I grew up in Mexico City at a time when the country was a repressive one-party dictatorship almost wholly dependent on oil revenues.
The one source of criticism even the most repressive authoritarian leader cannot silence is the outside world. Autocrats are usually thin-skinned and like to be admired, so at least, at first, they often seek to be praised abroad.
Defending human rights should be an important objective of foreign policy, and that, too, will sometimes be hard to reconcile with an economic agenda, especially when it comes to dealing with rich but repressive players like China and Russia.
After more than two decades of traveling with American presidents and chief diplomats - on visits to places that have included some of the world's most repressive nations - I am used to watching leaders disappear behind closed doors.
I wrestled with my Catholicism for a long time. It took a long time to escape. It began with a sense that it was repressive, stern, judgmental. It was passionate, but it was terrifying. There were individual priests and nuns who were helpful, but the religion was cold.
I'm really happy I went to a Catholic school because a lot of the repressive tactics they use make for great senses of humor.
I just think that unless you have that cohesiveness in the family unit, the male character tends to become very dominant, repressive and insensitive. So much of this comes also from a lack of education.
The raids on Freedom House, the National Democratic Institute and International Republican Institute, the Adenauer Foundation, and other groups helping Egyptians move toward respect for democratic politics and human rights were of a piece with the practices of Hosni Mubarak - only bolder and more repressive.
In 2000, just before leaving the White House, Clinton ratcheted up military aid to Colombia. Plan Colombia, as the assistance program was called, provided billions of dollars to what was, and remains, the most repressive government in the hemisphere.
Under the rule of a repressive whole, liberty can be made into a powerful instrument of domination.
