For those who insist that Bush is a freedom-suppressing tyrant taking advantage of a terror-war to crush democratic aspirations and traditions, please, please, please look to Vladimir Putin, who is in the process of giving a practical demonstration of what such a thing actually looks like in the world outside of your fevered imagination. It features the suppression of all media which disagrees with the tyrant; replacement of the process of election of legislators and provincial governors with appointment by the central government, and a return to central control.

If Bush was actually the devil of the imagination of some on the left, a Republican appointee would be Mayor of New York City, Congress would have been purged by fiat of Democratic congressmen, Paul Krugman would be in a psychiatric ward, Maureen Dowd would have been poisoned and imprisoned in a medical ward, the Times, the Washington Post, and the Boston Globe would be permanently closed, and the Salzburgers, Ted Turner, and George Soros would be all either be doing time on trumped up corruption charges, or in foreign exile.

Don't believe me? Read the news coming from Russia. It'll curl your hair.

Via Instapundit.

After reading Nathan Hamm's take on that article, I see that I overreacted just a smidge. I'm still not too thrilled with Putin, but he's not quite gone as far overboard as the above link would indicate.