A new focus

Claudia Rosett changes the focus of her column to The Real World.

Some societies, we often hear, are simply accustomed to authoritarian rule--maybe they like it? And in any event, or so we have often heard: better the devil we know. Who can predict who might replace Yasser Arafat, Saddam Hussein, Kim Jong Il or the House of Saud?

Listening to such rationalizations, I am sometimes reminded of an underground pamphlet, written in English and handed around in Beijing just after the 1989 Communist Party killing spree that ended the huge democratic protests that centered in Tiananmen Square. "Stability the Key to Absolutely Everything," ran the headline on this screed. It was a satire, poking fun at the regime's insistence that the Chinese army had murdered Chinese civilians in order to preserve the vaunted stability that the Communist Party insisted that it, and it alone, could confer on China.

Europeans love stability, having been so unsettled for so long. They are also, apparently, used to tyrants and dictatorships, having had so many for so long--and still having them as neighbors and such. While many embrace the notion of spreading democracy, others do not. How else do you explain those that embrace Arafat as if he were some great savior of the people, rather than a murderous thug?