise of national 'values'; for a culture that asserts its unique destiny and superiority and that worships military prowess; for a political system in which the dominant party manipulates procedural rules and threatens to change the law in order to get its own way; where journalists are intimidated into confessing their errors and made to do public penance. Europeans in particular have experienced such a regime in the recent past and they have a word for it. That word is not 'democracy.'"
The supreme irony here is that this same Professor Judt once wrote a very fine book about the moral imbecility of French intellectuals - in particular their ability to delude themselves that American democracy was the moral equivalent of Soviet totalitarianism. Now the professor has succumbed to the very same disease he diagnosed a decade ago. 11:28 PM