"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.

"I can't say I'd like that very much. Do the laws say the President has to answer, or can he just stand there?"

"No, he absolutely needn't answer, but the people of his country will form opinions about whether his Ukraine policy and his Gaza policy are any good, and they'll vote for Romney if he's doing a bad job, so if he wants to stay in office his explanations had better be satisfying." Iomedae herself preferred Romney, but she didn’t in fact think that Obama was doing a bad job. He was so, so good at explaining himself.

"What if his policy is good but it doesn't sound very good - if reporters were shouting at me asking why we're not at war with Cheliax I don't think I could give an explanation that would satisfy the average farmer, but I still think our policy of keeping to our international commitments even when it's inconvenient is the right one."

"...I think I have three answers. One is that I do think America gets into far more dumb foreign wars than Lastwall does according to its histories, in part because its commitments are no more durable than 'until sixty in a hundred senators votes to change this', though also I'm not convinced by the example of Cheliax that countries should make long-term commitments more durable than that. Maybe they should be eighty senators of durable, or even a hundred senators of durable, but - there's something to having an escape valve which will clearly only operate under extreme circumstances. The second is that I suppose even if we shouldn't go to war with Cheliax there's something to having people ask us to defend it. I don't know. I used to ask Aroden every night to fix the Evil afterlives already. I didn't really believe that he had the means to do it and would just forget if I didn't remind him, but - but it's a way of being in the habit of noticing the question, right, and not being someone who never wonders. 

The third and most practical answer is that America has three hundred million people in it and the President is the most persuasive and compelling and comprehensible one and I am nowhere near his rival, at making complicated decisions sensible to people. I probably will be in twenty years."

"Not sure I like that answer any better than the lack of one. We've seen it in Andoran too - Nothing against Codwin as a person but he's no genius, at war or foreign policy or lawgiving - but he sure is Splendid."

"Yes. People like it when their rulers make sense to them and make the world make sense to them. You can interpret this as idiocy, or as - all of you would I suspect be unhappy if Iomedae appointed an outsider with no comprehension of Lastwall's culture as your ruler, even if he was a genius at all of war and foreign policy and lawgiving. 

I can imagine it, some American who has the advantage of you at war and law because his world has more study of it and who happens to get along splendidly with Cyprian and Galfrey but who is an American, and eats absurdly sweet foods in absurdly large quantities and has no reverence for your gods and considers it mildly impolite to mention that they exist and who is licentious because a lot of Americans are, and you might work for him but you wouldn't like it, and every time a different woman left his chambers undressed except for being smeared in an exotic chocolate sauce he imported from Casmaron you'd feel - diminished, no matter how brilliant his tactical decisionmaking, because he doesn't care about the things you care about, and doesn't even know they're there to care about, and has never been subject to the constraints you are subject to and cannot recognize grace within them. 

I think this is how the people of a country usually feel about their rulers.

 No one likes to be ruled by strangers who cannot know their lives or make themselves understood to them. And no one likes to be unable to evaluate those who have power over them, they want those who have power over them to display those signs they can recognize as signs of familiarity and allegiance and shared values. 

In democracies when people get a choice they choose to be ruled by people who are comprehensible and likeable and feel like allies and friends to them, at the expense of other concerns. Some part of that is foolishly underrating the other concerns, some part of that is a preference as entitled to significance as any other. I don't know how much is the one and how much is the other.

But I do think that the fact people, given a choice, grasp ravenously for something that their rulers don't agree matters and would never otherwise think to give them is an argument for democracy, not against it."

Lastwall's cabinet has looked deeply uncomfortable ever since the words 'exotic chocolate sauce' if not sooner.

(Alfirin is trying not to look too delighted.)

"I suppose you've given us something to think about," says Jan after a pause. "...but for now, let's discuss the proposed rifle training schedule."

"This is Freedom Radio, and for today's guest, we've reached out to the Church of Asmodeus!"