Seth — I take a backseat to no one in my admiration of John Hinderaker and the folks at Powerline, but this line of John’s is just off-base and deeply strawmanesque:

I am perhaps a little less willing than some of my friends on the right to assume that because demonstrators take to the streets and the government tries to crack down, it necessarily means that the government deserves to fall.

Who are these friends on the right who instinctively assume that a government must fall because there are demonstrators in the street and the government cracks down? I’m straining my memory to think of conservatives who’ve lept to the conclusion that France’s government, or Germany’s, or America’s should fall simply because demonstrators took to the streets and the government responded by trying to maintain order.

And about that. John says that “the first duty of any government is to maintain order so that its citizens can go about their business.” I agree entirely that governments have a duty to maintain order so citizens can go about their business. But that is not their first duty. A government’s first duty is to be legitimate and just. If it is not those things, it is in a very fundamental sense evil. We can get into all sorts of definitional weeds about what constitutes legitimate and just, but as John himself is willing to concede, Iran’s regime does not meet the test.

Where I take exception is when John suggests that other folks on the Right haven’t made this calculation as well. It seems to me, they made it without needing to see police wearing ski masks to understand that this regime deserved to go. I like his new bright-line standard, but his epiphany doesn’t mean his friends on the Right are quite so romantic and naïve as he makes it sound.