"What was your first thought when you came to freedom? How not to lose my trousers!"

Excerpts from a Wall Street Journal interview with Natan Sharansky:

...democracy is a dirty word these days. ...So Mr. Sharansky is lonely too, bounced out of Israeli politics and out of favor. He, Vaclav Havel and other former Eastern European dissident faces of the freedom agenda are dismissed as Cold War naïfs, pernicious Utopians, or worse--men whose moral Manichaeism has no business in the "complex Middle East."
*****
[Sharansky's] bigger concern is the West's own weak stomach. This is a familiar theme for Mr. Sharansky and others who waged the Cold War battle on the other side of the Wall. Prosperous, stable societies can lack, by these lights, moral clarity and courage and are prone to cynical compromises or gullibility. Under totalitarianism the challenge is to fight evil (he paraphrases the British writer Melanie Phillips), and in free societies it is to see evil.
*****
"The more the free world enjoys their freedom the more they will be reluctant to support any freedom [for others]. I saw it in my personal life [in the Soviet Union], I see it to this day. They say the Arabs are not capable of this--such a strong racist statement." He pauses. "That's interesting. It's politically uncorrect [sic] to be a racist, but it's so politically correct now to say that promoting democracy is a bad idea."
*****
In his view, the West's so-called Russia experts misjudged Mr. Putin's aspirations and political talents, particularly his ability "to use the right language in Russia." Once, when the Russian president went on an anti-Western tirade, Mr. Sharansky recalls that Secretary Rice, one of those experts, noted that Mr. Putin was ruining his image abroad. "I told her, 'He looks stupid to you but the most important thing is how he looks in Moscow, and in Moscow he looks like a hero!' "

Read more about dissidents and Sharansky here.
Sharansky dissidents Shalem Center Prague democracy and security