This portrait too is on balance defensible, even if Easterly glosses over Hayek’s extremely peculiar ideas about democracy, including his proposal that legislatures should be composed of lawmakers who would be elected to a sole fifteen-year term by voters who would exercise their suffrage only once, at the age of forty-five.
Tears of a Rickshaw Driver
The great Chinese writer Lu Xun once wrote, about an earlier massacre: “Lies written in ink cannot disguise facts written in blood.”
The Stunning Result of India’s Elections
Did India consider itself so starved of decisive leadership, and so exasperated by its faltering progress, that it wished to take a chance on a polarizing leader who has been charged with tacitly encouraging riots against his own citizens, and has been backed by majoritarian organizations with little regard for civil liberties? The answer, as the results have now clearly shown, is an overwhelming yes.
Democracy and hypocrisy
But by so conspicuously holding back criticism first of the coup and now of the shooting of unarmed civilians, the West has confirmed the view of enemies of democracy everywhere: that its preaching is riddled with hypocrisy. The next time Mr Obama urges some authoritarian to embrace civil rights, he will find his case that bit harder to make.