| I think the only Russian leader who ever left and lived abroad was Gorbachev. Even Navalny came back to face the music, and he wasnt even president (yet?) I do not believe they are self serving at the expense of their country and will live in a bunker while their countrymen are bombed. They all thought and think they were doing the right thing for their country. Even Yeltsin, when he did in 1993 what essentially the Peruvian guy is doing now — trying to dissolve parliament in a constitutional crisis, in order to perpetuate the “shock therapy” of privatizing everything to oligarchs while people started to starve. I an sure even Stalin thought he was modernizing the country, just as Mao later did, while people were starving. The problem isn’t that they are self serving kleptocrats. Stalin owned one suit I think, and personally was poor. Just because they love their country and think they’re helping it, doesn’t make it true that they’re helping people though. I am sure George W Bush loved USA and wanted the best for it when he invaded Iraq. As libertarians we question the basic “patriotic common wisdom” of how things are set up in the first place. |