While the political climate in America climbs to fevered pitches that often are excessively shrill, our democratic republic of a representative government continues to be the best demonstration of liberty on the globe.
In contrast, North Korea apparently has had 30 members of its Communist regime die in "traffic accidents" during the last six months, in addition to another 200 state officials who were killed, according to news reports. Coincidentally, those same 30 North Korean officials were engaged in unsuccessful talks with South Korea to improve relations between North Korea's capital city, Pyongyang, and Seoul in vain hopes of reunification. Amid saber rattling and an unquestionable commitment to nuclear weapons development by their northern neighbors, the South Koreans' diplomatic welcome mat has not been offered.
Despite the death of Kim Jong-Il and the succession of his 29-year-old son, Kim Jon-Un, North Korea still uses political prison camps within its gulag system that hold up to 200,000 citizens today, along with "purges" such as the staged traffic accidents that mask executions of individuals who "fail the state" as standard operating procedure. This fact alone should serve as one of many signs that freedom and liberty are threats to the existence of a statist society.
Amnesty International has published its annual 381-page report that documents the National Human Rights Commission of Korea. The testimony of 278 defectors is captured with specifics of the 120 grams of rotten corn given daily for food, the beatings, the inability to bathe and even executions.
The messiness of American election years, partisan politics and an electoral system too heavily influenced by consultants and massive amounts of campaign cash is a magnificent contrast to a failing nation whose leadership continues on a path that destroys the individual with no personal property and no opportunity for success, only a daily guarantee of state-controlled shortage and the threat of violence.
America is driven to the pursuits of freedom. North Korea is driven to death.