<sarcasm>Sure, the Soviet Union is dead</sarcasm>
Idiots (If it’s true. Drudge is kind of tabloid, so can be sensationalist at times)
And people think the Patriot Act is bad–it’s a drop in the bucket in comparison. I don’t exactly feel oppressed in publishing whatever the hell I want on the web. I don’t feel threatened by some secret police that will take me away to prison for 20 years for voicing my opinion against policy. But, it looks like that’s what Russia is reverting to.
Whether their government is communist or not, absolutism is a sure-fire way of causing trouble 😛 They seem to have completely forgotten the likes of Stalin. Putin has been terribly bad about centralization, especially in his second term. Why not pull a Hugo Chavez and declare himself dictator and sing the <moresarcasm>glories of Socialism</moresarcasm>? 😛
Perhaps this is what the Cold War was really all about–absolutist dictatorship vs self-determination and expression. It wasn’t really all about Communism vs Capitalism but it was certainly an element of the “argument”, I suppose a simplified summation of it. Their Communist society just gave them “license” to oppress, and they’ve now found that they can get away with this crap even without a Communist face to it *sigh*