<i>'After I described the book to my Chinese dinner companions-a hip and artsy intellectual crowd-one friend declared: "Some day the same thing will happen in China, then I'll know who my real friends are."'</i><p>Sometimes I think people misunderstand why police states are evil. It isn't that it oppresses this group, or that group. It oppresses <i>everyone</i>. From the lowliest peon to the person putatively at the top, everyone must watch their step. Some people seem anxious to set up police states because they think they will be in the oppressor class rather than the oppressed class, but there isn't an oppressor class, just varying degrees of oppression. (I don't mean some people here on HN, I just mean in general.) As wonder as it may seem to be Chavez or Kim Jong-il, they find their hands pretty tied by the system they've created too.