As Daniel McAdams helpfully explained, the Russian parliament has darn good reasons for putting limits on foreign “NGOs”. If I had any reason to doubt Mr. McAdams’s good word I can now rest assured that the Russian parliament is on the right track. In a December 7 editorial in the New York Times, Moscow’s Empty Red Square, a bipartisan team of John Edwards and Jack Kemp loudly object to Russia’s move.

In a nice rhetorical bait and switch they start in the first paragraph expressing concern for “Russian civic groups and nongovernmental organizations”, then quickly switch to talking about how the proposed law, aimed at foreign NGOs, will cut Russia off from the global community: “Russia faces a choice between entering the mainstream of the modern world, or trapping itself in an eddy of reaction and isolation.” Why is it that the politicals are always so deeply concerned about people becoming “isolated”? I guess they have fully adopted the very opposite of the classic American desire to be left alone and mind one’s own business. Instead no one throughout the globe shall be left alone nor allowed to mind their own business.

I’m glad I had the LRC Blog to enlighten me or I might almost be taken in by these two, credited only as “co-chairmen of a Council on Foreign Relations task force on United States policy toward Russia.”

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