A politically hopeful Iranian exile, Reza Pahlavi, was interviewed in the March 6th New Yorker. Connie Bruck reports:

At one point, Pahlavi became quite excited, saying, "Maybe what happened twenty-six years ago is a blessing in disguise. ... I don't think we could have had the appreciation for democratic values we have come to today. It's by losing democracy that we have come to value it."

Iran lost democracy twenty-six years ago when Reza's dad, the former Shah, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, was kicked out by a popular rebellion. You will, of course, recall the democratic procedure which installed the Shah into power many years before that --- a CIA-sponsored coup which displaced Mohammed Mossadegh, a politician who had been autocratically forced on the country by voters in a free election.

How fortunate we are in America has appointed one of the children of its own men of power --- Dick Cheney's daughter --- to the position of "democracy tsar" so that the democratic process that installed the Shah the first time can happen again. Look how well it worked out for us...