Cossacks and Prairie Muffins

If you believe that every human being has the right to self determination, then how do you cope with people who claim not to want that right?

The BBC’s Steven Eke had a fascinating report last week on Russia’s Cossacks. The radio broadcast version of this story, ended with the man pictured at that link, Ataman Viktor Vasilyevich, explaining his ideal of the future of Russia:

We need a tsar, one annointed by God. Then there’ll be complete order in Russia. That’s how it always was. Democracy doesn’t suit us. We need a firm hand.

Eke asked him if he had anyone in mind, and Vasilyevich suggested Vladimir Putin, adding, “May God grant him health, and may he rule over us.”

So what do we make of this? How do we accommodate people who say, “Democracy doesn’t suit us” and insist that they want an autocrat to “rule over” them rather than an elected leader to serve them?

I suppose one answer would be to send Bush and Cheney over to southern Russia — the Cossacks would have the autocrats they always wanted, Cheney would have the complete lack of accountability he’s always wanted, and American citizens might get their democracy back. Sounds like a win-win-win scenario.

I’m mostly kidding there. America is heading towards a constitutional crisis provoked by the Bush administration’s insistence that executive privilege trumps the rule of law. As a small-d democrat and small-r republican, I think that’s a Bad Thing, but not everyone agrees. It’s not only the Cossacks who don’t think democracy suits them and who long to be ruled by a “firm hand.”

Viktor Vasilyevich’s attitude isn’t all that different from that of our old friends the Prairie Muffins or of Concerned Women for America (run by Mrs. Tim LaHaye).

The problem with all such groups is that their embrace of hierarchy is unable to tolerate freedom for others. In order for the world to be the way they want it to be, the firm hand they desire has to hold sway over everyone. I suppose, from their point of view, the same could be said of those of us who favor freedom, rights and democracy.

What right do we have, they ask, to impose liberty and dignity on them when that’s not what they want? That’s how they’d like to frame the question, although I’m not sure any sense can be made of it. It’s a bit like the “You don’t tolerate my intolerance” nonsense — an ouroboros swallowing its own tail. And it’s not a harmless bit of nonsense, since the freedom from freedom they insist on requires others to join them in servitude.

When I encounter people like this — whether Cossacks or Concerned Women — I always have a hard time accepting that they’re for real. I tend to think of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as an expression of universal human desires. I realize, of course, that there are always going to be some people who behave inhumanly — seeking to dominate others and deny them their rights. But it’s always jarring to be reminded that some of their victims embrace this. I expect to see would-be autocrats and patriarchs reciting Orwell’s dystopian mantra, “Freedom is slavery,” but it always surprises me to see their would-be subjects chanting along and claiming that slavery is freedom. The Cossack villagers and the thousands who have joined Concerned Women or the Prairie Muffins claim to desire submissive servitude. I think they are deceived or deluded or, at best, codependent. (Like any expression of pity, that may come across as condescending, but it would be inconsistent of them to complain that it does.)

There does seem to be another category, though, where we find people like Viktor Vasilyevich and Bev LaHaye. They seem to be trying to carve out a niche for themselves as the middle managers of autocracy, already staking out a position as collaborators with a future authoritarian regime. The Cossack ataman rules his family and village with unchallenged, unchecked authority. A tsar would likely permit him to continue to do so, while the spread of democracy and freedom could undermine his local authority. LaHaye has become a powerful woman, the executive of a large organization and a D.C. mover and shaker. The source of that power is the thousands of women she has helped to convince to embrace powerlessness. Convince them otherwise and she’d be out of a job. Vasilyevich and LaHaye are probably also deceived or deluded at some level, but I can’t seem to muster the pity for them that I feel for their followers.