- AP Photo/RIA-Novosti, Alexei Nikolsky, Presidential Press Service
- Putin may be “on the wrong side of history,” as President Obama states, but the fervor he’s incited might be on the other side.
When President Obama said Vladimir Putin’s invasion of the Crimea put him “on the wrong side of history,” it made me wonder what those two sides consist of. I suppose there’s the dark side, on which the sun is setting, in which history is made by force of arms. And the side basking in a rising sun, in which the peoples of the earth democratically choose their destinies.
The Economist‘s essay misfires in some of its details. It notes the threat to conglomerate states posed by independent movements in, say, Catalonia and Scotland, without explaining why these movements also threaten democracy. Secessionist leaders say they do not. And there’s a passing mention of gerrymandering, which in the Economist‘s view corrupts democracy and “encourages extremism” because “entrenched incumbents” must satisfy only the party faithful.
The United States on the other hand, “has lost its moral authority and is unsustainable, ungovernable, and unfixable.” Said Naylor, “I don’t want to go down with the Titanic.”
