"Hm. I suppose if that's your standard, then I would say Lastwall is not a 'free' country, though I'm not convinced that it's worse for it."

"Well, I can imagine a few ways that might be true. One is that Lastwall's people are very foolish, and don't know what they want, and would choose badly who was in charge if they got to choose. We don't give toddlers freedom, as they'd wander off and be eaten by bears. Is that the reason you are thinking of?"

"Well, not exactly that - people do not have to be very foolish to be more foolish than the wisest people in the country, or than a god."

"So the people of Lastwall would do a pretty good job, probably, of choosing their leaders, but not as good a job of it as Iomedae can do Herself. Like how a boy of twenty training to be a smith can make a pretty good horseshoe, but not as good as his master, probably. Only, if his master never lets him make any horseshoes, he'll never have the chance to surpass the master."

"I see what you're saying but - it does not seem right, to choose the leaders and laws of an entire country that way. The consequences of choosing a bad ruler or a bad law are far, far worse than those of making a bad horseshoe, and fall on many people. It seems to me that it's wronging those people, to expose them to those consequences only so that they can get practice deciding. Even if some of them might, with practice, become better choosers than the ones who decide now, I think that not all of them will."

"Well I wouldn't say that the only point of political freedom is to train people in the choosing of leaders, though it's among the advantages. Another point is that duties we've chosen are easier to take up than duties assigned to us. Does Iomedae order people to join her church and become her priests? Are those She empowers considered so ordered?"

"No!  It is our vows that we make as Her priests that oblige us to follow her orders - it would make no sense for Her to order us to swear to follow Her orders."

"But that's precisely what a country is! It issues orders to those who have never taken any oath to follow them, or else requires those oaths in the first place. A man cannot grow up in Lastwall and decline to pay taxes or follow laws because he never agreed to do that, can he?"

"Hmmm. He cannot, of course. But he could leave, if he found our laws or our taxes intolerable."

"I am glad of that. It's very important. But philosophically, I think every demand that people obey orders from an authority they did not choose is on shaky ground, and so it is good when people choose their government. It is not the only good. If Lastwall fails in its duties, we will all die horribly, and I will readily admit that it seems important for us to not all die horribly. Lastwall is perhaps unique in how little it could weather a single fool of a ruler, because its watch cannot be interrupted and the other wars wouldn't do much better. 

But - but I would say that this is an injustice that was done to Lastwall in its founding, that it was saddled with a task that had no affordance for error and therefore no affordance for political freedom."

"I am not sure that I want to concede that - Even ignoring Lastwall's special purpose as a country, I don't think that the people of Lastwall are worse off for having a government that is wisely chosen instead of popularly chosen."

"I think that you believe this because democracy is in its infancy, and no one you've ever seen has a lot of practice at it. And of course when Iomedae chose to make her state as it stands, democracy was not even in its infancy, and there was nothing even to try to improve on. …and some of the truth of this matter depends on how smart gods are, exactly, and how much they improve even on the best possible popular judgment. But I think that the people of Lastwall are - treated as children, in having a government in which they have no say, and the benefits of the treatment are real but the costs hard to measure. …should we argue about something else?"

"I hope that democracy will last long enough that we can see if it's a good idea. And, yes, I think you're right that we've - found our disagreements here, and are unlikely to convince each other. What else did you want to talk about?"

"So, say you see a slaver ship on the high seas, and with just a little bit of banditry you could take three hundred free people to the nearest free port. And maybe not make it to Heaven, but Nirvana's all right too. Does Iomedae say you shouldn't do this?"

Oh, this one he prepared for.

"Iomedae does not command us to attack slave ships, nor does She forbid it. In this sort of matter, She instead teaches us how to properly go about it - If Lastwall were to decide to put an end to the slave trade in the inner sea, we would not do so with random, unpredictable attacks on slave ships. There would be - a declaration of war, I suppose, against all slavers, and a set of procedures that our captains would follow when demanding a ship's surrender, and courts to ensure that all our captures were legal and to compensate any merchants we troubled who were not carrying mortal cargo. An individual Iomedan ship's captain, unaffiliated with Lastwall or any other Iomedan order, might engage in a private crusade against slavery, in which case the teachings of the Goddess would still be to do so openly, without trickery, to demand surrender rather than attack without warning, to compensate those wrongly detained, and so on."

"So all of those things could be justified two ways, or at least I can think of two ways, and maybe your church with more practice justifying them could justify them some more ways after that. The first way makes reference to the fallibility of mortals. Sure, I might say, for a truly just cause it would be worth conducting oneself in an underhanded manner, but many people are wrong about their cause or wrong that their actions advance it. By committing to ask for surrender and avoid trickery, the Iomedaean captain saves himself if he is in error, and it is error that his rules protect him from.

