Rousseauvean thoughts

Looking at Iraq's "Democracy at gunpoint" I am continually reminded of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's estimation in The Social Contract of what to do with illiberals:

Whoever refuses to obey the general will shall be forced to obey it by the whole body politic, which means nothing else but that he will be forced to be free.

Roll that phrase over your tongue: "he will be forced to be free...."

Make no mistake, our neocons our latterday jacobins, with everything that was wonderful and terrible about the jacobins--except that they haven't the courage (yet) to do it to their own people, but only to an alien one.