Yesterday, April 4, was the 75th year anniversary of NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization); the collective commitment to peace of 12 countries in Western Europe and the United States in the wake of WW2. Today NATO includes 32 countries banding together against the military aggression of other nations. HCR provides some history of NATO built around President Truman's comments in support of the treaty when he signed it in 1949:
“There are different kinds of governmental and economic systems, just as there are different languages and different cultures. But these differences present no real obstacle to the voluntary association of free nations devoted to the common cause of peace,” he said. “[I]t is possible for nations to achieve unity on the great principles of human freedom and justice, and at the same time to permit, in other respects, the greatest diversity of which the human mind is capable.”
The experience of the United States “in creating one nation out of…the peoples of many lands” proved that this idea could work, Truman said. “This method of organizing diverse peoples and cultures is in direct contrast to the method of the police state, which attempts to achieve unity by imposing the same beliefs and the same rule of force on everyone.”
We can debate (and do) what constitutes a "free nation" or question the lack of freedom, or inequality, and discrimination against one group or another in an otherwise "free nation," or democracy, and in the pursuit of a more perfect union we absolutely should, but to sustain such efforts for more freedom we also must be able to tell the basic difference between the forces for "free nations" and "police states."
NATO, the UN, international aid workers, and currently in US elections, Democrats, support and promote "free nations" and peaceful coexistence, while Russia, Republicans, and various "police state" dictatorships around the world (and rightwing governments like Israel's) support and promote more violent division and war. At this moment in history, it really is that simple.
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