This explanation proposes the question: does Iomedae have to care about the rules? She's a god. She's not in error."

"Even gods can err. Aroden did, one assumes, or else His plan is far beyond our comprehension. But even setting that aside - there is a power in being predictable. In following the rules so that you are seen to follow the rules - Only attacking following a declaration of war, or the like, means forfeiting the element of surprise, but it also means that anyone who you have not declared war on knows that they are safe, that they do not need to fear a surprise attack from you, that they can make themselves vulnerable in approaching you and you will not take advantage of them doing so. It means a lot more opportunities to work with people to get things you both want, even people who might be your enemies - or imagine themselves to be your enemies - in other circumstances."

"That was the second explanation that I thought of! It's related to what Sevandivasen spoke of. People know Abadarans won't steal their money, and so people will put their money in an Abadaran bank, when they'd otherwise be fools to trust it to a stranger. This is a gift Abadar gives His priests, even if the form the gift takes is the fact He might strike them dead on the spot about it; they are stronger for the fact He might do that, not weaker, because it is worth so much to be known to be trustworthy. If people know Iomedans will respect their surrender, will war with them only openly, will be straightforward in negotiations, then this is a gift She gives Her priests. Assuming they can hold to it. 'Don't steal money' is simpler than 'war only openly'. If a listener lives in Cheliax, and will die the minute that they war openly with House Thrune, should they war secretly, or not at all, or should they just plan on dying?"

"I must admit, the teachings of the Goddess for countries like Lastwall and for free people are likely not the best possible advice for people who are not free. If there are listeners in Cheliax who find themselves more called to Milani's path - I can hardly fault them for that. I myself would probably choose that way, living under the Thrunes. Though dying in the fight against evil is often not the worst fate that a man might meet."

"I have taken an oath of honesty," says Freedom, "and some time after I first considered myself bound by it I was taken prisoner in a foreign country, and made a kind of indentured servant, which is a position in which honesty is very difficult. The hardest part was not actually that I feared I might die, if I was asked the wrong question, though I did fear that. The hardest part was that I feared I might get other people in trouble with me, and they would rightfully be very angry with me, for having made an oath that now obliged me to betray them to their captors.

If I could speak now to myself then, I would tell her that - that to draw a line in the sand and say you'll die before you cross it is the freedom it is most difficult to deny people, and the most precious one I've ever known. To take up the hand you've been dealt and decide the point past which you will refuse to play it is to be a free person in secret, no matter what those who have power over you believe you to be. For a while it was my greatest source of strength. 

...but it is reasonable to choose not to draw one's personal line in the sand at 'ever lying'. 

And it makes sense for Iomedae's banner to mean certain things to all who see it, things that one cannot make true alone in enemy territory, such that one should not take that banner up where one cannot make those promises come true. In sufficiently difficult circumstances the promises one makes to oneself should be different ones than She made, as the champion of a great Crusade, as a god.

But it seems to me that one is walking in Her footsteps, whenever one tries to figure out who they'll be even if the world is trying to make them worse than that, who it is that they will refuse to ever stop being. There is following Iomedae by keeping the promises She was known for, and there is trying to be like Iomedae, by making your own."

Iomedae is kind of expecting the next high level strategy meeting to be awkward because she went on the radio and called their country unfree. She is giving them a fair bit of credit that Cansellarion has not ordered her to cut it out. Her father would at this point have ordered her to cut it out.

Fortunately they're all politicians and are presumably experienced at being diplomatic even if they're annoyed with her.

"If I ever tell Iomedae that I'd like to be on her radio show," Jan says, "You are to relieve me of command until I have recovered my senses."

She was planning to pressure him into it by getting Codwin and Cyprian first. She looks at the table, a bit sheepishly. …then she realizes that he is joking, and that she got him to make a joke, and then she is delighted. "You are going to take this as the strongest case yet against democracy but in America the president takes questions from reporters every week. They stand in a crowd with their microphones and shout them at him."

"Questions about what?"

(from an August 2014 press conference which I selected at random, drafted before recent events, resemblance genuinely coincidental):

"You've said there should be a ceasefire in Gaza, but how can Israel agree to that when today one of their soldiers was kidnapped? Also, have you seen the Israeli government respond at all to your call for them to do more to protect civilians?" and "Do you think you could have done more to prevent the Russian invasion of Ukraine?" and "Mr. President, you've called for a ceasefire in Gaza, you've also called for a ceasefire in Ukraine, with no more success there. Has the U.S. lost its global influence? Have you lost yours?" Iomedae liked listening to Obama's press conferences. She found them very instructive. She can do voices for all of the reporters.