From Natan Sharansky’s The Case for Democracy: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny & Terror, pp. 196–197:
For dissidents within the former Soviet Union, these moral lines [between good and evil, right and wrong] were practically self-evident. Unlike philosophers and rights activists in the West, we dissidents did not feel the need to split hairs over the precise nature of human rights.
We knew that to determine whether or not human rights were being generally upheld in a particular country, we only had to ask a few simple questions:
Could the people in that country speak their minds?
Could they publish their opinions?
Could they practice their faith?
Could they learn the history and culture of their people?
We understood that for those living in a fear society, the answer to most of our questions, if not all of them, was no. The structural elements that enable democratic societies to respect human rights—independent courts, the rule of law, a free press, a freely elected government, meaningful opposition parties, not to mention human rights organizations—were all glaringly absent in fear societies. While these structures are not always sufficient to ensure the protection of human rights, our experience had convinced us that without them. human rights would inevitably be crushed. Every political prisoner in the Gulag recognized the moral chasm that separated free societies and fear societies. We recognized that a free society did not guarantee the protection of human rights, but we knew that a fear society guaranteed their violation.
When someone like Phil Robertson is excoriated by society for speaking his mind, for having his opinion published, for expressing his religious beliefs, I have to wonder whether America is not turning into the type of fear society described in Sharansky’s book; when courts are packed with liberal judges who legislate from the bench, when the press blatantly shows its bias for one particular party, when efforts to insist on proper voter identification are characterized by the press and one political party as voter suppression rather than its opposite, when the press and the political party in power try to convince the minority party to remake itself in the opposition’s image, I have to wonder whether America is not turning into the type of fear society described in Sharansky’s book.
