So I did.
I guess we're in trouble.
...[S]hould we give credit to such a regime, single it out for praise, whenever it happens to behave in a rational manner on one issue or another? After all, functioning governments of every kind do a multitude of worthy things for their people every day. They build roads, lay electric lines and sewer pipes, maintain the food supply, sponsor medical research, facilitate technological developments, adjudicate civil disputes, provide disaster relief, maintain parks and recreation areas, etc., etc. – the list is virtually endless. And this was equally true of, say, Nazi Germany or Stalin's Soviet Union, and other regimes imbued with a crimeful essence. Would you have told a dissident opposing the depredations of Hitler or Stalin or Franco or Tojo or the apartheid regime in South Africa that he or she must always be sure to point out any constructive thing these governments do, and give them credit for it?
[...]
...extreme systems force that kind of triage upon us. Raoul Wallenberg could not end the Holocaust; he could only save what was in relative terms a very small number of people at the margins. But who would deny his heroism, and wish that he had not sought such small but deeply meaningful mitigations? Conversely, who among us would have suggested that Wallenberg, in the dire moral urgency of his mission, take time out to give credit to the Nazis for, say, their "Strength Through Joy" recreational programs for ordinary workers, or their remarkable highway system? Or in our time, do we require Shirin Ebadi to praise the Tehran regime for its social housing programs, or Aung San Suu Kyi to give credit to the Burmese generals for building roads or installing storm drains?
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