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From: matthews@harvard.ARPA (Jim Matthews)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: The United Nations
Message-ID: <513@harvard.ARPA>
Date: Wed, 27-Mar-85 09:14:19 EST
Article-I.D.: harvard.513
Posted: Wed Mar 27 09:14:19 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 31-Mar-85 04:27:17 EST
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Organization: Aiken Computation Laboratory, Harvard
Lines: 19

> (a) There is no difference between authoritarian and totalitarian regimes.
>     It is an invention of Jeanne Kirkpatrick to justify her support for
>     some tyrants and her denunciation of others.  Torture is torture.
> 

> Mike Kelly

	Can you name one totalitarian system that has fallen in the last fifty
years, without being invaded?  Authoritarian rule has fallen in Nicaragua,
Argentina, Uraguay, and Iran, and all that just in the last 6 years!
Argentina and Uraguay even instituted elections -- when was the last time
you saw a totalitarian state go that road?  And while torture is tortue,
there is no comparing the simply greater capacity of well-run, totalitarian
states to inflict pain.  All the tin-pot dictators in this century don't
add up to the Gulag, much less the Khmere Rouge, the Cultural Revolution,
and Castro.

Jim Matthews
matthews@harvard