Despot of the Year

Time Magazine is out with their "Person of the Year" and this year's is a doozy! Time's Person of the Year is Vladimir Putin and the only thing more stunning than the choice was the reason for the choice.

TIME's Person of the Year is not and never has been an honor. It is not an endorsement. It is not a popularity contest. At its best, it is a clear-eyed recognition of the world as it is and of the most powerful individuals and forces shaping that world—for better or for worse. It is ultimately about leadership—bold, earth-changing leadership. Putin is not a boy scout. He is not a democrat in any way that the West would define it. He is not a paragon of free speech. He stands, above all, for stability—stability before freedom, stability before choice, stability in a country that has hardly seen it for a hundred years.

It is how the former KGB agent achieves that stability that should have put the Time editors off of this nomination. People who question Putin's tactics have died in some rather creative ways along with being handled in some of the more mundane ways.

Putin has moved Russia away from democracy and openness back to the old days of dictatorship and fear. This is what Time feels is leadership. Then again, they also considered Hitler and Stalin to be a leaders too so I suppose that this is not too much of a surprise.