And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? -W. B. Yeats, "The Second Coming"
round the world, rough beasts are busily slouching. They are the nations recently emerged from decades of com- munist misrule, or those on the verge
of similar emergence, while some additional few are escapees from other forms of authoritarian gov- ernance, both of the right and left persuasions. What all have in common, from Russia and Poland to Zambia and Nicaragua,...