This is not a war story, but it is taken from a highly rated comment I made on Reddit.
Here’s a paraphrase of a question I was once asked: Why are so many Western commentators so willing to advocate for authoritarian regimes that would oppress them?
The answer is that far fewer people are actually committed to political and economic liberalism than you would normally think.
Everyone likes liberalism when they are in the minority, because it limits the power of the majority. Few people maintain that view consistently when they are actually in the majority. They start to view the minority as an obstacle, the last holdouts of a bygone era who are preventing capital-P Progress at the end of capital-H History.
“If only it weren’t for these [Group X], we would have [Desirable Thing Y],” they think, ignoring that even though Group X is a minority, it’s still many millions of people who have perfectly valid reasons not to like Thing Y. They could talk to those people and come up with some sort of compromise, or change their position through persuasion. The problem with that is that requires a lot of work and is not a guarantee of success. Thus, it is not an approach favored by the lazy or the stupid.
Lazy, stupid people naturally look at cultures they know nothing about and assume those cultures have all the answers. “China doesn’t have these problems with [Group X],” they think. “If we were China for a day, we could just clear all this up in one swoop and get [Thing Y].” This ignores lots of small details, like:
- Being “China for a day” is impossible.
- Being “China for a day” would introduce a host of new problems.
- China is only able to be China because it is full of Chinese people; westerners might take great offense being treated by their governments the way Chinese are treated by China.
- There are lots of problems in the world that China cannot solve, and are less likely to solve than free societies.
But, you’d have to think in order to come up with that. This fascination with the power of authoritarianism is a feeling. A juvenile sort of feeling that you’re supposed to grow out of before reaching the age of majority.