Historically, there have been authoritarian societies that placed Party Loyalty above all else.

[mythology]

106. It's simplistic understanding of history to say that it repeats itself

Santanya wasn't a historian. He was an essayist, a philosopher. If I want to understand history, I go to historians.

Edmund Morgan, one of the most respected American historians, held that history doesn't repeat itself. Why? Because it's easy to point to a few things believed to be held in common and say that obviously that's the answer. The original post is an example of this. It claims that authoritarian regimes all have characteristics X, Y and Z and all result in failure. But that doesn't account for other governments who also have those same characteristics. It doesn't account for many countries that have successfully gone from governments that could tolerate no dissent to ones that do. It's the distinct details of a given situation that determine how it turns out. Not a handful of cherry picked examples.

For example, Lincoln suspended Habeas Corpus and Wilson passed the Alien and Sedition Acts, but the U.S. survived those mistakes, both of which are far more significant than anything the government has done to trouble Edward Snowden's life.