"This is yet another reminder of the elemental distinction between autocracies and democracies that President Joe Biden has highlighted in a series of speeches and other public statements. Americans have no trouble seeing Russia and China primarily as national-security threats and challengers to the United States, in part because they are. But there is a deeper divide—one that cuts to the very core of what it means to be a citizen and even a human being. Dictatorships elevate the nation and the leader as ultimate ends, while mere individuals have no inherent worth outside of their service to the state. Driven by an inherent logic of force and brutality, authoritarian regimes—particularly those with delusions of imperial grandeur—commit atrocities with indifference and even abandon. And they bring their populations along with them, willingly or unwillingly. This is what makes them doubly dangerous. It is also why the struggle ahead of the United States—and all democratic nations, whether they realize it or not—is likely to be a long one. As systems of government and ways of organizing society, democracies and dictatorships are irreconcilable. In a better world, coexistence might have been possible. But that is no longer the world we live in."