The lodestone of this weblog, indeed my intellectual cast, is that man's freedom and dignity make for his greatest earthly solace. Democracy will sustain itself and save humankind by destroying authoritarianism. The two kinds of rule were not meant to coexist; the former was meant to push the latter, a destructive vestige of animal nature, into extinction. Our mortal flaws will remain, but we will all live under the protection of nations that exist to accommodate our efforts to do better. I'd offer you links if they didn't number into the thousands. My colorful essay and the most powerful evidence yet that this war is a war for freedom — that dictatorships cannot compete with liberated societies — should suffice, though I encourage you to read what I and those to whom I link have written.

Still — tragically, maddeningly, perilously — too many academic minds subscribe to elitism, parochialism and other relativistic arguments against the universality of freedom. So it's heartening to read a blunt statement like this one from Amir Taheri:

Afghanistan's first free elections ever, held last month, has had a big impact on the entire region: If the Afghans did it, why not us?

Taheri wisely makes this appeal a practical one: democracy can come to all, provided the free world can apply the most effective method to each despotism. For Iraq and Afghanistan, and as I believe, Iran and Syria, the authoritarian regime must be forcibly removed and its supporters dispersed; the purveyors of rule through strength shamed and kept from power. For nations whose dictators are tolerating a slow but inexorable shift of power to people — Taheri names them, "Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Yemen, Jordan, Algeria and Morocco" — a deft choreography of popular encouragement and pressure on the state may suffice. But there is one understanding: that it can and must be done.